Volkmar Denner, the chief executive of German industrial giant Robert Bosch GmbH, has said that the future of his company depends on the so-called Internet of Things.

He said that Bosch will learn from US Internet companies. “The American lesson for traditional German companies is to increase speed, while adopting an innovative spirit.”

Mr Denner said that “some parts of Bosch have little tolerance for failure, but in areas linked to Internet technologies, it’s simply the standard.”

Mr Denner, who has been at Bosch for nearly 30 years and took over the top job in 2012, said that his goal is to re-make the company “as equal parts IT group and manufacturer”.

Back in February, the group announced that it was acquiring Cologne-based ProSyst Software GmbH, which produces software for ‘smart’ devices and employs 110 people.

A month later, it confirmed that it will recruit some 12,000 new employees, a “growing number” of them for its software business. The company now has 3,000 software engineers working on the Internet of Things.

It has also developed its own software platform for factories. Called IOT Suite, this lets companies connect production machinery on a secure cloud and take advantage of its Big Data Processing application to analyse huge amounts of data.

Mr Denner said: “The question of who will rule the industrial Internet remains open. It’s not a given that the IT-based companies with no footprint in the physical world will dominate the ones that own the physical world and are moving into the networked world. It’s not a catch-up game; it’s a new game.”