In a converted former hotel just off Berlin's main east-west thoroughfare, the Unter den Linden, Maxime Legardez is plotting the domination of the Australian beauty business. After arriving in Australia in   June armed with little more than a business plan, the 29-year-old former French finance graduate says his team has signed up 750 hairdressers, beauticians and spas in mostly inner-city Sydney and Melbourne to his online booking business Vaniday.
More are expected to follow in Brisbane, Perth and Canberra as Legardez and his handful of staff on the ground aim to make-over an industry dominated by small traders by putting it on a global, digital platform that delivers -mobile consumers a booking in just a few clicks. 
"It is still an old industry using pen and paper, like the taxi, hotel and restaurant industries were 10 years ago," Legardez says. Vaniday is already operating in seven countries on four continents, a rapid-fire series of launches in Brazil, Russia, Italy and Dubai aimed at capturing a slice of a global market estimated at $420 billion. "In this business we are the first mover," Legardez says, "there is some competition but there is no market leader." Welcome to Rocket internet, one side of Berlin's start-up scene and part of the innovation fabric that Australia wants to borrow from as it tries to reinvigorate a post-mining boom economy.
Vaniday is the latest in a series of businesses launched and grown aggressively by Rocket, the multi-billion-dollar Berlin-based online business builder. If you've ever bought clothes from The Iconic, had food delivered by Hello Fresh or had your house cleaned by Helpling, you've already interacted with the standout business success of Berlin's start-up scene.
Legardez, at 29 already a veteran of several start-ups, was drawn to the German capital after working for the owners of other businesses. "When I decided I wanted to be on the other side of the business, Berlin was the best place to be. So I decided to move to Berlin and try it." Driven by necessity and fuelled by thriving higher tourism industries, cheap rents, and the halo effect of large and sophisticated network of research institutions, Berlin has become the centre of Germany's start-up scene. Abandoned by industry when the wall went up - and shunned even after it fell in 1989 - the German capital is creating an economic and jobs engine to grow a city its former mayor Klaus Wowereit once called "poor but sexy". Politicians and bureaucrats from Australia have been studying the innovation system in Germany for clues on how it has driven the industrial giant and how it might be adapted to better harness the business, research and education resources of the Australian economy. Their heightened interest comes amid competition for a $50bn contract for new submarines - with Germany, France and Japan all in contention - and Australia seeking new markets for exporting liquefied natural gas.
Thanks to the involvement of first lady Lucy Turnbull - "the bridge builder," according to Germany's Minister of State, Marie Bohmer - and German-speaking Finance Minister Matthias Corman, who co-chaired an Australia-Termany Advisory Group, it is getting attention at the highest levels.
Last month, Malcolm Turnbull presented German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a report -making 59 recommendations on improving economic, strategic, cultural and educational links between the countries. Billed as the first comprehensive review of relations between the world's fourth and twelfth biggest economies the report appears to help inform the innovation statement released on Monday with a major focus on how to commercialise scientific research.
"The time was more than ripe," says Bohmer and with Cormann, the advisory group co-chair, of the audit of the two countries' ties. Both are high wage, generous welfare safety-net countries with high immigration levels and well educated, well-travelled populations. But the economic relationship is thin: Australia has a $12bn trade deficit with Germany, its biggest export being gold coins against tens of thousands of high-end cars, appliances and heavy machinery imported from Europe's richest country. Lots of Australian's travel to Germany - Berlin is said to be among the hottest of destinations for 20-somethings - but few take advantage of the free university education system where many of the courses are taught in English.
Overlaying the desire for greater cultural and education exchange there are some big business opportunities, with German companies in the running for a $50bn contract to build Australia's next generation of submarines. Australia also wants to sell more gas to an energy-intensive country that has set an ambitious goal to reduce carbon emissions by 90 per cent by 2050.
In an interview in Berlin, Bohmer highlighted research links to industry as a particular area where Australia could learn from Germany. She noted that while Australia has an international reputation for academic research, "the central question for Australia is how do you transfer research to the private sector".
German government spending on research and innovation equates to 0.91 per cent of GDP, against just 0.44 per cent for Australia. The difference is magnified by extensive industry spending - much of it channelled through public research bodies - trebling the total to 2.7 per cent of GDP. Unlike Australia it is all direct spending, rather than via tax breaks, with the consensus being that the state gets better value from being able to influence the direction. Debate is emerging ahead of elections in 2017, when the next policy cycle will be set, about whether to lift that spending target to 3.5 per cent of GDP and to introduce tax breaks for private research and development.
Maximillian Steiert, the director of science policy at the Fraunhofer Institute, calls it the "roots and fruits" approach. The German government funds about one-third of the â‚¬2bn ($3bn) budget for Fraunhofer - a quasi-public body similar to the CSIRO. The rest comes from industry collaborations and government research commissions through a network of 66 institutes and 23 alliances. That, and the royalties from the MP3 audio file-sharing technology that enables services such as iTunes and invented by a Fraunhofer research team in the 1980s, which are expected to peak in 2017.
The institute, named for pioneering 19th century scientist and entrepreneur Joseph von Fraunhofer, focuses on delivering economic outcomes from Germany's research effort. The 9125 scientists among the institute's 24,000 staff have to compete for funds and boast 33 per cent success rate in winning project funding. "Part of the mission is to develop the people and shift them from the Fraunhofer Institute to the universities and the private sector," Steier says.
Bohmer notes that while most big companies have their own research and innovation arms, public bodies play an important role for the small-and-medium enterprises, the so-called mittelstand of mainly family-owned enterprises that she says are the backbone of the German economy. The publicly funded and collaborative research helps Germany's vast industrial base keep up with or even ahead of technological -advances that can be integrated into their output.
"I think that could be especially relevant for Australia as well," she says. While the country debates a lift in R&D spending, its advancement may be checked by the scandal at Volkswagen following the discovery it had installed software in tens of thousands of cars that cheated emissions tests. Government officials fear the cost of product recalls and billions of dollars in compensation and class action claims will force VW to curb spending on R&D. As the world's biggest spender on R&D, according to consultants Strategy&, it spends $US13.5bn ($18.5bn), or 5.2 per cent of revenue - major cuts would have a big impact on the national R&D spend.
In a former biology lab a few blocks from Rocket's overflowing headquarters Volker Hoffman is taking a more grassroots approach to start-ups. The managing director of Humbolt Innovation, the technology incubator set up by Humbolt University, is tasked with finding commercial opportunities among the research done by 450 academics and university students and helping them develop away from the rigours of venture capital. "You need to have the competitive, hard-edge businesses like Rocket internet, but you also need a more supportive environment for research," Hoffman says.
Supplemented by the proceeds of the university merchandise store, HI oversees grants from the German government worth up to â‚¬200,000 a year to students like Benjamin Herzog, whose start-up Solaga is trying to develop home biogas units, and Dominika Bienkowska, whose UberEnergy is developing a smart thermostat to help cut heating costs that account for more than 60 per cent of home energy consumption.
Hoffman says that Germans are risk averse. High wages and job security makes for an easy path from university into jobs with bigger companies. But he says with a bit of prodding and support academics and students can be encouraged into starting viable businesses, with HI alumni companies creating 600 jobs via start-ups such as online learning business sofatutor.com. Those companies are more enduring, with 70 per cent of academic start-ups surviving beyond five years, compared with 15 per cent across the broader economy.
Herzog says the grants give him the freedom to develop his concept, without the pressures that come from having venture capital backers to develop the product a certain way. "The big companies want guys like us but we don't want to go with them because we don't want to give away the technology."Andrew White travelled to Berlin as a guest of the German government.