Female Speaker - Carina Stöttner

The Future of Industry, the Future of the Economy: Why Germany Needs to Bet on Radical Innovation Now

Written by admin on May 7, 2026. Posted in Blog, Rede.

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.

When the futurist takes the podium

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.

Resilience isn’t defense — it’s the ability to build a future

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.

Deep tech and radical innovation: Germany’s real competitiveness question

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:

Longer capital horizons than the typical German financing mix currently offers
Greater tolerance for failure, both inside companies and in the logic of public funding
Tighter integration of frontier research and industrial scaling, rather than sequential handovers across interfaces that take years
Talent that thinks across disciplines and can move between the lab, the codebase and the factory floor

The trade-offs of protectionism: when resilience becomes a cage

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:

Innovation lost to isolation. Reorganizing critical inputs on a purely national basis costs more than higher unit prices — it costs the competitive pressure and knowledge exchange that drive innovation. Closed systems age faster than open ones.
Capital and talent flight. Researchers, founders and investors choose ecosystems where they can scale. Overdone protectionism sends a signal: this is a place that defends, not one that builds.
The strategic cost of the subsidy spiral. Every industry kept in the country by subsidy ties up money that would have bought more future elsewhere — in deep tech, education, infrastructure. Industrial policy is always also an allocation decision against alternative futures.
Reciprocity risk. Protective measures provoke protective measures. In an escalating protectionist spiral, an export nation like Germany loses structurally more than more closed economies do.
Democratic erosion. When “strategic industries” becomes a permanent category, the entanglements between the state and large corporations grow — and over time they weaken competition and renewal.

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.

What remains: three imperatives for the coming decade

Three imperatives can be distilled from Stoettner’s keynote — applicable to any industrial economy, and to Hesse in particular:

Bet on deep tech and radical innovation. Incremental improvement is table stakes now, not an advantage. The real work is financing, organizing and scaling technologies with ten- and fifteen-year horizons — starting now.
Think about education and work across a whole working life. Not curricula but learning architectures. Not training as a project but learning as infrastructure.
Balance resilience with openness. Sovereignty where it’s indispensable. Openness everywhere else — as the source of innovation, talent and economic strength.

About the congress: LEON 2026 in Wiesbaden

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:

Resilience is becoming a competitiveness question — given fragile supply chains, geopolitical tension and rising energy and security demands.
Industry, innovation and security can no longer be thought about separately. Key technologies like AI and new materials have civilian and security applications.
From a knowledge problem to an implementation problem. “We don’t have a knowledge problem, we have an implementation task,” as Economics Minister Kaweh Mansoori put it in his opening remarks.

The keynotes and talks at a glance

Kaweh Mansoori, Hesse Minister of Economic Affairs — opening remarks
Prof. Marcel Fratzscher (DIW Berlin) — keynote: “After Us, the Future: A New Generational Contract for Freedom, Security and Opportunity”
Peter R. Manolopoulos (CEO, Schunk Group) — “What Makes Us Strong: Resilience in Industrial Mid-Sized Companies”
Hans-Dieter Kemler (Executive Board, Helaba) — “Financing Transformation in Germany — Hesse Leads the Way”
Dr. Pierre Dominique Prümm (Executive Board, Aviation, Fraport AG) — “Rethinking Resilience: How Aviation Shapes the Future in Turbulent Times”
Christoph Bernius (Divisional Board, Cyber Risk, Commerzbank AG) — “Cyber Resilience: Europe’s Path to Security and Economic Strength”
Dr. Kai Beckmann (CEO, Merck KGaA) — video message on the future of Merck
Defence panel with Major General Wolf-Jürgen Stahl (President, BAKS), Thomas Mailänder (EDAG), Daniel Zittel (Daimler Truck), Prof. Andreas Glas (UniBw Munich), Dr. Hans Christoph Atzpodien (BDSV) and Brigadier General Holger Radmann (Hesse State Command): “Why We Need Strong Cooperation Between the Armed Forces, Industry and Innovation”
Nathalia Schomerus (Legal Innovation Lead, Legora) — “Security and Resilience in German Industry: The Cybersecurity Dimension”
Hesse’s industrial front-runners — presentations from six outstanding companies based in the state: JUMO, Energiesysteme Groß, Vacuumschmelze, Ponticon, Stephan Schmidt KG and Alexander Binzel Schweisstechnik / Abicor Group
Carina Stoettner, futurist — closing keynote: “The Future of Industrial Work”

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.”

What is a keynote?

Written by admin on April 21, 2026. Posted in Blog, Rede.

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 term and its origins

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.

What a keynote does

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.

Where it sits in the program

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.

Who gives a keynote?

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 keynote speaker’s wider role

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.

Fees and bookings

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.

Keynote or plenary lecture: is there a difference?

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.

Tag: Female Speaker