DSuccess sometimes leads to comparison with great role models. “Adlershof is Berlin’s Silicon Valley,” says Berlin Economics Senator Franziska Giffey about Germany’s largest science and technology park in the southeast of Berlin. Only last week she was able to get a picture of the original on a trip to the west coast of the USA. For anyone who doesn't notice the parallels between Adlershof as a business and science location and the San Francisco Bay Area at first glance, the SPD politician has brought some advice with her from her trip. “What we can really learn from Silicon Valley is that we talk more positively about our own successes,” said Giffey when presenting the figures on the latest development of the 1,330 companies based in Adlershof and 18 scientific institutions that are based here.
“The principle of the technology park works,” says Roland Sillmann, managing director of Wista Management GmbH, which is responsible for location marketing in Adlershof on behalf of the State of Berlin and surveys local companies about economic development once a year. Accordingly, the dynamism in the almost five square kilometer business and science location remains unbroken despite stagnation in the overall economy. Almost 80 companies relocated or expanded their activities in Adlershof last year.
The sales and budgets of the companies and scientific institutes at the location grew by more than seven percent to 3.9 billion euros last year. That is less than the average growth since 2015, which was more than nine percent in Adlershof. However, compared to the development of Berlin's economic performance and especially compared to the overall German growth, Adlershof has again made strong gains.
590 addresses for high technology
In the so-called core area, which includes the area formerly used by the GDR Academy of Sciences and includes around 590 companies in the field of high technology, sales climbed by ten percent to a good 1.2 billion euros including funding. If there is something like Silicon Valley in the southeast of Berlin, it is here in the core area of Adlershof that it best stands up to comparison with the original. This is also due to eleven non-university research institutions with 2,900 employees as well as the seven institutes of the Humboldt University with a further 1,100 employees and more than 6,000 students who are located here.
The number of employees at companies in the core area climbed by three percent to 9,400. “The companies that make up the core and operate particularly close to science have even grown by 13 percent,” says Sillmann. The number of employees here increased by six percent.
The so-called growth area in Adlershof has recently developed less dynamically. The sales and budget resources of the 510 companies and institutions still rose last year by a little more than six percent to almost 1.8 billion euros, including funding. In addition to commercial companies, there are also shops, hotels and restaurants that benefit from the dynamism in Adlershof. The number of employees nevertheless fell by one percent to 11,300.
Things were worse in the media city, which is also part of Adlershof and is located on the former site of the GDR television station Deutscher Fernsehenfunk. Last year, the turnover of the 230 companies in the media city only increased by a little more than one percent to 462 million euros. The number of employees fell by eight percent to 3,300 employees.
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