Germany and the U.S. continue to drive innovation around the Industrial Internet. The two countries are economic powerhouses and they are keenly aware of the importance of internet connectivity for business applications. Yet their approaches to harnessing it differ, as I documented in a 2015 report. What’s changed since then?

A flash GDP estimate showed the growth rate nearly doubling in the Eurozone to an annualized pace of over 2.5% in the first quarter. This compares to the equivalent U.S. rate of 0.5%.

The United States is a partner country for the world's leading trade fair for industrial technology.

This is my third in a series of commentaries from a European trip that took me to Switzerland, Germany, and Poland in mid-November. In Warsaw, I met staff of Poland-based U.S. subsidiaries for a formal discussion of the Industrial Internet.

During my European tour a few weeks ago, I held meetings with and delivered presentations to many of MAPI’s key stakeholders. Here is the first of four installments summarizing my trip.