Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: In today s modern economy a country s or region s competitiveness lies in its capability to innovate. Whilst earlier old and established companies were reliable producers of innovation as well as jobs, that is changing. The big corporations are outsourcing and downsizing, and the new technologies are emerging from companies that did not exist 20 years ago . This quotation taken from the Handbook of Research on Venture Capital points out the increasing relevance of the Schumpeterian growth regime of today s advanced economies which means that growth and wealth is unlikely to be maximized if most new business developments are carried out by old long-existing corporations. While in Europe only few global champions have been created in the past 50 years the United States economy seems to be capable of continuously creating great, leading-edge companies. Why is Europe lagging behind in enabling new ventures to become global champions? Why are successful high growth companies like Amazon, AMD, AOL, Apple, Cisco Systems, eBay, Genentech, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Yahoo and recently Google all US based corporations and not of European or Japanese origin? One reason is seen in the outstanding capability of the US economy to put innovative business ideas from individuals, universities and other research institutions into practice and thus create with the help of a well developed venture capital industry new global champions. A strong and sophisticated VC industry is widely recognised for providing a major contribution to turn innovation into (internationally) successful high-growth corporations and therewith foster economic growth. Taking Germany as the largest economy in Europe this thesis will try to work out the main differences of the VC market in Germany - which is still considered as lagging behind - and its correspondent in the United States. While most of the previous comparative studies focus on single aspects of the VC market and the VC investment process this work will try to provide a brief but comprehensive empirical analysis of the entire venture capital investment process (from fundraising to exiting investments). As business in general and the venture capital industry in particular is considered to be increasingly influenced by socio-economic and cultural factors this thesis draws special attention to differences related to the influence of culture on both VC markets. Hence it will be [...]