"Bad Luck!"
The most convenient lie of the German innovation system
The Dialogue
There is a dialogue that has been repeating between inventors and the system for decades. It has many variants, but at its core it always goes the same way:
In these two sentences lies the entire tragedy of the German innovation system. One says: The problem is structural. The other says: The problem is you.
And as long as the system can enforce its answer, it doesn't have to change.
The Mechanics of Reinterpretation
What happens when an inventor fails? Not technically — their invention works. But commercially, institutionally, in the system.
The system has two options:
Option A requires self-reflection, change, work.
Option B requires only one sentence: "Bad luck."
The German innovation system has been choosing Option B for decades.
The Variants of Bad Luck
"Bad luck" comes in many disguises. Here are the most common:
Timing Bad Luck
"You were ahead of your time."
This sounds like a compliment. It isn't. It means: The invention was good, but the inventor is to blame for having it too early. As if the right timing were something the inventor could control — and not the system that decides when it's ready to listen.
Social Bad Luck
"You lacked the right contacts."
Translated: Innovation depends not on the quality of the idea, but on who you know. The system openly admits it's based on networks — and then blames the outsider for not being an insider.
Character Bad Luck
"You couldn't sell yourself."
So the inventor should not only invent, but also be a sales talent, marketing expert, and networker. And if they're "only" a brilliant engineer who developed a groundbreaking technology? Bad luck. Wrong personality.
Market Bad Luck
"The market wasn't ready yet."
As if "the market" were a force of nature like the weather. In truth, the market is the result of decisions — of companies that didn't want to invest, of banks that didn't want to take risks, of funders who preferred the familiar. But all these decisions disappear behind the abstract "market," and what remains is: the inventor with their bad luck.
The Function of the Lie
"Bad luck" is not an analysis. It is a protective assertion.
It protects the system from uncomfortable questions:
- Why aren't inventors without companies funded?
- Why are there no technical development capacities for individual inventors?
- Why are inventions taken over by companies without involving the inventor?
- Why does everyone refer to someone else, and no one is responsible?
- Why do funding agencies ask "Do you even have a company?" instead of "What have you invented?"
All these questions disappear when you say: "Bad luck." The problem then isn't the system. The problem is the unlucky one.
The Statistical Impossibility
Here's the strange thing: If you ask enough inventors, they've all "had bad luck." Different people, different technologies, different decades — but all had bad luck.
At some point, the sum of individual cases becomes a pattern. And a pattern is not bad luck. A pattern is a system.
When independent inventors systematically fail in a country over decades — while their inventions are taken over and successfully marketed by established companies — that's not statistical bad luck. That's a structure functioning exactly as it was designed.
The system isn't broken.
It's built for others.
The Price of the Lie
"Bad luck" has consequences — not just for inventors, but for the entire country:
Innovations migrate. When inventors find no support in Germany, they go elsewhere — or their ideas do. To China, to the USA, anywhere someone is willing to take the risk that German institutions shy away from.
Knowledge is lost. When inventors give up, they take their knowledge with them. It's not documented, not passed on, not used. It simply disappears.
New talent is deterred. Young people see what happens to independent inventors. They draw their conclusions. They'd rather become consultants than inventors — less risk, more recognition.
The system confirms itself. The fewer inventors there are, the less noticeable it is that the system doesn't support them. The shortage becomes proof that there's no need.
The Truth
The truth is uncomfortable, but simple:
It wasn't bad luck.
It was a system optimized for risk avoidance. A system that doesn't provide for inventors without companies. A system that values networking and sales talent higher than technical brilliance. A system that prefers to fund the familiar rather than dare the new.
This is not an accusation. It's a diagnosis. And a diagnosis is the first step toward healing — if you're willing to hear it.
The question is: Is Germany ready?
Or does it prefer to keep saying: "Bad luck"?
Conclusion
The dialogue at the beginning of this essay is real. It repeated over years, between an inventor and his partner in the system. One said: "Your rules are wrong." The other said: "Well, you've had bad luck."
Both were right in their own way.
The rules were wrong. And within those rules, the inventor had bad luck — the bad luck of not fitting into the system. The bad luck of being an inventor in a country that no longer wants inventors.
But to present one as the other — to sell systemic failure as individual bad luck — that is the most convenient lie of the German innovation system.
And as long as we believe it, nothing will change.
"Those who have bad luck can't help it.
Those who produce bad luck can."
This essay is part of the series "Germany's Innovation Desert"
The material will flow into the book "Celestial Mechanics in the Machine Tool."