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Author: CarinaS

What Shell Knew Before the Crisis Hit

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight, News.

When the oil crisis struck in 1973, most companies were caught flat-footed. Shell wasn’t. They’d already spent two years thinking through how they’d need to adapt.

Why? Because back in 1971, two senior Shell managers dared to ask a simple question: what would happen if oil prices swung dramatically?*

The scenarios they built weren’t great forecasts. Their price estimates were set far too low. But it didn’t matter — and that’s the whole point. Whether oil tripled or quadrupled, the consequences rhymed: a wobbling economy, social tension and fuel theft, shifting mobility paradigms (remember car-free Sundays?), a push toward diversified supply chains, and new pricing policies.

Shell had already reasoned through those consequences. So when the shock came, they weren’t panicking, but rather already in the execution mode.

Thinking in scenarios

Thinking in scenarios is far more than playing out the single most likely outcome. It means:

  • Reasoning through many possible futures, not just one.
  • Continuously adapting your strategy, because you’ve learned to watch for the signals that one future or another is emerging.
  • A huge cultural shift — building an organization that welcomes people asking challenging questions, rather than punishing it.

That last point is the hard one. Asking “What if a pandemic shuts down the country?”, “What if kerosene is no longer available?”, or “What if the Rhine becomes unnavigable?” isn’t always welcome. It requires leaders willing to engage seriously with divergent futures — and, in doing so, to admit they don’t have 100% certainty about the years ahead.

That admission is uncomfortable. It’s also exactly what let Shell move while everyone else was still reacting.

*How it all played out at Shell is told by Dr. Henk Alkema in a video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9WZQU8_HnA

Zukunft gestalten statt verwalten – Carina Stöttner als Speakerin auf dem WTS Female Finance Roundtable

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight.

Unter diesem Motto fand Mitte Juni 2026 der inzwischen 5. Female Finance Roundtable statt, ausgerichtet von der WTS Advisory. Networking, viele gute Gespräche zwischen Female Leaders im Finanzbereich und jede Menge Zukunfts-Enthusiasmus – ein Nachmittag voller inspirierender Impulse, spannender Diskussionen und offenem Austausch unter den zahlreichen Teilnehmerinnen.

Dabei wurde eines besonders deutlich: Gerade in herausfordernden Zeiten kommt es darauf an, den Fokus auf Möglichkeiten statt auf Risiken zu richten, Handlungsspielräume herauszuarbeiten und Veränderung als Chance zu begreifen.

Zukunft als Raum voller Chancen

Futurewise CEO Carina Stöttner zeigte in ihrem Impuls eindrucksvoll, warum es sich lohnt, etablierte Denkmuster zu hinterfragen und Zukunft nicht als Bedrohung, sondern als Gestaltungsraum zu verstehen.

Wer Zukunft aktiv gestalten will, muss zunächst die eigenen Wahrnehmungsmuster überwinden – allen voran den Negativitätsbias und den Normalitätsbias, die uns dazu verleiten, Risiken zu überschätzen und Veränderungen zu unterschätzen.

Entscheidend ist dabei, nicht in der einen Zukunft zu denken, sondern in Zukünften. Wer sich weniger von einzelnen Trends (ver)leiten lässt und stattdessen in Szenarien denkt, erweitert die eigene Handlungsfähigkeit erheblich. Wichtig ist die Unterscheidung: Szenarien sind keine Prognosen. Sie liefern keine Vorhersage, sondern eröffnen Denkräume.

Und genau dafür braucht es eines vor allem: Zeit und Raum, um neue Perspektiven überhaupt entstehen zu lassen.

Nachhaltigkeit als strategischer Faktor

Wertvolle Einblicke in die Bedeutung von Nachhaltigkeit und zukunftsorientiertem Handeln für Unternehmen und Entscheiderinnen gab Gyri Reiersen.

Anschaulich zeigte sie auf, was ein Vulkanausbruch in Island mit der Entstehung der Demokratie zu tun hat – ein eindrückliches Beispiel dafür, wie tiefgreifend ökologische Ereignisse gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen prägen können.

Sie verwies auf Studienergebnisse, wonach der Anteil unbewohnbarer Flächen bis 2070 von 1 % auf 19 % ansteigen könnte und in der Folge rund 3,5 Milliarden Menschen umsiedeln müssten.

Künstliche Intelligenz und Nachhaltigkeit sieht sie dabei in einem doppelten Verhältnis: einerseits im Spannungsfeld, andererseits in der Chance, sich gegenseitig zu ergänzen – etwa dann, wenn mithilfe von KI die Datenbasis für Nachhaltigkeit schneller auf das Niveau von Finanzdaten gehoben werden kann. Ihr Fazit: Beides – KI wie Nachhaltigkeit – wird zum Erhalt der Wettbewerbsfähigkeit benötigt.

Es hat uns sehr gefreut, Teil dieses Nachmittags zu sein – vielen Dank für die Einladung.

Mit Foresight zur Strategie: So entwickeln Sie zukunftsfeste Pläne

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight.

