From Factor of Production to Autonomous Industry: The Transformation of Germany's Software Sector

In recent months the German software industry has gained extensive public prominence for manifesting a phenomenon not seen on this scale in Germany for decades: a dire labor shortage. As even the general public has been made aware by the Bündnis für Arbeit, Germany’s information technology (IT) industries currently suffer a shortfall of about 75,000 software specialists.1 However, the focus of this article is not on the labor problems, but on the comparative characteristics of Germany’s software industry. Difficult though it is to delimit the exact boundaries and segments of the software industry in an age of widespread technological convergence and digitalization, what follows is an attempt to assess the comparative national profile of Germany’s software sector in three ways: first, by looking at the business segments that German software firms specialize in; second, by examining the nature of their various business strategies; and third, by considering the components of Germany’s “national system of innovation” in regard to software: education and training, government policy, and organized interest formations. All three aspects of the German software industry are in a state of rapid transformation, as reflected in the current German high-tech boom and the growth of the Neuer Markt. Hence the following characterization of the German software sector is very much that of an industry in transition. Wenngleich es heutzutage im Zeitalter der technologischen Konvergenz und Digitalisierung schwer ist, die Grenzen der Softwareindustrie genau festzulegen, soll im vorliegenden Beitrag versucht werden, das Profil des deutschen Softwaresektors unter drei verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten zu bestimmen: (1) hinsichtlich der Geschäftsfelder, auf die sich deutsche Softwarefirmen vornehmlich spezialisieren; (2) hinsichtlich der verschiedenen Unternehmensmodelle und -strategien im Softwaresektor, und (3) hinsichtlich der Komponenten des "nationalen Innovationssystems" im Bereich der Softwareproduktion. Diese drei Aspekte der deutschen Softwareindustrie befinden sich in einem rapiden Umwandlungsprozess. Daher beschreibt die folgende Charakterisierung des deutschen Softwaresektors durchaus eine Industrie im Übergang.