Scientists at the German Economic Institute set out to find out how many inventors and innovators are among the foreigners who have come to the country
As Deutsche Welle reports, these questions were asked by three scientists from the German Economic Institute (IW) in Cologne, who conceived a study titled "Migration and Germany's Innovative Strength." And they immediately faced a problem: how to find out? Generally, one of the most indicative indicators of innovative activity is the number of registered patents. But how to know whether the author of a patent is a foreigner or has migration roots? After all, the German Patent and Trademark Office (DPMA) naturally does not record the citizenship or even the ethnicity of the inventor – only the surname, first name, and address.
Of course, among the authors of patents registered in Germany, there are residents of foreign countries, but the IW scientists decided not to consider them: the subject of the study was to be migrants living in the country. As a result, the institute's experts devised a special methodology based on a rather original idea: to analyze the names of inventors.
If, for example, an inventor is named Karl-Heinz, it can be said with a high degree of certainty that he is German or at least from a German-speaking country. At the same time, a name like Agnieszka clearly indicates Polish roots.
By collecting the name data of all inventors living in Germany who registered patents from 2005 to 2016 (the DPMA has not yet provided more recent data), the IW scientists obtained a total of 20,375 different names. Then, a computer program developed by the institute's experts distributed them by country, region, or language group.
Various subtleties were taken into account, for example, the fact that in Italy Andrea and Gabriele are male names, while in German-speaking countries they are female. In such cases, additional internet searches were conducted to determine the inventor's gender, for instance, using photographs. Ultimately, the study authors write, in more than 90 percent of cases, it was possible to determine the inventors' origin with sufficient accuracy.
And the picture that emerged was as follows: if in 2005 the share of foreigners among inventors living in Germany was 5.9 percent, by 2016 it had risen to 9.2 percent, and the number of patents registered by migrants reached almost 3,000. At the same time, the most innovative turned out to be people from Eastern and Southeastern Europe: they accounted for about a third of all inventions made by foreigners in 2016 (nearly 1,000 patents).
By Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the IW scientists mean, in particular, Poland and the Czech Republic, Russia and Ukraine, Bulgaria and Serbia. In other words, Slavic states, although this term is not used in the study itself. It was not possible to determine the inventors' origin more precisely in this case, the study authors note, explaining this, for example, by the fact that names like Andrei, Alexander, or Maria are widespread in a number of countries in the region, be it Russia, Ukraine, or, for instance, Bulgaria.
The second large group of innovative migrants consists of inventors with Arab or Turkish (Turkic) roots. In 2016, they accounted for 565 patents. The third largest group is people from Southern Europe and Latin America. At the same time, the fastest growth (albeit from a very low level) was in the number of inventions made by people from India. Compared to 2005, the number of patents they registered almost tripled. For inventors with Chinese names, it doubled.
This dynamic is clearly linked to the fact that citizens of India and China have become the most active recipients of the Blue Card – a residence and work permit for Germany, specifically issued since 2012 to highly qualified specialists from non-EU countries. In recent years, citizens of Russia and Ukraine, Syria and Turkey have also frequently obtained such "blue cards."
So, "Germany has more and more smart minds with foreign roots." This is the main conclusion of the IW study. According to one of its authors, Oliver Koppel, the results convincingly show how important the law on immigration of skilled workers, approved by the government in December 2018, is for Germany. Compared to the Blue Card, it will significantly expand opportunities to attract specialists to the country not only with higher education but also with secondary vocational education.
The scientist is convinced that the new law, which is soon to be passed by parliament, "will facilitate the influx of specialists in technical and natural sciences, in other words, many potential inventors, and will strengthen the German innovation system."