This is the result of a survey conducted by the consultancy company Ernst & Young . Last year German companies already invested an average of 5.9% of turnover in networking machines, digital twins and cloud computing; in large businesses with over 500 employees, the figure was even as high as 7.5%. Generally companies believe that these outgoings will bring cost savings of the same amount. Whether the anticipated growth is actually happening, however, remains a contentious issue: various studies describe a productivity paradox – falling productivity despite increasing capacity. A heated debate is being conducted about this theory among economists.

In addition to investment in future technologies, the spending of companies on research and development also reached a record high last year. There are three companies from Germany among the international top 20 – Volkswagen, Daimler, and Siemens. The average research spending of German companies, at 4.6%, is above the international average.