Wenn die alte Strategie nicht mehr trägt

Es gibt einen Moment, den viele Führungsteams gerade erleben: Die Strategie, die noch vor zwei Jahren solide wirkte, fühlt sich plötzlich brüchig an. Die Welt hat sich unter ihr verschoben. Geopolitik, Technologie, Märkte und gesellschaftliche Erwartungen verändern sich schneller und widersprüchlicher, als klassische Planung es abbilden kann.

Häufig steht am Ende gar keine falsche Entscheidung, sondern überhaupt keine. Wenn zu viele Entwicklungen parallel laufen und die Signale aus Markt, Politik und Technologie sich widersprechen, wächst die Versuchung, lieber abzuwarten, abzusichern oder ganz zu vertagen. Strategie wird zur Hängepartie.

Robustheit entsteht aus besserem Umgang mit Unsicherheit

Die naheliegende Reaktion – noch genauere Forecasts, noch detailliertere Pläne – greift zu kurz. Ein Forecast verlängert die Gegenwart in die Zukunft. Er funktioniert, solange die Annahmen stabil bleiben. Heute tun sie das nicht mehr.

Zukunftsfeste Strategien zeichnen sich nicht dadurch aus, dass sie die Zukunft korrekt vorhersagen. Sie machen handlungsfähig in mehreren möglichen Zukünften gleichzeitig. Das ist der Kern von Leadership under Uncertainty: nicht die eine Zukunft zu erraten, sondern Entscheidungen zu treffen, die über verschiedene Entwicklungen hinweg tragfähig sind.

Denken in Szenarien

Hier setzt Szenarienarbeit an. Statt über einzelne Trends oder Bauchgefühle zu diskutieren, arbeitet das Führungsteam mit klar formulierten, plausiblen Zukunftsbildern. Unterschiedliche – auch widersprüchliche – Entwicklungen werden in einen konsistenten Rahmen gebracht und damit besprechbar.

Das schafft zweierlei. Zum einen einen gemeinsamen Referenzrahmen, der strategische Diskussionen versachlicht und implizite Annahmen offenlegt. Zum anderen, fast paradox, Fokus: Denkt man verschiedene Szenarien konsequent durch, zeigt sich häufig, dass sie zu ähnlichen Konsequenzen führen – und dieselben strategischen Entscheidungen erfordern. Dort entsteht Klarheit. Szenarien helfen, robuste Maßnahmen zu identifizieren, die in mehreren möglichen Zukünften sinnvoll bleiben.

Wie wir mit Executives arbeiten

Wir verstehen Szenarienarbeit als gemeinsamen Prozess über mehrere Monate, nicht als einmaligen Workshop. In dieser Zeit lernen Führungskräfte Denkweisen und Methoden aus Foresight und Futures Thinking kennen – und wenden sie unmittelbar auf die eigene Branche an.

Gemeinsam entwickeln wir Szenarien für Ihr Marktumfeld, durchdenken Markt, Technologie, Gesellschaft und Rahmenbedingungen systematisch und identifizieren szenarienübergreifende Muster, die unabhängig vom konkreten Zukunftsbild strategisch relevant sind. Am Ende steht kein Foliensatz, der in der Schublade verschwindet, sondern eine Denk- und Arbeitsweise, die im Team bleibt – und Szenarien, die Sie direkt als Grundlage für Ihre Strategie nutzen können.

Dabei ist uns wichtig, bestehende Initiativen und bereits geleistete Arbeit nicht zu ersetzen, sondern daran anzuschließen und sie weiterzuentwickeln. Wir holen Sie dort ab, wo Sie heute stehen.

Vom Reagieren zum vorausschauenden Entscheiden

Zukunftsfeste Strategie heißt nicht, alle Antworten zu haben. Sie heißt, die richtigen Fragen früh genug zu stellen – und ein Führungsteam zu haben, das gelernt hat, in Möglichkeiten statt in Gewissheiten zu denken. Diese Fähigkeit macht den Unterschied zwischen einer Strategie, die beim nächsten Bruch kippt, und einer, die trägt.

Wenn die Führungsrunde nur teuer nickt: Group Think an der Unternehmensspitze

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight, News.

Jan David Ott ist Facilitator for Longterm Strategic Decision-Making & Change bei der Futurewise Company. Auf seinem LinkedIn-Account nimmt er uns mit bei Themen zu Change Management, Leadership und Foresight. Hier veröffentlichen wir Auszüge seiner Erfahrungen.

Wie viel Geld investieren Sie in hochkarätig besetzte Führungsrunden — und am Ende hätte das Leittier genauso gut allein entscheiden können?

Das ist keine rhetorische Frage. Es gibt Phänomene in Gruppen, die wissenschaftlich gut belegt sind. Doch in Top-Führungsrunden mit Highperformer*innen kommen sie vermeintlich nicht vor. Das passt nicht zum Selbstbild. Da sollen also Extraversion, Gender und Muttersprache keinen Einfluss darauf haben, wer gehört wird und wer den Ton angibt. Schließlich werde ja „gut” moderiert.

Was ausgeblendet wird, wirkt trotzdem

Besonders gefährlich wird das beim Group Think. So sehr es das Selbstbild kränken mag — gerade in Unternehmensspitzen ist dieses Phänomen aktuell besonders relevant.

