8. Creating excellence in digital technology research, development and innovation Currently, German companies invest only 14% of their annual research budget in commercial applications for digital technologies. US companies spend twice as much. We must therefore broaden digital research efforts, especially in traditional industries. The digital maturity of the economy can be significantly enhanced with research. The two big trends, Industry 4.0 and Big Data, are already the focus of BMWi’s technology funding programmes that aim to create exemplary solutions for high-tech applications. In addition, with our technology-oriented funding initiatives such as the Central Innovation Programme for SMEs (ZIM) we are providing an important impetus for strengthening SMEs in their role as providers and users of digital technologies. These are only the first steps, however. Innovation in the area of the Data Economy in competing regions of the globe is very dynamic. In the USA, for example, Big Data solutions made up 49% of total patent applications in 2012, whereas in Germany, they constituted only less than 5%. German companies presently still use old technology for their data analyses. New technologies (NoSQL or Hadoop) are used by only one-quarter of the companies surveyed. Only one-fifth of the companies analyses social media data. www.de.digital 45