Heading to the sea – Planung trifft Realität What to do when the storm hit you – Vom Lock-down zum Lock-On Finding new routes Die neue Realität in einer Welt beschleunigter Transformation
1st published in the German newspaper Handelsblatt on January 8, 2020 – translated by DeepL.com. Photos: Pixabay
Looking at the world sometimes gives the impression that things seem to be much better outside Europe. Examples? The world’s largest airport, Beijing-Daxing, goes into operation after four years of construction, while at BER, construction continues after 13 years. The coffee house chain Luckin Coffee, valued at $4.5 billion, will replace Starbucks as No. 1 in the Chinese market by the end of the year, two years after its foundation. Digital platform companies such as Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Tencent & Co. have left the traditional commodity and industrial groups behind in terms of value.
What made these American and Asian companies so big? Absolute willingness to implement at high speed, massive state and private investments, sometimes industrial policy intervention, huge, scalable domestic markets and a just-do-it mentality favour economic and technological development alongside a number of other factors.
Is Europe, on the other hand, in a downward spiral? Is the continent now losing the much-discussed second half of digitisation, which is mainly about the digitisation of industry, now that the B2C race seems to be lost?
The recent history can also be told in a different way. The financial crisis of 2008/2009 has shown how valuable Europe’s and especially Germany’s strong industrial core is. A highly specialised, excellent SME sector and the leading groups from mechanical, plant and vehicle engineering to the pharmaceutical and chemical industries are anchors of stability. With Industry 4.0, the vision for the future of value creation comes from Germany, and there is a worldwide competition for its widespread introduction.
The strength lies in product innovation, especially in complex products such as machine tools, medical devices, vehicles or building services engineering. Germany also has world market leaders in engineering and in production and automation technology. Despite all the negative predictions, Germany has further expanded its strength in networked physical platforms with the integration of IoT, data and services in industrial environments and has secured a very good starting position. The German research landscape also holds an internationally good position in areas critical to success such as semantic technologies, machine learning and the digital modelling of products and users. And let’s not forget that the companies in the country have produced outstanding software products for the fast, reliable and scalable processing of big data and the integration of business processes.
While Germany wants to consolidate its pioneering position as the world’s supplier, the USA is relying on its expertise as a global networker and China is relying on short decision-making paths, capital intensity and a large domestic market in which it can scale quickly. In this situation, it is important that we concentrate on our strengths and resolutely tackle the digitization of industry and SMEs. However, this requires a much faster entry into the emerging B2B platform markets.
In Europe, we stand for a liberal value system, both economically and politically, which, as in the past, has proven to be the decisive differentiating factor in the medium and long term. The debate on the use of data is conducted in Europe in good tradition at an extremely high level and this in the good understanding that digitisation is not coming over us, but is made by people and is intended to serve them.
It is therefore the right moment to take a decisive step towards the future and to open up Europe’s path. To do this, we need a large, homogeneous domestic market that will make us almost competitive with the USA and China. We also need substantial investment in digital infrastructure and cybersecurity, as well as training and further education. Both competitive regions currently have the power to set standards in digitization as well. The goal of the European Union to create a single digital internal market is laudable, but final implementation is still pending. This implementation, however, is the important and very concrete next step in order to be able to achieve the competition-relevant scaling effects and to be able to play a competitive role in data-based business model innovations.
The second half is running and nothing is lost.
About the authors
Jochen Werne (48) is a member of the Executive Board and Chief Development Officer of Prosegur Cash Services GmbH, as well as a member of the Artificial Intelligence Learning Systems Platform and the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jochen-werne-2292507a/
Twitter: @WerneJochen
E-mail: jw@JochenWerne.com
Dr. Johannes Winter (42) heads the office of the Learning Systems Platform and the technology department at the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech).
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johannes-winter-13048629/
Twitter: @jw4null
e-mail: winter@acatech.de
The Digital Summit (previously the National IT Summit) and the work that takes place between the summit meetings form the central platform for cooperation between government, business, academia and society as we shape the digital transformation. We can make best use of the opportunities of digitisation for business and society if all the stakeholders work together on this.