Ungeachtet vorheriger Einzelgespräche gilt: Einmal um den Tisch versammelt, möchte in Unternehmenskrisen niemand einer Lösung im Weg stehen. Alle wollen sich committen, alle an einem Strang ziehen. Doch genau dieser Zusammenhalt tötet die kritische Distanz.

Die „richtige” Lösung liegt dabei keineswegs auf der Hand. Aber wenn links und rechts alle vermeintlich zustimmen und mitmachen, überzeugt es auch mich. Meine Fragen würden da jetzt nur wertvolle Zeit kosten — so der Reflex. Und so nickt eine teuer besetzte Runde sich durch eine Entscheidung, die niemand wirklich geprüft hat.

Den Bann brechen: ein Blick in die Zukunft

Dieser Bann lässt sich lösen — mit Diskussionen über die Zukunft in 10, 15 oder 20 Jahren. Denn hier versagen Erfahrung, Karrierepfad und Pay Grade als Orientierung. Niemand am Tisch kennt die Antwort.

Richtig moderiert, verliert der Tongeber seinen Führungsstab. So entstehen seltene, wertvolle Momente in Diskussionen unter Executives, in denen tatsächlich Perspektivenvielfalt zählt — und weniger Macht und Beziehungen.

In meiner Praxis stelle ich daher eine Frage: Was sollten wir für unsere aktuelle Entscheidung über die Welt in 10 Jahren wissen? Auf Führungsteams wirkt sie oft wie ein befreiender Jungbrunnen.

Und Ihre Runde?

Eine lohnende Frage zum Schluss: Wie immun ist gerade Ihre Führungsmannschaft gegenüber Group Think?

Wild Cards in Foresight and Future Planning

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight.

Remember the spring of 2020? For about six months, you couldn’t open a newspaper, a LinkedIn feed, or a quarterly earnings call without somebody, somewhere, calling the pandemic a “black swan event.” Politicians used it to suggest that no reasonable government could have been expected to prepare for the thing that had, in fact, been war-gamed repeatedly by public health agencies for over a decade.

The phrase did a lot of work in those months, most of it apologetic. A black swan, in the way the term was thrown around, was something nobody could have seen coming, which conveniently meant that nobody could really be blamed for failing to see it coming. The trouble is that Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who popularized the idea, was almost immediately on television and in op-eds explaining that COVID-19 was not a black swan at all. Pandemics had been forecast. The warning signs were on the record. What was actually surprising wasn’t the event but the discovery, in real time, of how fragile the supply chains, the hospitals, and the political institutions turned out to be when the predictable thing finally happened.

That whole episode is a useful way into a much older idea from the world of strategic foresight, one that predates Taleb by a decade and a half and that, in some ways, captures what we were trying to describe more precisely than the black swan ever did. The idea is called the wild card.

A wild card is a future event with a low probability of occurring and a very high impact if it does. The definition sounds clinical, and it is, but the concept itself is older than most people realize. It was formalized in 1992 by the Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies, working with BIPE Conseil and the Institute for the Future, and it entered wider circulation in 1997 through John L. Petersen’s book Out of the Blue – Wild Cards and Other Big Future Surprises. Petersen wasn’t claiming to predict the future. He was making a more interesting argument: that any serious planner had a professional obligation to spend at least some time staring at the unlikely corners of the distribution, rather than the comfortable middle where most strategy gets written.

Black swans and wild cards are close relatives. Wild cards live in the working vocabulary of foresight practitioners, who deliberately surface them in scenario exercises, stress tests, and strategy retreats; they are things you put on a whiteboard and argue about. Black swans, in Taleb’s stricter sense, are events that were essentially invisible beforehand and only look inevitable in retrospect.

What sits between them, and what foresight people spend most of their time worrying about, is the question of weak signals. Wild cards rarely arrive in complete silence. They tend to be preceded by fragments of information that look like noise at the time and only become meaningful in hindsight: an oddly worded paper in an obscure journal, a procurement contract in a country nobody is paying attention to, a small shift in the language used by a regulator, a cluster of unusual hospital admissions in a town that doesn’t normally make the news. The hard part is organizational: Most reporting structures inside companies and governments are designed to filter exactly this kind of signal out as irrelevant, because most of the time it is. The discipline of foresight is largely the discipline of building institutions that can hold onto the weird stuff a little longer than instinct suggests they should.

The Four Animals in the Foresight Bestiary

Snow Leopard

A known but underrated phenomenon: documented and visible to specialists, but camouflaged against the noise of more dramatic events and therefore systematically underweighted. The metaphor was developed by the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for its Global Foresight reports, named for the species’ disruptive coat pattern that breaks up its outline against Himalayan terrain — the ghost of the mountains. (Some risk-management writers use white leopard for the same idea.)

Example: the vulnerability of submarine fibre-optic cables, which carry roughly 99 percent of intercontinental data and a significant share of global financial settlements. The concentration risk has been documented for years; it took incidents in the Red Sea, the Baltic, and the Taiwan Strait to bring it into mainstream view.

Black Elephant

A high-probability, high-impact event that is already documented and discussed by specialists, but that society chooses to treat as unlikely because acknowledging it would demand uncomfortable change. The term was coined in 2009 by disaster-relief consultant Vinay Gupta and popularized in 2014 by environmentalist Adam Sweidan through Thomas Friedman’s New York Times column. When the elephant finally arrives, it gets relabelled a black swan that nobody could have seen coming.

