Some places make it easier to think about the future. Konstanz on Lake Constance is one of them. On 9 and 10 July, the IST hosted its Friends & Family Day — two days with entrepreneurs, alumni, project partners and long-standing friends of the institute. It opened with a get-together at the Hochrhein-Bodensee Chamber of Commerce, led by Lucas Sauberschwarz, Sebastian Strohmaier, Lukas Dieterle and futurist Carina Stoettner. The theme running through it: resilience, and what it takes to build it.
Carina Stoettner’s contribution centered on scenario thinking — and on why a method developed in the 1970s has become so relevant again.
Most companies plan for exactly one future: the present, extended. Revenue up X percent, costs down Y, market share holding steady. Buried in that logic is a quiet assumption — that tomorrow will be a slightly modified version of today. In stable times, Stoettner noted, this works remarkably well. In complex times it becomes a liability.
That’s where scenario thinking comes in. Scenarios are not forecasts. The point isn’t to be right. The point is to be ready for more than one possibility.
The best-known story in scenario planning, and the one Stoettner returned to, begins in the late 1960s in the planning department at Royal Dutch Shell. A handful of pioneers were asked to examine the possibility that oil prices might rise.
Nobody at Shell predicted the 1973 crisis in its full severity. That’s the crucial part. But when it arrived, it wasn’t unfamiliar terrain to the company’s leadership. They had already walked through that world in their minds. They didn’t need months of stunned paralysis before they could act. While competitors were still trying to make sense of what had happened, Shell was already making decisions — and came out of the crisis considerably stronger than it went in.
For Stoettner, that remains the most important lesson of the whole method: scenarios don’t change the world. They change the map decision-makers carry in their heads. The real output of scenario work isn’t the document that ends up on a shelf — it’s the changed thinking of the people who did the work. Which is also why buying scenarios in from outside and having them presented to you doesn’t work. If you haven’t been through the process, you won’t find the way.
If scenario work is so effective, why do we find it so hard? Much of the answer, Stoettner explained, is in our own heads. The brain isn’t built for thinking about open futures. It’s built for reaching decisions quickly and cheaply. Three biases get in the way again and again.
We think in straight lines. Exponential growth, tipping points and saturation curves are things we systematically underestimate — too little for too long, then too much too late.
We cling to normality. When a situation shifts, we hold on to the assumption that everything will stay as it was, often for a remarkably long time. That isn’t stupidity; it’s the default setting of human perception under uncertainty.
We fixate on the negative. Bad news carries disproportionate weight — what we read recently, what’s emotionally charged, what everyone in the industry happens to be discussing right now.
None of these are defects. They made evolutionary sense: fast judgments in a largely stable environment. In a complex one they become a vulnerability. And you don’t get rid of them by knowing about them — only through method, through a process that forces you to take several futures seriously at once.
What organizations take away from good scenario work is rarely a finished plan. It’s closer to this:
After the talks came the water. A trip out on Lake Constance, good conversation, a relaxed toast in a setting you couldn’t easily invent. On Friday, the Friends & Family Day wound down at the institute.
What stays with you from days like these: the willingness to think together about uncomfortable futures is there — and it’s growing. That willingness is where resilience begins. Not the ability to predict the future, but the ability to be ready for more than one.
Warm thanks to the IST team for the invitation and the hospitality — and to everyone who thought, argued and celebrated along the way.
That was the theme of the fifth Female Finance Roundtable, held in mid-June 2026 and hosted by WTS Advisory. As in previous years, the event was full of thought-provoking talks, lively discussion and open exchange among the many women taking part.
One thing came through especially clearly: in challenging times above all, what matters is focusing on possibilities rather than risks, identifying where you actually have room to act, and treating change as an opportunity.
In her talk, Carina Stoettner made a compelling case for questioning established ways of thinking and seeing the future not as a threat but as something to be shaped.
Anyone who wants to shape the future actively has to get past their own patterns of perception first — above all the negativity bias and the normalcy bias, which lead us to overestimate risk and underestimate change.
The key is not to think in terms of the future but in terms of futures. Letting individual trends steer you less, and thinking in scenarios instead, expands your capacity to act considerably. And the distinction matters: scenarios aren’t forecasts. They don’t predict anything — they open up room to think.
