I don't agree necessarily both on religiosity and on that being a cause for performance or innovation. I'll grant you that in the U.S. there are a lot more arguments about religion and it is tighter bound to politics. You will find masses of devout Christians all over Germany, but they usually don't go out bullying school administrations into some bs about creationism.
The more the people's lives are dominated by the religious, the less innovation there is. We only need to look at the Islamic countries to see evidence of this.