Example: anthropogenic climate change. The physics has been understood since Arrhenius’s 1896 calculations, the projection literature is consistent across IPCC cycles, and the response has nevertheless behaved as though the problem belongs to a future generation.

Black Jellyfish

A known, ostensibly normal phenomenon that escalates into systemic crisis through positive feedback — a small input that, amplified by interconnected systems, produces effects out of all proportion to its starting scale. The term comes from Ziauddin Sardar’s postnormal times theory and represents “unknown knowns”: phenomena we believe we understand but whose behaviour at scale surprises us.

Example: the 2013 shutdown of Sweden’s Oskarshamn nuclear plant, when Aurelia aurita blooms — driven by warming seas, ocean acidification, and overfishing of jellyfish predators — clogged the cooling intakes and forced a 1,400-megawatt reactor offline.

Grey Rhino

A high-probability, high-impact threat that is large, visible, slow-moving, and consistently ignored despite a complete absence of any information deficit. Introduced by policy analyst Michele Wucker in her 2013 World Economic Forum address and developed in her 2016 book The Gray Rhino. Wucker’s point, against the prevailing fashion for black swan vocabulary, is that most major crises are not surprises at all; the interesting question is why the institutions in their path failed to move.

Example: the 2008 subprime crisis. Shiller’s Irrational Exuberance documented the housing bubble in 2005, the Bank for International Settlements flagged systemic risk in 2006 and 2007, and the FBI warned of a mortgage-fraud “epidemic” as early as 2004. The rhino was visible from a considerable distance.

The point of wild card thinking isn’t prediction; it’s the cultivation of adaptive capacity, in the same sense biologists and resilience engineers use the term. An organization that has seriously rehearsed the loss of its largest supplier tends to handle the loss of its second-largest one with more composure, even though the specific scenario was wrong, because the underlying flexibility transfers. Beyond that, sitting with the improbable for any length of time tends to bring back into the strategy conversation a set of unfashionable virtues — redundancy, optionality, slack, balance sheet conservatism — that long periods of stability quietly erode, and whose absence is universally regretted in the first quarter after stability ends.

So what does all of this leave us with, after the dust of the past few years has settled and “black swan” has gone the way of most overused phrases? Mostly a sharper vocabulary, and a slightly more honest one. The wild cards, the elephants, the jellyfish, the leopards, the rhinos — these aren’t predictions and were never meant to be. They are a way of naming the different ways the future tends to escape the assumptions we’ve built our planning on, and a reminder that when the next big surprise lands, the interesting question won’t be whether it was foreseeable. It almost always was, by somebody. The interesting question will be whether anyone in the room had been paying attention.

Fear in the leadership team: A dangerous taboo for future planning

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight, News.

Jan David Ott is Facilitator for Longterm Strategic Decision-Making & Change at the Futurewise Company. On his LinkedIn account he takes us along on topics related to change management, leadership, and foresight. Here we publish excerpts of his experiences.

You lead a company – and you sense the worries and fears of your leadership team regarding the future?

We all know this sentence: “Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is acting despite fear.”

But in reality, doesn’t a different expectation actually apply? Leaders don’t have fears, they have solutions. They are the sponges of the company – soaking up everyone else’s worries, and “with one wipe” it’s all gone. How? With the right mindset, of course.

The mindset list keeps getting longer

Growth mindset, agile mindset, inclusive mindset, entrepreneurial mindset…

The list is long. Mindset seems like the universal tool – whoever just has the right attitude masters everything.

A study by GP Strategies (“Great Leaders Think Differently”) breaks with this image. Because when top performers lack something, it is often not the skills required for the respective mindset. Those they acquire. What is missing is the right way of dealing with a feeling that is not allowed to occur: fear.

And now it gets interesting – also for corporate foresight

When executives have to develop long-term future strategies, they need a futures mindset. And the key to success for this is not knowledge and methods. What is decisive is the way of dealing with critical uncertainties:

What are the forces that will radically change the world in 10 to 15 years? How do they interact – and where are we headed beyond the next bend?

You can face these uncertainties. Or you can look away – and focus on what seems certain. Two years. Four years. Or rather just six months?

But here you can usually only optimize and rarely shape.

Three steps in futures sparring

That is why, in my #FuturesSparring with company leaders, I rely on three steps:

➤ First, spell out the fears – because they are an important indicator: What presumably will not stay the way it has been?

➤ Then unleash your own curiosity – long-term strategy is a vast, as yet uncultivated space for shaping. Those who engage early with critical uncertainties can look out for signals of change and see patterns. Can discover new possibilities before others see them. #Zukunftsmusik (dreams of the future) whets the appetite.

➤ And then arises courage fueled by enthusiasm and filled with energy – because the goal is no longer to lose nothing, but to gain something new.

Destroy someone else's sculpture – what this exercise has to do with change and leadership

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight.

Jan David Ott is Facilitator for Longterm Strategic Decision-Making & Change at the Futurewise Company. On his LinkedIn account he takes us along on topics related to change management, leadership, and foresight. Here we publish excerpts of his experiences.