Which requires one thing above all: time and space for new perspectives to emerge in the first place.
Gyri Reiersen offered valuable insight into what sustainability and forward-looking action mean for companies and the people making decisions in them.
She showed vividly what a volcanic eruption in Iceland has to do with the emergence of democracy — a striking example of how profoundly ecological events can shape the course of societies.
She pointed to research suggesting that the share of uninhabitable land could rise from 1% to 19% by 2070, with roughly 3.5 billion people having to relocate as a result.
Artificial intelligence and sustainability, in her view, stand in a double relationship: in tension with one another on one hand, and on the other with real potential to complement each other — for instance where AI can bring sustainability data up to the standard of financial data far faster. Her conclusion: both AI and sustainability will be needed to stay competitive.
Munich, IFAT 2026 — the world’s leading trade fair for environmental technology. Four people share a stage to work through a question that could hardly matter more to Europe’s industrial future: where is the circular economy heading — toward a high-tech, globally integrated system? Or will protectionism and geopolitical fragmentation pull it back from the international stage?
The session was hosted by BDSV, the German association of steel recycling and waste management companies, and VDM, the German association of metal traders and recyclers — two bodies currently merging into the future Circular Metal Association. On the panel: Murat Bayram, Andreas Schwenter, Prof. Frank Pothen — and futurist Carina Stöttner, whose short keynote set the frame for the discussion.
What emerged reaches well beyond the sector itself: steel and metal recycling is one of the places where it will be decided whether Europe stays industrially sovereign — and whether it does so in a way that holds up over time.
Before talking about the future, it’s worth looking at the present. In Germany alone, roughly 10,000 circular economy companies account for some 300,000 jobs. Across Europe, the figure runs into several million. Family-run mid-sized firms, specialist plant builders, highly automated sorting operations — over the past decades they have invested billions in shredding plants, modern processing technology and AI-assisted sorting.
Murat Bayram’s message on the panel was accordingly blunt: this industry needs to stop talking itself down. Recycling operations aren’t a burden on the environment — they are, in Andreas Schwenter’s words, environmental protection facilities. They secure raw materials, avoid CO₂, make green steel possible and lay the foundation for industrial value creation in Europe.
Prof. Frank Pothen supplied the economic backing: every ton of recycled steel scrap avoids substantial CO₂ emissions. The circular economy isn’t a footnote to climate policy — it’s the practical core of it.
It was into this picture that Carina Stöttner delivered her talk — and opened up the view forward.
Her opening question was deliberately pointed: where is our industrial economy heading? And what does that mean for the steel, metal and recycling sector?
Her point: which scenario arrives isn’t a forecast. It’s a decision. And that decision is being made right now — in Brussels, in Berlin, in supervisory boards, in investment committees.
What Stöttner made particularly clear at IFAT: the next stage of the circular economy is a deep tech stage.
In practice, that means:
This is exactly where Stöttner’s keynote met the associations’ pointed position on the panel. Andreas Schwenter and Murat Bayram were unambiguous on one point: protectionism, export bans and additional trade barriers are not a strategy for the future.
The reasoning isn’t ideological — it’s industrial:
None of which argues against sovereignty. It argues for intelligent sovereignty rather than a reflex to build walls. Strategic reserves, diversified flows of critical materials, European standards — yes. Blanket long-term export bans and new barriers — no.
Stöttner’s contribution: an industry that pulls up the drawbridge buys short-term security and loses its long-term future. The circular economy worth aiming for is open, cooperative and technologically ambitious — not defensive.
Four imperatives for the years ahead emerged from the panel and Stöttner’s keynote — not as finished answers, but as the right questions:
The announced merger of BDSV and VDM into the Circular Metal Association fits that line exactly: more clout, more common ground, more future — and an industry finally positioning itself the way it has long since been built.
Stöttner’s central message at IFAT: the future isn’t written. It can be shaped.
Whether Europe builds a global high-tech circular economy or retreats into a fragmented protectionist one won’t be settled by forecasts. It will be settled in the next rounds of investment, in the next wave of European regulation, in whether the industry takes its own strength seriously — and whether policymakers have the nerve to open up room for possibility rather than close it down.