The National IT Summit was renamed the Digital Summit in 2017. This was to take account of the fact that digitalisation comprises not only telecommunications technology, but the process of digital change in its entirety – from the cultural and creative industries to Industrie 4.0.
The Digital Summit aims to help Germany to take advantage of the great opportunities offered by artificial intelligence whilst correctly assessing the risks and helping to ensure that human beings stay at the heart of a technically and legally secure and ethically responsible use of AI.
The Digital Summit looks at the key fields of action within the digital transformation across ten topic-based platforms. The platforms and their focus groups are made up of representatives from business, academia and society who, between summit meetings, work together to develop projects, events and initiatives designed to drive digitalisation in business and society forward. The Summit will serve to present the results of the work that has been done in the past, to highlight new trends and discuss digital challenges and policy approaches.
Looking forward moderating the Panel Discussion on “Digital Platforms for new AI-based Services”
“It has been inspiring discussing with Katharina Schneider about AI and the future of the financial sector and being quoted in her article among other experts as Prof. Andreas Dengel (DFKI), Dirk Elsner (DZ Bank) and Nils Beier (Accenture) . Read the original article here“
Jochen Werne
Frankfurt The interplay between artificial intelligence and the financial sector in Great Britain will soon be very vivid: from 2021, the portrait of Alan Turing will adorn the new 50 pound notes. The scientist is known for his early research on computer technology. (translated with DeepL.com)
The working group focuses on human-centred design of the future working world and on human-machine interaction issues (HMI). At the same time the working group serves as the interface between HMI and the area of Manufacturing and Industrie 4.0.
It’s an inspiring honour being member of this body of experts.
This paper was prepared by the Working Group Work/Qualification, Human-Machine Interaction of the Learning Systems Platform. As one of a total of seven working groups, it investigates the potentials and challenges arising from the use of artificial intelligence in the world of work and life. The focus is on questions of transformation and the development of humane working conditions. It also examines the requirements and options for qualification and lifelong learning, as well as starting points for shaping human-machine interaction and the division of labour between humans and technology.
The Working Group is lead by:
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth André, Universität Augsburg Prof. Dr.-Ing. Prof. e. h. Wilhelm Bauer, Fraunhofer-Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation IAO und Universität Stuttgart
Members of the Working Group are:
Prof. Dr. Lars Adolph, Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin (BAuA)Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jan C. Aurich, TU Kaiserslautern Vanessa Barth, IG Metall Klaus Bauer, TRUMPF Werkzeugmaschinen GmbH + Co. KGNadine Bender, KUKA Deutschland GmbH Prof. Dr. Angelika Bullinger-Hoffmann, TU Chemnitz Prof. Dr.-Ing. Barbara Deml, Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT) Prof. Dr. Prof. h.c. Andreas Dengel, TU Kaiserslautern und Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Künstliche Intelligenz (DFKI) GmbH Dr. Jan-Henning Fabian, ABB AG Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sami Haddadin, Munich School of Robotics and Machine Intelligence, TU München Prof. Dr. Michael Heister, Bundesinstitut für Berufsbildung (BIBB) Dr. Norbert Huchler, Institut für Sozialwissenschaftliche Forschung e.V. (ISF-München)Dr. Nadine Müller, Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft (ver.di) Dr. Rahild Neuburger, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Prof. Dr.-Ing. Annika Raatz, Leibniz Universität Hannover Prof. Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Roßmann, Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule AachenProf. Dr. Christoph M. Schmidt, RWI – Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung und Ruhr-Universität Bochum Prof. Dr. Jochen Steil, TU Braunschweig Andrea Stich, Infineon Technologies AG Oliver Suchy, Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (DGB) Prof. Dr.-Ing. Sascha Stowasser, Institut für angewandte Arbeitswissenschaft (ifaa) Dr. Hans-Jörg Vögel, BMW Group Dr. Bernd Welz, SAP SE Jochen Werne, Bankhaus August Lenz & Co. AG
The Working Group is supported by:
Dr. Chi-Tai Dang, Universität Augsburg Dr. Andreas Heindl, Geschäftsstelle der Plattform Lernende Systeme Dr.-Ing. Matthias Peissner, Fraunhofer-Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation IAODr. Anke Soemer, Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der angewandten Forschung e.V.