We stood in a circle – each of us with a self-made sculpture beside us, showing what we stand for as leaders. Sculpture by sculpture was presented. Closeness arose. A values-based sense of belonging.

Then the next instruction: Destroy someone else’s sculpture.

Even after years, I think about what this exercise has to do with leadership. Two possible approaches seem to me particularly relevant today.

Leadership quite often means contradicting – against directives, against slogans, and against the current. I could therefore have said (should I have?): I’m not taking part in that. Entrepreneurs bear a social responsibility.

And at the same time, leadership often also requires taking something familiar away from people. The status quo and the self-image in which they feel secure. Positions are cut. Operations are relocated.

Change leadership demands something special from entrepreneurs on top of this: a determination that is not coldness – but clarity of goal and means.

And that is exactly where this exercise and practice often have their catch.

It sounds so simple: change without direction is loss. Change with a convincing tomorrow is transformation.

But this tomorrow often lies in the long-term future – in the opportunities of the next 10 to 15 years, which open up only if we proactively tackle them today.

That is why I ask executives in my #FuturesSparring: What are you actually building up for the long term right now? For whom and to what end?

Without an answer to that, much of everything else ultimately remains merely continuous crisis management.

Leadership that deserves the name makes #Zukunftsmusik (dreams of the future).

I am curious about your experiences.

Carina Stöttner at the LEON Congress Hesse: in conversation with Hesse's Deputy Minister-President, generals, and CEOs

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in News.

Photo: Jana Kay. From left: Brigadier General Holger Radmann, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Guido H. Baltes (moderator), Christoph Bernius (Divisional Board Member Cyber Risk, Commerzbank AG), Kaweh Mansoori (Minister of Economic Affairs), Carina Stöttner (CEO Futurewise Company), Alexander Laukenmann (Senior Executive VP Fraport), Peter R. Manolopoulos (CEO Schunk Group). A look back at the closing keynote by futures researcher Carina Stöttner at LEON 2026 – and what she had to say about the future of industrial work, resilience, and the risks of overcorrected protectionism. It is already past 5 p.m. at the Casals Forum in Kronberg. A long day of the congress lies behind the roughly one hundred decision-makers from business, science, politics, and the German armed forces. The day’s major themes – resilience, security, transformation financing, the Mittelstand as an anchor of stability – have been drawn out. Introduced by Prof. Dr.-Ing. Guido H. Baltes, Carina Stöttner takes the stage and poses the question: where could German industry and the economy develop in the future? Stöttner is a futures researcher – not a forecaster who extends charts into the next ten years, but someone who works with companies, ministries, and educational institutions to make desired futures concrete. Her closing keynote “The Future of Industrial Work” was not a full stop, but a starting signal: for a debate that has been conducted too technocratically in Germany for too long – and now needs a direction.

Resilience is not defense – but the ability to build the future

Throughout the day, resilience had been the leitmotif of LEON 2026. Minister of Economic Affairs Kaweh Mansoori had declared it the “decisive prerequisite for competitiveness.” Stöttner picked up the term – and turned it around. Resilience, as the thrust of her keynote went, is not the attempt to defend a status quo against an uncertain world. Resilience is the ability to remain capable of action despite – and with the help of – disruptive change, and to shape desirable futures. Those who understand resilience merely as a protective shield build bunkers. Those who understand it as the capacity to shape things build platforms. This set the frame for the keynote’s two major thematic strands: deeptech and radical innovation on the one side, education and the work of the future on the other.

Deeptech and radical innovation: Germany’s real question of competitiveness as a location

Germany has an innovation paradox. Strong in research, strong in patents, strong in its Mittelstand – and yet behind the USA and China in many key technologies. Stöttner delivered a diagnosis for this that resonated in the room: We have perfected incremental innovation, but have structurally weaned ourselves off radical innovation. Deeptech – that is, technologies with high scientific risk and a long development horizon, from quantum computing through synthetic biology to new energy and materials systems – requires different conditions than the optimizing innovation in which German industry grew large:
    • Longer capital horizons than the typical German financing mix offers today
    • A higher tolerance for failure, both within companies and in the logic of public funding
    • Closer interlocking of cutting-edge research and industrial scaling, as well as international cooperation
    • Talent that thinks across disciplines and can move between lab, code, and factory floor
Fotografie Kim
Fotografie Kim
Fotografie Kim
Fotografie Kim

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

Stöttner devoted perhaps the most delicate part of her keynote to a question that is often circumvented in the current industrial-policy discourse: What happens when protectionism becomes too drastic? Resilience and sovereignty are legitimate, even compelling, goals. But they have a downside that must be named in honest industrial policy:
    • Loss of innovation through isolation. Those who reorganize critical intermediate products on a purely national basis pay not only higher unit costs, but also lose the competitive pressure and knowledge exchange that drives innovation. Closed systems age faster than open ones.
    • Strategic costs of the subsidy spiral. Every industry kept in the country by subsidy ties up resources that are then lacking elsewhere. Where investment goes into the production of efficient commodities, capacities no longer suffice for new high technologies. Industrial policy is always also an allocation decision against alternative futures.
    • Reciprocity risks. Protective measures provoke protective measures. An exporting nation like Germany loses structurally more in an escalating protectionism spiral – in social prosperity and in growth.
    • Democratic erosion. When “strategic industries” become a permanent category, the entanglements between the state and corporations grow, weakening competition and renewal in the long term.
Stöttner’s plea was not a naive call for free trade, but a plea for measure: resilience where it is relevant to security and not otherwise attainable – and openness everywhere else, because openness remains the true source of innovation and prosperity. The desirable future lies not in maximal self-sufficiency, but in smart, partnership-based sovereignty.