IFAT Munich is the world’s leading trade fair for water, wastewater, waste and raw materials management. The joint stage session hosted by BDSV and VDM — the German steel and metal recycling associations now merging into the Circular Metal Association — brought together:
A look back at futurist Carina Stoettner’s closing keynote at LEON 2026 — and what she had to say about the future of industrial work, resilience and the risks of protectionism taken too far.
It’s 5:15 p.m. at the Casals Forum in Kronberg. A long day of talks lies behind the hundred or so decision-makers from business, academia, government and the Bundeswehr. The day’s main threads — resilience, security, financing the transition, the Mittelstand as an anchor of stability — have all been drawn. Then Carina Stoettner takes the stage and asks the question: where might German industry and the German economy actually be heading?
Stoettner is a futurist — not a forecaster extending charts ten years into the future, but someone who works with companies, ministries and education providers to make desirable futures concrete. Her closing keynote, “The Future of Industrial Work,” wasn’t a full stop but a starting gun: for a debate that has been conducted too technocratically in Germany for too long — and now needs a direction.
All day, resilience had been the leitmotif of LEON 2026. Economics Minister Kaweh Mansoori had called it the decisive precondition for competitiveness. Stoettner picked the term up — and turned it around.
Resilience, as her keynote had it, isn’t an attempt to defend a status quo against an uncertain world. Resilience is the ability to stay capable of acting despite disruptive change — and by means of it — and to shape futures worth having. Treat resilience as a shield and you build bunkers. Understand it as the capacity to shape things and you build platforms.
That set the frame for the keynote’s two main strands: deep tech and radical innovation on one side, education and the future of work on the other.
Germany has an innovation paradox. Strong in research, strong in patents, strong in its Mittelstand — and still behind the US and China across many key technologies. Stoettner offered a diagnosis that landed in the room: we have perfected incremental innovation and structurally lost the habit of radical innovation.
Deep tech — technologies carrying high scientific risk and long development horizons, from quantum computing to synthetic biology to new energy and materials systems — requires different conditions from the optimizing innovation that German industry grew up on:
Stoettner devoted perhaps the most delicate part of her keynote to a question the current industrial-policy debate tends to sail around: what happens when protectionism goes too far?
Resilience and sovereignty are legitimate goals — necessary ones, even. But they have a downside that honest industrial policy has to name:
Her argument wasn’t a naive call for free trade but a case for proportion: resilience where security genuinely demands it and no other route exists — and openness everywhere else, because openness remains the real source of innovation and prosperity. The future worth aiming for doesn’t lie in maximum self-sufficiency but in intelligent sovereignty built on partnership.
Three imperatives can be distilled from Stoettner’s keynote — applicable to any industrial economy, and to Hesse in particular:
On 6 May 2026, representatives from business, academia, government and security institutions came together at the Casals Forum in Wiesbaden for LEON, the new business and industry congress for the German state of Hesse. The guiding theme: resilience as the decisive competitiveness question of the 21st century.
Three threads held the day together:
The main stage program was complemented by 13 breakout sessions on subjects including cutting red tape, cybersecurity, sustainable industry, financing transformation and security cooperation — plus a poetic and musical wrap-up to close the day.
LEON is designed as a long-term platform. In Mansoori’s words, it sees itself as the beginning of a dialogue meant to shape the years ahead: “The future of Hesse as a place for innovation and industry is being decided right now.”
Anyone who attends a conference, a trade fair or a corporate congress will sooner or later come across the term keynote. But what does it actually mean — and where does it come from?
The word keynote comes from vocal music. A cappella groups — doo-wop ensembles, barbershop quartets — sound a single note together before they begin. That note establishes the key the piece will be sung in and brings every singer into alignment. Carried over into public speaking, the idea is the same: the keynote speaker attunes the audience to the central message of an event. They set the note everything else is pitched to.
“The keynote speaker attunes the audience to the central message — they set the note everything else is pitched to.”
The more formal term is plenary lecture — a talk given to all participants at once. In practice, though, “keynote” has largely taken over, even on German-language event programs.
A keynote is far more than an opening address. It lays the intellectual and emotional foundation for the whole program: it previews the most important themes of the conference or fair, presents standout developments, and frames the message meant to run through every session and discussion that follows. A keynote gives people their bearings. It answers the question: why are we all here today?
DID YOU KNOW?
At large congresses, several keynotes can run in parallel. The term is increasingly used interchangeably with plenary session or invited talk, with an opening keynote, a closing keynote and further keynotes in between.
