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Unternehmen Region programme sets in motion market-oriented innovation processes in the new Länder

Innovation is the key to developing eastern Germany. Through its Unternehmen Region innovation initiative, the BMBF supports regional cooperation alliances to develop and implement a strategy for achieving success through their own innovative, sustainable and technological approaches. The strengths and potential of each region should be used and bolstered in order to determinedly take their innovations forward to the market.

The Unternehmen Region programme creates powerful centres of innovation that are attractive to business and science and which in the longer term will be recognised as business clusters across the region and beyond. The funding is thus functioning as startup capital and investment for regions acting in an entrepreneurial way.

Over 200 Unternehmen Region initiatives in over 2000 individual projects, ranging from top-flight research to concrete market-related developments, are working on the spot to develop eastern Germany. The 2008 annual report of the German Federal Government on the state of German unification clearly shows this: In 2007, the economy of eastern Germany grew at a rate of 2.2%. This means that the rate of growth in 2007 was up on the previous years. Alongside this, unemployment fell to its lowest level since 1991. Development in the industrial sector - where the rate of increase in eastern Germany outpaced that in the west - and in the future technology sectors was especially positive. This is due in no small part to the consistent support for innovations and their commercial implementation provided by the Unternehmen Region funding programme.