What remains: Three imperatives for the next decade

From Stöttner’s keynote, three imperatives can be distilled that apply to any industrial and economic location – and to Hesse in particular:
    1. Bet on deeptech and radical innovation. Incremental improvement is a mandatory exercise, no longer a competitive advantage. The real challenge is: financing, organizing, and scaling technologies with a ten- to fifteen-year horizon now.
    1. Think about education and work from the perspective of the life course. Not curricula, but learning architectures. Not qualification as a project, but learning as infrastructure.
    1. Balance resilience and openness. Sovereignty where it is indispensable. Openness everywhere else – as a source of innovation, talent, and economic strength.

About the congress: LEON 2026 in Kronberg, Hesse

On 6 May 2026, representatives from business, science, politics, and security institutions came together at the Casals Forum Wiesbaden for the new Hessian economic and industrial congress LEON. The leitmotif: resilience as the decisive question of competitiveness for the 21st century. Three brackets held the day together:
    • Resilience becomes a question of competitiveness – in the face of fragile supply chains, geopolitical tensions, and rising energy and security requirements.
    • Industry, innovation, and security can no longer be thought of separately. Key technologies such as AI or new materials have civilian and security-relevant applications.
    • From a problem of insight to a problem of implementation. “We do not have a problem of insight, but rather a task of implementation,” Minister of Economic Affairs Kaweh Mansoori put it in his opening remarks.

The keynotes and impulses at a glance

    • Kaweh Mansoori, Hessian Minister of Economic Affairs – Opening
    • 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 the Industrial Mittelstand”
    • Hans-Dieter Kemler (Member of the Board, Helaba) – “Transformation Financing in Germany – Hesse Leads the Way”
    • Alexander Laukenmann (Senior Executive VP Fraport) stepped in for Dr. Pierre Dominique Prümm (Member of the Board, Aviation, Fraport AG) – “Rethinking Resilience: How Aviation Shapes the Future in Turbulent Times”
    • Christoph Bernius (Divisional Board Member 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. Dr. Andreas Glas (UniBw Munich), Dr. Hans Christoph Atzpodien (BDSV), and Brigadier General Holger Radmann (Landeskommando Hesse): “Why We Need Strong Cooperation Between the Bundeswehr, Business, and Innovation”
    • Nathalia Schomerus (Legal Innovation Lead, Legora) – “Security and Resilience of German Industry with Regard to Cybersecurity”
    • Hesse’s industrial frontrunners – Presentation of six outstanding Hessian companies: JUMO, Energiesysteme Groß, Vacuumschmelze, Ponticon, Stephan Schmidt KG, and Alexander Binzel Schweisstechnik / Abicor Group
    • Carina Stöttner, futures researcher – Closing keynote: “The Future of Industrial Work”
The stage program was complemented by 13 breakout sessions on topics such as reducing bureaucracy, cybersecurity, sustainable industry, transformation financing, and security-policy cooperation – as well as a poetic-musical wrap-up at the close. LEON is designed as a long-term platform. It sees itself, in Mansoori’s words, as the prelude to a dialogue meant to shape the years ahead: “The future of Hesse as a location for innovation and industry is being decided now.”

Carina Stöttner as a speaker at IFAT for the steel and metal recycling industry

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight, News.

Munich, IFAT 2026 – the world’s leading trade fair for environmental technologies. On stage sit four people negotiating together a question that could hardly be more decisive for Europe’s industrial future: Where is the circular economy heading – toward a highly technologized, globally integrated system? Or are protectionism and geopolitical fragmentation pulling it back from the international stage?

The hosts were the BDSV (German Federation of Steel Recycling and Disposal Companies) and the VDM (Association of German Metal Traders and Recyclers) – two associations that are currently merging into the future Circular Metal Association. On the panel: Murat Bayram, Andreas Schwenter, Prof. Dr. Frank Pothen – and futures researcher Carina Stöttner, whose short keynote set out the framework for the discussion.

What became visible in the process goes far beyond the industry: steel and metal recycling is one of the places where it is decided whether Europe remains industrially sovereign – and whether it does so in a way that is fit for the future.

The underrated industry: What has long existed

Before talking about the future, it is worth looking at the present. In Germany alone, around 10,000 circular economy companies account for about 300,000 jobs. In Europe, the figure runs to several million jobs. Family-run small and medium-sized enterprises, specialized plant manufacturers, highly technologized sorting operations – over the past decades they have invested billions in shredding plants, modern processing technology, and AI-supported sorting.

Murat Bayram’s message on the panel was therefore clear: This industry must stop talking itself down. Recycling operations are not a burden on the environment but, in the words of Andreas Schwenter, environmental protection facilities. They secure raw materials, avoid CO₂, enable green steel, and lay the foundation for industrial value creation in Europe.

