Franchise Talk

Franchising In Germany: A Stepping Stone Toward Entrepreneurship

April 21st, 2009 | Author: Jack

Germans are widely considered to be risk-averse, and Germany is hardly the first country one associates with entrepreneurship. “The entrepreneurial culture is much more advanced in the U.S.” than in Germany, according to Walter Grassl, partner at Munich-based venture capital fund Munich Venture Partners. For typical middle-class Germans accustomed to long-term employment in their field of training, entrepreneurship is often seen as complex and overly fraught with risks. Franchising, however, represents a means of avoiding many of these risks.

The concept of the visionary, risk-taking entrepreneur is far less developed in Germany than in many other countries. Traditionally, independent German businesses have been based on the technical and engineering expertise of their founders, rather than on the novelty of their business models. The great powerhouses of German industry, as well as the Mittelstand stock of small- and medium-sized enterprises, which in many ways forms the backbone of the German economy, are strongly focused on engineering and other technical sectors.

The quintessential examples of German entrepreneurs include Werner von Siemens, who started his industrial empire in a small workshop in Berlin; Robert Bosch, who opened a workshop for “precision mechanics and electrical engineering”; and Carl Zeiss, who founded his namesake company as a workshop for precision mechanics and optics. Each of these entrepreneurs focused his life on a developing company that bore his name and remained true to the core competencies upon which it was grounded. The idea of the serial entrepreneur focused on the process of launching new businesses and discovering new ideas across a range of industries has traditionally been far less common. Full article.

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