Keynotes often open an event — but not always. One can sit in the middle as a motivating bridge between sessions, or at the end as an inspiring close. Where it goes depends on how the organizers want the day to build.
Keynote speakers tend to be either well-known figures or recognized experts: executives, entrepreneurs, politicians, elite athletes, prominent researchers. In academic settings — university graduations, for instance — these talks are usually called commencement speeches and are given by invited public figures or academics.
Choosing the right speaker is a strategic decision. A recognizable name or someone with genuine authority in the field makes the event more attractive and draws the interest of potential attendees well before the doors open.
The job often extends beyond the talk itself. In some formats the keynote speaker also acts as conference host, guiding the audience through the full program and giving the event a thread that holds it together.
Keynote speakers either work independently or are represented by specialist agencies known as speakers bureaus. When a speaker is booked through an agency, a commission of 25 to 30 percent is standard. Industry practice is for the speaker to absorb that commission, so the fee stays transparent and consistent for the client.
Although plenary lecture describes the same slot, “keynote” now signals more than a format. It carries an expectation about staging, relevance and impact. Thanks in no small part to large tech events — Apple’s legendary presentations among them — the keynote has established itself as a communication format in its own right, well beyond a simple opening address.
On 12 March 2026, Hamburg once again became the center of the European foodservice industry. At the International Foodservice Forum at the Congress Center Hamburg — traditionally held the day before Internorga — decision-makers from across Europe came together to discuss the future of the out-of-home market.
Among them: Carina Stoettner, futurist and founder of the Futurewise Company, who took the stage to deliver the closing keynote. The booking was arranged through the speaker agency Premium Speakers.
The Foodservice Forum is one of the sector’s most influential agenda-setters. It isn’t only about trends but about strategic questions: how is consumption changing? What business models are emerging? And how does hospitality stay relevant over the long term?
The 2026 program reflected exactly that range. Speakers included:
Panels, start-up pitches and best-practice sessions rounded out the program — from Asian urban cuisine to stadium catering.
Carina Stoettner brought the day to a close with her keynote: “A Taste of What’s Coming: Change as the Industry’s Greatest Opportunity.”
The focus wasn’t only on trends but on concrete questions about the future that operators need to answer strategically today:
Her central message: change isn’t only a challenge — it’s a strategic lever for new business models, new customers and renewed relevance.
Alongside the talks, the forum offered plenty of room for exchange — a decisive factor in an industry currently undergoing serious transformation.
A particular highlight followed on Friday evening as part of Internorga: around 400 invited guests gathered for the gala at the Grand Elysée Hamburg to celebrate outstanding concepts and individuals — among them Karls Erlebnis-Dörfer, Haferkater and Henry McGovern.
Photo: Thomas Fedra
In January 2026, sociologist and futurist Carina Stöttner founded Futurewise Company. The consultancy works across Europe, helping executive boards and leadership teams stay strategically capable of acting in a climate of permanent uncertainty.
Futurewise runs executive offsites, builds futures thinking projects aimed at opening up new growth areas, and carries out strategy reviews. The goal is to give companies orientation in complex situations — without false certainty, but with a clear basis for making decisions.
The starting point was the upheaval of recent years: the pandemic, geopolitical conflict, the energy crisis, inflation and fragile supply chains. In that environment, Stöttner argues, optimizing existing business models is no longer enough. Growth increasingly emerges where uncertainty is greatest — and those are precisely the spaces companies need to open up in a structured way.
Through scenario work and futures thinking, Futurewise creates space for decisions: room to think through possible futures systematically and weigh strategic options against them. The focus is on resilience as a precondition for new growth — not as retreat, but as a deliberate opening toward future markets and business models.
A conversation about trust, the future and social responsibility at the Markgrafentheater in Erlangen
Can hope be learned again, in a time defined by overlapping crises, political radicalization, technological overload and a sense of powerlessness in the face of ecological breakdown? That question was at the center of the second edition of the talk series Amt 44 at Schauspiel Erlangen, held on 16 December 2025 at the Markgrafentheater.
After a successful first edition in the spring, the format returned to a subject that could hardly be more timely. Hosted by Matthias Köhler, resident director and part of the artistic leadership, the evening wasn’t about quick answers or moral certainties. As the format intends, what mattered was asking the right question.
