Frankfurt, June 26, 2009 – Crytek GmbH is one of the 100 most innovative middle-sized companies in Germany. This is the conclusion of an actual study in line with a nationwide and interbranch comparison between different companies. And Crytek convinced especially with its custom innovation management. Lothar Späth, retired prime minister of Baden-Württemberg, handed the coveted award to the Hessian enterprisers on Friday evening in the course of a ceremony at „Gästehaus Petersberg“ in Königswinter.

The mentor of the initiative for middle-sized companies appreciated the credits of Crytek in the fields of „innovation-supporting top-management”, „innovation-climate”, „innovative processes and organisation“, „innovation-marketing“ and „innovation-success“.

An exemplary innovation climate and modern innovative processes – that’s how the company, that normally deals with real time-graphics like a gulf simulator or ego shooters,   convinced at “Top 100” analysis. The “CryENGINE“ technology set completely new benchmarks regarding computergraphics. It is used by totally different applications not only such for leisure time activities but also applications for visualization, simulation and training, the so called „serious games“. The middle-sized company with its 255 employees earned approximately 17 million Euros in Germany in 2008. In addition to Frankfurt, Crytek runs studios in Nottingham, Budapest, Sofia, Kiev and Seoul. The company cultivates strong partnerships with Intel and NVIDIA and the development team furthermore exchanges experiences with Microsoft and Sony. In order to position itself in the market, the Frankfurt based developers are giving lectures in seminars and on conferences and publish their approaches in several special interest media. „We would like to share our knowledge and assume that we’ll get it back somehow. This principal determines the collaboration in our team as well as the innovation climate which is again affected by trust and respect”, says Avni Yerli, Managing Director of Crytek.

The honour is based on a double-stage method of Vienna University of economics and business. “Our findings show that the “Top 100”-innovators tackle challenges very powerful and are thus for example well-prepared for the current economic situation. In most companies innovation is dealt with by the management, says the academic leader of the study, Prof. Dr. Nikolaus Franke. The awarded companies earned about 2/3 of their turnover through innovations and innovative advancements of the three last years – compared to other German middle-sized companies a pretty high number, they make at most 30% of their turnover through innovations. Furthermore the top-companies saved about 12% of their costs through process innovations – average middle-sized companies saved barely 4%. The consequence: This years’ „Top 100“ include 54 national market leaders, 22 are even the worldwide number 1 in their field of activity. Avni Yerli is glad about the success: “Our power of innovation counts evidentially among the best of the German middle-sized companies. That strengthens our credibility and builds up trust at our employees, partners and of course customers. I guess there’s no better way to come up against crises.” In total 319 companies took part at “Top 100”.

All 100 top-innovators will be presented in Lothar Späth’s book „Top 100 – The 100 most innovative middle-sized companies” and on the website www.top100.de. The initiative is organised by the Überlingen based compamedia GmbH.