If you want a cultural difference vs America to point a finger at: low ambitions. Even the most talented don't necessarily shy away from modest markets that cou

If you want a cultural difference vs America to point a finger at: low ambitions. Even the most talented don't necessarily shy away from modest markets that could never buy them their own private island. Industrial machines is a high value market, but the total growth potential isn't so big. With a typical European medium business (this is really not limited to Germany at all), if it achieves exceptional success in its particular field, chances are that it won't try too hard to leverage that success for growing aggressively into other fields, eventually losing focus on their core business. High specialization like Kern is achieved by sticking to what you do best and trying to get even better at it, not by trying to become a billionaire. Americans, by comparison, would be more prone to handing over the core business to the management equivalent of a maintenance coder and moving on to the next bigger opportunity.