Four very different perspectives met on the panel:
Peter Dabrock, theologian, ethicist and former chair of the German Ethics Council;
Baro Vicenta Ra Gabbert, author, lawyer and spokesperson for social and ecological justice at Greenpeace;
Vincent C. Müller, philosopher and Humboldt Professor for the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence;
and Carina Stoettner, futurist and adviser to leadership teams.
Peter Dabrock brought an ethical and theological perspective, understanding hope as a deliberate stance that keeps you able to act even without optimism. Baro Vicenta Ra Gabbert spoke from the practice of activism and showed how hope grows out of everyday commitment — through young people above all, even in the face of political setbacks. Vincent C. Müller opened a philosophical and technological horizon, arguing that thinking worst-case scenarios through properly is a precondition for shaping the future responsibly. Carina Stoettner placed the discussion in the context of futures research, arguing that hope at a societal level rests above all on trust — in the future and in one another — and on the quiet majority finding the courage to speak.
You can read more about the evening in the write-up by Rezensöhnchen or in the Nürnberger Nachrichten (both in German).
The verdict: an absorbing conversation, with plenty of spontaneous contributions and debate.
Would you like to book Carina Stoettner for a panel or a talk? Get in touch. More about the speaker.
Photos: Henrik Stelter
On 1 December 2025, Carina Stoettner was a guest at the Südwestmetall Heilbronn Christmas reception at the Audi Forum in Neckarsulm. Her talk looked at the future of German industry — at the opportunities within the transformation as much as the challenges facing companies and society. Communications consultant Christian Gleichauf wrote up the evening afterwards; his account forms the basis of what follows.
Deep tech is the thing we ought to be paying attention to. Carina Stoettner makes that very clear. And it has a little something to do with Heilbronn.
At the Südwestmetall Christmas reception at the Audi Forum last night, the futurist sketched out several possible futures worth thinking hard about.
In three of four scenarios, the good times in Europe don’t keep rolling. Only if we manage to build on our strengths and set off a few genuine breakthroughs do we get a future to look forward to.
That takes a society-wide willingness to engage with the new. Lifelong learning, a new relationship with science, a new sense of self in industry — in short, transformation.
In the end it will probably be a mix of scenarios. The familiar local-for-local approach will play a role one way or another. But you also have to hope the scenarios that would shrink the German and European economies into insignificance don’t come to pass.
What Stoettner does manage, in the space of a few minutes, is to make the urgency land — in front of an audience that deals with transformation every day of the week.
Christine Grotz, chair of the Heilbronn/Franconia district group at Südwestmetall, asks the fair question: what can we do? Stoettner appeals directly to the employers in the room: industry underestimates the leverage it has. Basic research is one example — and the state won’t be funding all of it. Nor will this happen without partnerships.
Former state secretary Friedlinde Gurr-Hirsch called for new approaches to training and apprenticeships. In front of more than 160 invited guests, Heiko Asum of Fibro Rundtische in Weinsberg put his finger on the sore spot: we’re not fast enough anymore.
Deep tech, collaboration between industry and science, combining Gyro Gearloose’s out-of-the-box thinking with Scrooge McDuck’s commercial instincts, using robotics to keep production in Europe, a clear focus on future technologies like AI, chip production and quantum computing. What’s striking about that list of ingredients: most of it is currently emerging in the Heilbronn ecosystem or out of it (Schwarz Group!).
So we’re watching a blueprint for Europe take shape. And if that’s our one chance of not going under, it sounds like there ought to be a majority prepared to at least pull in the same direction.
Doesn’t that sound like a Christmas message?
Also worth a mention: the inventive welcome video from Senta Woldeck and Güldeniz Acar (where was Jörg Ernstberger? 😉). And not to be forgotten — this year’s Herz der Wirtschaft award went to the Main-Tauber district and Futurelabs gGmbH, an initiative that encourages young people to experiment and gives them a way to put ideas into practice. Fitting, given the theme of the evening.
So — shall we give deep tech a chance?
This piece was originally published by Christian Gleichauf on LinkedIn. Christian is deeply connected in Heilbronn’s fast-growing ecosystem. He advises companies and institutions on communications, drawing on a background in journalism (more at www.wortCraft.de).
