Soelden While the traffic light negotiators are negotiating a possible coalition in Berlin, top managers, entrepreneurs, scientists and visionaries met in the breathtaking mountain scenery of Sölden at 3,048 meters to discuss the digital future of Germany and Europe.
The pandemic has shown that digital technologies have long since reached all areas of life: They are revolutionizing the healthcare system, the education system, research, they are helping companies to use resources more sparingly – and are changing the way people live together in cities.
But what is the tech agenda for the next few months? What has to happen so that Europe is not crushed in the technology contest between China and the USA? And how do technologies come about that really serve people – and not the other way around?
These were the key questions with which around 40 visionaries traveled to Sölden, including Audi board member Hildegard Wortmann, Vodafone Germany boss Hannes Ametsreiter, Westenergie boss Katherina Reiche, Techem CEO Matthias Hartmann, the vice president for digital and IT at Mercedes-Benz Cars, Sabine Scheunert, and the co-founder of Bosch Climate Solutions, Donya Amer.
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They all accepted the invitation from Handelsblatt, “Wirtschaftswoche”, “Tagesspiegel”, “ada” and Vodafone to discuss the most important digital issues of the future.
One of the many highlights of the event was the live interview by “ada” founder Miriam Meckel with former US Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Al Gore about global climate policy. The next day, Handelsblatt editor-in-chief Sebastian Matthes spoke to historian and bestselling author Yuval Noah Harari, among others, about how the corona pandemic has changed the world.
These were the most important theses of the summit:
1. Algorithms are revolutionizing healthcare, but standards are needed.
Digital technologies are in the process of fundamentally changing the healthcare system. Without the digital collaboration of laboratories around the world, it would not have been possible to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus in the shortest possible time. Video consultation hours have made it possible to provide medical care to people without the risk of infection. And data analysis using artificial intelligence can help scientists identify diseases more quickly and develop the right diagnoses.
But with the many new technological approaches, the field is becoming more and more confusing. “We need global and national standards for the use of technologies,” says Soumya Swaminathan, senior scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO). Both the governments of the countries and pharmaceutical companies would have to set international standards, for example with regard to the use of digital vaccination certificates and the treatment of cancer. The WHO is currently developing these guidelines.
2. Worldwide networks help to overcome crises
The discussion participants at the “Giga Summit” quickly agreed: the closer the world is networked and the closer states and scientists cooperate, the easier it will be to overcome crises in the future.
The Berlin entrepreneur Ijad Madisch, for example, has developed a kind of Facebook for researchers with Researchgate. During the pandemic, thousands of scientists exchanged their findings on Covid-19 on his platform. He wants to make the network even more efficient and use artificial intelligence to help researchers gain new insights from existing data.
Information is abundant, but in order to draw the right conclusions, “we need a system in which man and machine do research together,” he says. He calls on politics to focus more on scientists and to strengthen international cooperation.
3. The most important ability of the future: resilience.
Careers used to be straightforward. Anyone who had a good job stayed. But the times are long gone. There is even a lot to suggest that in times of increasing automation, people have to reinvent themselves several times in their professional lives. The most important ability in the future is therefore flexibility, said the historian Harari.
Sebastian Dettmers, head of the Stepstone career platform, argues similarly. He believes resilience is a key to success. “Because careers have many breaks, applicants need to be able to reinvent themselves,” he said. Vodafone Germany boss Ametsreiter warned: Instead of looking at math grades in the application process, managers should pay more attention to skills such as creativity, the use of artificial intelligence and programming. “Just as children learn a foreign language, they must also be able to code,” says Ametsreiter.
4. In order to be able to cope with the major upheavals, the education system has to change drastically.
The corona pandemic has relentlessly exposed the gaps in the German education system. Missing classes, a lack of digital skills on the part of teachers or inadequate technical equipment in schools meant that children were sometimes left on their own for weeks.
In order to compensate for educational deficits and to offer people opportunities for further development even after many years of work, initiatives for lifelong learning, even after completing school education, are particularly important, explains Ametsreiter.
He tries out concepts of how he can arouse “curiosity, the hunger for more and the will to contribute” in employees, he says. A practical means of doing this are continuing education courses, also beyond one’s own specialist area – for example on the subject of artificial intelligence or meditation.
In order to alleviate the foreseeable shortage of skilled workers, the direct promotion of specialists from abroad is also a central issue, explains Stepstone CEO Dettmers. “The greatest potential is the educational integration of migrants,” he says. If Germany does not take advantage of this opportunity, the country will deprive itself of a massive competitive advantage.
Deepa Gautam-Nigge, Senior Director Corporate Development M&A at the software developer SAP, adds: “Knowledge is everywhere, we just have to learn to use it.” Internationally, it has been shown that successful young companies are particularly often set up by migrants.
5. A key element in everyday digital life is a digital ID.
People manage their banking transactions digitally, shop online and compare insurance companies there. But when you have to deal with the authorities, you need a pen, paper and your identity card. Techem CEO Matthias Hartmann believes that “this is a wrong path. He demands a digital ID for all residents of a city. Instead of going to the citizens’ office to apply for a passport and filling out long forms, citizens could enter their ID on a website and would be identified immediately.
The ID also knows the educational history and prevents fake CVs in the application process, he explains. Objects can also have their own ID, says Hartmann. The ID of a car, for example, knows accidents and damage from the past and protects used car buyers from fraud.
6. The basis for digital and sustainable cities is a data platform.
Cities face enormous problems: They waste energy, suffocate in traffic – and space is slowly becoming scarce in many places. For years, urban planners have been hoping for digital technologies to alleviate these problems and make cities more livable: networked street lights save electricity, intelligent traffic lights prevent traffic jams, and digitized rubbish bins keep the city clean.
According to Westenergie boss Reiche, a central element of this smart city is the intelligent power grid. This is the only way to balance the fluctuating electricity supply from wind turbines and photovoltaic systems with consumption. E-car charging stations, for example, would charge more slowly when the cars were not in use. That relieves the network, says Reiche.
The basis for all of this, however, is to network the city’s digital offers in a data platform. “We are a long way from that,” says Techem boss Hartmann. “Networking the city must have absolute priority in the next few years,” he explains.
7. Europe still has a chance.
The basis for the big business models of tomorrow is data. And so far, large digital corporations from China and the USA have dominated the market, warned historian Harari at the “Giga Summit”. While the data converge at the digital superpowers USA and China, Europe and the rest of the world are becoming more and more of a kind of data colony.
But it is not too late: Europe could still become the third power center in the new data economy – so far, however, little has been seen of this. It’s about nothing less than a new industrial revolution: whoever has power over artificial intelligence “controls the world”, says Harari.
8. New technologies are needed to offset emissions.
The economist Ottmar Edenhofer is convinced that CO2 emissions can only be reduced with negative emissions. To this end, he calls for the CO2 price to rise to up to 180 euros per ton. The director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research suggests social compensation for low-income households. In addition, new technologies should help to produce synthetic fuels in a greenhouse gas-neutral manner.
Politicians must “enter into credible self-commitments”. Then investors would finance new technologies. “Investors are holding back because they don’t believe that politicians can stick to the ambitious climate targets,” he says. “We cannot avoid emissions from industry.” Instead, new processes are needed to remove the emitted CO2 from the atmosphere.
Shortly before the start of the World Climate Conference in Glasgow, Harari is also calling for state investments: “It is not too late to take action against climate change. With just two percent of global GDP, we can prevent climate change. We don’t burn the money. We invest it. “
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