I have no problems admitting that Americans tend to be better at commercialization and marketing than Europeans. Yet, that is quite a different claim from Europeans not inventing things or creating innovations.

Something can be an innovation even if it is not particular successful in the market. A lot of innovative products create the foundations for later successful products. We see that in programming all the time with languages such as LISP, Smalltalk, Haskell, SML, Simula, Ada and others which may not have made it big in industry but were often crucial in inspiring other products that made it big in industry later.

Necomen steam engines was not that big of a commercial success as the James Watt steam engine but was a crucial earlier phase to make James Watt engine possible in the first place.

Just to remark on Fraunhofer. Usless research going nowhere or not being able to predict the future is hardly some unique European trait. Xerox Parc invented one thing after the other and Xerox itself failed to see to the potential or commercialize most of it. You had people like Steve Jobs who saw the potential for some of the technologies.

I have seen my fair share of failed technologies over the years. Many of them from the US. That is kind of how markets work. Somewhat by necessity one has to try a variety of things before hitting upon true innovation. The whole Multi Media thing was hype all over industry for a long time. Hardly unique to Fraunhofer. Most companies failed to catch onto the importance of the internet.