Maintaining the innovation capabilities of firms, employees and institutions is a key component for the generation of sustainable growth, employment, and high income in industrial societies. Gaining insights into the German innovation system and the institutional framework is as important to policy making as is data on the endowment of the German economy with factors fostering innovation and their recent development. Germany's Federal Ministry of Education and Research has repeatedly commissioned reports on the competitive strength of the German innovation system since the mid-eighties. The considerable attention that the public and the political, administrative and economic actors have paid to these reports in the past few years proves the strong interest in the assessment of and indicators for the dynamics behind innovation activities. The present study closely follows the pattern of those carried out before. It has been extended, however, to include an extensive discussion on indicators for technological performance and an outline of the key features of the German innovation system.