Prof. Dr. Frank Pothen provided the economic underpinning: every ton of recycled steel scrap avoids considerable CO₂ emissions. The circular economy is not an accessory to climate policy, but its practical core.

Into this self-understanding Carina Stöttner placed her impulse – and opened up the view ahead.

IFAT Munich
IFAT Munich
IFAT Munich
IFAT Munich
IFAT Munich

Stöttner’s scenarios: possible futures for the circular economy

Stöttner’s opening question in the keynote was pointed: Where is our industrial economy heading? And what does that mean for the steel, metal, and recycling industry?

  • Scenario A – High-tech circular economy. A globally integrated circular economy in which AI sorting, robotics, new materials sciences, digital material passports, and international cooperation work together. Recycling rates rise drastically, the quality of secondary raw materials reaches primary level, and Europe becomes the technology leader in a growth market.
  • Scenario B – customers migrate away and relocate production largely abroad. And with them go raw materials in the form of production scrap, as well as the demand for recycled materials.
  • Scenario C – fragmented protective economy. Rising protectionism, new export bans, regional isolation. The industry loses economies of scale, investment power, and innovation pressure. The circular economy does become necessary, but does not turn into a global growth field.

Her message: Which scenario comes to pass is not a forecast. It is a decision. And this decision is being made right now – in Brussels, in Berlin, in supervisory boards, in investment committees.

Deeptech as the future formula of the circular economy

What Stöttner made particularly clear at IFAT: The next stage of the circular economy is a deeptech stage.

In concrete terms, that means:

  • AI-supported sorting and material identification, delivering secondary raw materials in qualities that today only primary raw materials achieve
  • Robotics in the dismantling of complex products – from electric cars and wind turbines to electronics
  • New materials and processes that orient product design toward circularity from the very outset
  • International cooperation in research, standards, and trade, because no single market is large enough to bear these investments alone

The trade-off: When protection weakens the very industry it is meant to protect

It was precisely at this point that Stöttner’s keynote interlocked with the pointed position of the associations on the panel. Andreas Schwenter and Murat Bayram were unequivocal on one matter: Protectionism, export bans, and additional trade barriers are not a future strategy.

The logic behind this is not ideological, but rooted in industrial reality:

  • Those who seal off markets deprive the industry of investment power. Recycling technology scales only with global sales markets – not with national residual volumes.
  • Those who restrict scrap exports slow innovation. International competition is precisely what has made the German recycling industry into the leading position it holds today.
  • Those who bet on self-sufficiency lose quality. Secondary raw materials require specialization, sorting purity, and international material flows. Closed systems produce lower qualities at higher prices.
  • Those who overload the Mittelstand with bureaucracy weaken the backbone of the circular economy. The ten thousand companies that carry the system need framework conditions that enable – not hold back.

That does not mean: no sovereignty. It means: smart sovereignty instead of a protective-wall reflex. Strategic reserves, diversification of critical material flows, European standards – yes. Long-term, blanket export bans and new walls – no.

Stöttner’s contribution to this: An industry that hunkers down gains short-term security and loses long-term future. The desirable circular economy is open, cooperative, and technologically ambitious – not defensive.

What the industry needs now: less nostalgia, more courage

From the panel and Stöttner’s keynote, four imperatives for the coming years could be distilled – not as finished answers, but as the right questions:

  1. Self-confidence instead of justification mode. For decades, the industry has been solving in practice what others demand in theory. This achievement belongs in the public narrative about climate protection and industrial sovereignty.
  2. Deeptech investments now. AI, robotics, new materials, and digital traceability are no longer pilot projects. They are the foundational technologies of the sector for the next twenty years.
  3. Framework conditions that enable. Reducing bureaucracy, faster approval procedures, reliable energy and trade policy – so that investments can take place in Europe rather than elsewhere.
  4. International cooperation as a strategy. European strength does not arise from going it alone, but in alliance with global partners, shared standards, and open markets – while maintaining sovereignty in genuine key areas.

The announced merger of BDSV and VDM into the Circular Metal Association fits precisely into this line: more clout, more unity, more future – and an industry that is finally positioning itself the way it has long been set up.

Conclusion: The future of the circular economy can be shaped

Stöttner’s central message at IFAT: The future is not predetermined. It can be shaped.

Whether Europe builds a global high-tech circular economy or retreats into a fragmented protective economy will not be decided in forecasts. It will be decided in the next rounds of investment, in the next wave of European regulation, in the question of whether the industry takes its own strength seriously – and whether politics has the courage to open up spaces of possibility rather than close them.

About the event

The IFAT in Munich is the world’s leading trade fair for water, wastewater, waste, and raw materials management. On the joint stage format of BDSV and VDM – the associations of the steel and metal recycling industry that are merging into the Circular Metal Association – the following took part in the discussion:

  • Carina Stöttner, futures researcher, CEO futurewise company
  • Murat Bayram, President, VDM
  • Andreas Schwenter, President, BDSV
  • Prof. Dr. Frank Pothen, Professor of economics at the University of Applied Sciences (Ernst-Abbe-Hochschule) in Jena

Offsite: Why executive boards, executives, and teams need a change of scenery

Written by CarinaS on . Posted in Foresight, News.

