Dusseldorf And suddenly virtual meetings are completely normal. Everything had to happen very quickly in spring 2020. Face-to-face conferences were canceled and replaced by video meetings. Employees frantically carried monitors from office buildings. IT departments worked overtime to enable companies to work remotely. Programs like “Slack” or “Teams”, which had slumbered unused on office computers for years, became an essential part of everyday work out of the blue.
Even today, the German economy collectively pats each other on the shoulders. The tenor is that they have demonstrated a wealth of improvisation and reacted quickly to protect their employees in the pandemic. But how can it be that all of this was necessary at all?
This is what Mario Herger asks himself in his new book “Future Angst”. He writes that “Zoom” and Co. were new territory for many German companies at the beginning of the pandemic. Because: “At least since I moved to the USA in 2001, such virtual conferences have been part of my everyday life.”
Herger has a doctorate in chemistry and was with SAP for a long time. For several years he has been working as a management consultant in Silicon Valley, giving lectures on technology trends and digital disruption. Most recently he wrote books on artificial intelligence, autonomous driving and the mindset of Silicon Valley.
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In “Future Angst” it becomes more general and deals with the question of what exactly separates Germany from this mindset today. And with the question of why the country, which was once considered the place of poets and thinkers, is now only dealing with new innovations when they are already considered old-fashioned elsewhere.
Mario Herger: Future fear. How we went from innovation pioneers to innovation laggards and how we overcome German fear.
Plassen publishing house
Kulmbach 2021
480 pages
22.90 euros
ISBN: 978-3-86470-772-8
The short answer to this is already provided by the title of his book: Too often it is fear that guides the German economy. Fear of new ideas, changes, mistakes and wrong decisions. It’s also much easier to bask in the comfort of the status quo.
The “German assertiveness” used in the Anglo-Saxon region as a complement to the stereotype of “German fear”, the typical German arrogance, is part of the problem. And where hesitation and arrogance meet, innovation simply cannot flourish.
Herger writes that the books about technology that sell best in Germany are always those that put the threat of the foreign first. He describes the authors of such works as “moral entrepreneurs”, and mentions Anders Indset and Richard David Precht as media-present examples, who warn of mass unemployment as a result of digitization.
The encouragement that those addressed reap with their “citable bonmots” is, for Herger, a symptom of a negative attitude in German society and entrepreneurs, “a mental obstacle to seize opportunities and achieve great things”. It is true that humans are evolutionarily conditioned to pay more attention to threats than to positive aspects. But: “Why shouldn’t we have more of the opportunities and instead less of the risks?”
Herger’s argument is conclusive at this point. The technological upheavals of the past have shown that when jobs become obsolete, new fields of work always arise. Nevertheless, the author has to put up with the accusation of behaving in a very similar way to those he criticizes. Herger’s role as an “anti-moral entrepreneur” also only depicts a reduced view of the future.
The arguments of the tech skeptics have not changed
At least the author can support his appeal for more technology optimism with historical examples. Because: A lot of things that are so common today that we no longer perceive them as technology were initially considered dangerous – whether lifts, trash cans, electric lights or umbrellas.
The reasons behind this in individual cases seem absurd today – but only at first glance. Because the arguments of the technology skeptics are essentially still the same: They refer to traditions, worry about outside influences, loss of immediacy and alleged effects on health.
“Inventors, scientists, technologists and engineers have no problem solving technological problems,” Herger writes at the end of his excursion into the history of innovation. The real challenge is to prepare people psychologically for new technology. “And we never learned that.”
This is all the more true for digital technologies and the two most important technology trends that drive the economy now and in the future: automation and artificial intelligence. There is something mysterious about them, writes Herger, which makes them almost a “modern equivalent of the divine”. Instead of mechanical parts, electrons move that are invisible.
The fact that the fear of the intangible is deeply anchored in the German economy is once again shown by the example of the home office: The fact that many companies in this country could only get involved when the corona crisis made no alternative is based on a “fear of losing control” writes Herger.
“It was only through the physical presence of the employees in the office that it was believed that they were actually getting work performance. What you couldn’t see didn’t exist – a way of thinking that also explains the deeply anchored distrust of digital technologies in our society. “
When “tradition” becomes a bad word
This mistrust of new things is also reflected in the falling number of business start-ups in Germany: According to data from the state development bank KfW, the share of business start-ups in the workforce in Germany has halved since 2004. “It almost seems as if we are becoming a culture with fewer and fewer ambitions,” attests the author.
“Tradition” is therefore a nonsense for him and should be deleted from the vocabulary of entrepreneurs as quickly as possible. Sentences like “We always did it like this” or “Never change a functioning system” are examples for Herger of the so-called “status quo distortion”, a glorification of the state of affairs that refers to “existential fear, avoidance of loss, the omission effect , but also the lack of information or a cognitive limitation ”.
Herger writes that there are many characteristics that German companies can demonstrate that are worth emulating. But to be proud of it could “become a tightrope walk that quickly slips into arrogance”. This arrogance, in turn, could quickly “become a massive problem and endanger entire branches of the economy”.
This can be seen from the example of Tesla and Elon Musks. For a long time, the German auto industry smiled at the American newcomer and his extravagant CEO out of deceptive arrogance instead of taking an example – for example with regard to an agile corporate culture and a focus on new future technology instead of past sales figures. It was only when Tesla’s lead in e-mobility had become almost impossible to catch up that German companies began to rethink.
But what specifically can companies do in order not to succumb to the “status quo distortion”, to become innovative and to stay that way? Thorsten Reiter provides concrete approaches for this in his book “Killing Innovation”. And makes it clear right away: Even the Silicon Valley, glorified by Mario Herger, is not immune to arrogance and laziness.
Ironically, Apple, supposedly the flagship innovator par excellence, cites Reiter as an example of a company that threatens to lose its innovative strength. The company’s “last innovative bang” was a long time ago.
Thorsten Reiter: Killing Innovation. How companies destroy their innovative strength themselves … and how it survives.
Vahlen publishing house
Munich 2021
150 pages
19.80 euros
ISBN: 978-3-8006-6437-5
Reiter is an economist and describes himself as an expert in innovation and corporate strategy. His new book looks a bit like a third-rate detective novel and rides the gag of the “murder” of innovation over 160 pages to death, which is not particularly funny at the beginning. In between, however, he comes up with refreshing ideas and models, with clear guidelines on how companies can position themselves to be innovative – and, above all, how they can remain so.
Reiter divides a company’s ability to innovate into three elements: perceiving, grasping and transforming. What this means is that opportunities and risks must first be recognized, then used or averted – and finally a “continuous realignment of the internal resource base, competencies, processes and structures to a reality that has changed after the innovation” must be implemented in order to generate innovative strength.
These elements would have to become the institutional logic of a company, at best manifest themselves in their own innovation departments, so that innovative capacity does not have to be built anew every time and new disruptions can be reacted to quickly.
Innovation requires a concrete vision, a clear long-term perspective and not just a short-term view of the search for the next best opportunity, writes Reiter. Even a single change within the corporate structure, such as the change from a technology-focused to a marketing-oriented CEO, could massively jeopardize innovative strength. Reiter speaks of “political, functional and social destroyers” and warns: Innovation in companies always needs protection, “because standstill wins by itself”.
Herger and Reiter agree on at least one thing: the ingenious loner who locks himself in his laboratory in order to produce something innovative is a myth. Rather, innovations are team efforts that need productive conditions to thrive. They end with the individual employee, lead through corporate culture and politics, but begin with the social mentality.
“We should take the necessary steps from a pessimistic to an optimistic worldview,” writes Mario Herger in “Future Angst”. Anyone who intuitively and fearfully reacts to new things can actively take countermeasures. “This applies to each individual, but also to companies and even the whole country.”
More: Pension, climate, digitization – How a renewed FDP could play the key role in the reform of the country.