When the calendar is overflowing, the strategy is talked to death between two quarterly reports, and no one knows anymore what the team is actually working on – then it’s time for an offsite. But what lies behind the term that, in corporations and start-ups alike, is increasingly becoming a fixed part of leadership work?

Offsite meaning: More than just a change of scenery

The literal translation of offsite into German is simply “away from the location.” But the meaning of offsite goes far beyond the geographical aspect. An offsite is a planned work event outside the usual office environment that creates space for strategic thinking, intensive collaboration, and undisturbed reflection.

In contrast to the classic meeting in the conference room, an offsite event pursues three central goals:

  • Distance from day-to-day business, in order to sharpen the view of the big picture
  • Concentrated working time for strategic matters without interruptions from operational topics
  • Strengthening of relationships among the participants

While the term has long been established in English, offsite in German is increasingly catching on in business language – as a synonym for closed-session conference, strategy workshop, or leadership retreat.

The various formats: From the team offsite to the shareholder offsite

Not every offsite is the same. Depending on the group of participants and the objective, different formats have become established.

Team offsite

The team offsite is aimed at working groups, departments, or project teams. The focus here is on operational planning, team culture, and solving concrete challenges. Typical topics are quarterly planning, retrospectives, onboarding new team members, or the development of shared ways of working.

Company offsite

A company offsite encompasses the entire workforce or at least large parts of it. Such formats often have an event character and combine work phases with shared experiences. They are particularly suited to conveying company values, making strategies transparent, and strengthening the sense of togetherness – an aspect that is becoming ever more important in times of distributed teams and hybrid work.

Executive board offsite and board meeting offsite

The offsite for the executive board is the premier format of strategic closed sessions. Here, the management, board members, or C-level come together to work on fundamental questions away from operational pressure: Where does the company stand? Where is the market heading? Which strategic course must be set now?

A board meeting offsite goes beyond the formal session. While regular board meetings are often dominated by mandatory topics, reportings, and resolutions, the offsite format creates space for more in-depth discussions about future themes, risks, and opportunities.

Shareholder offsite

The shareholder offsite brings together shareholders, investors, and management. Such meetings serve the strategic exchange about the long-term direction of the company, upcoming investment decisions, or the assessment of business development. In contrast to the annual general meeting, the focus here is on confidential, dialogue-based exchange.

Why classic offsite meetings often fail

Despite good intentions, many offsite meetings turn out disappointing. The most common causes can be traced back to a few patterns.

For one thing, the preparation is underestimated. An offsite is not a change of scenery with random discussions, but requires a clear agenda, a well-thought-out methodology, and defined outcome goals. For another, neutral facilitation is often lacking. When the management facilitates and joins the discussion on substance at the same time, both roles suffer. Important voices go unheard, conflicts are swept under the rug, decisions are postponed.

Another problem: the lack of follow-up. What was decided at the offsite peters out in day-to-day business if no consistent implementation follows.

What makes a good offsite

Successful offsites are characterized by a few central features. They have a clear focus rather than an overloaded agenda – better to truly penetrate two topics than to skim over ten superficially. They make use of the right environment, because the place shapes thinking: an inspiring venue opens up different mental spaces than the conference room at headquarters.

Good offsites work with professional facilitation that guides through complex discussions, involves all voices, and also puts uncomfortable topics on the table. They combine work and recovery in a dramaturgy that interlocks phases of concentration with informal encounters, movement, and reflection time. And they end with concrete results: defined measures, responsibilities, and timelines.

Strategic topics for executive board offsites

At the executive board level in particular, certain thematic fields have proven especially valuable for offsite formats.

Future strategy: How does the company position itself over the next five to ten years? Which technological, regulatory, and societal developments will shape the business model? Such questions need time, space, and a protected setting.

Scenario planning: Instead of linear forecasts, executive boards develop alternative images of the future at offsites. What happens if the economy slumps? If a new competitor shakes up the market? If regulatory requirements change fundamentally? Thinking in scenarios makes the company more resilient.

Sharpening the customer view: In the operational everyday, leaders often lose their direct line to customers. An offsite can bring this view back into focus – through customer journey analyses, persona work, or direct exchange with selected customers.

Organizational development: Phases of growth, crises, or strategic realignments raise the question of whether the organization still fits the strategy. Executive board offsites offer the setting to fundamentally question structures, processes, and leadership models.

The underrated factor: External facilitation

Anyone planning an offsite at the executive board level or in the extended leadership circle should not underestimate one aspect: the facilitation. External, professional facilitation brings several advantages. It is neutral, has no political interests within the company, and can also ask the difficult questions that no one internally dares to voice. It structures discussions with proven methods, ensures the participation of everyone present, and captures results in such a way that they become actionable.

Especially with strategically highly relevant topics such as future strategy or scenario planning, this investment pays off. The difference between a well-facilitated and a poorly facilitated executive board offsite can amount to several million euros – in wrongly set priorities, missed opportunities, or delayed decisions.

Conclusion: The offsite as a strategic instrument

An offsite is not a luxury, but a strategic tool. Properly conceived and professionally facilitated, it creates clarity where complexity reigns, alignment where silos dominate, and the capacity to act where stagnation looms. Whether as a team offsite, company offsite, executive board closed session, or shareholder offsite – the format unfolds its effect when preparation, facilitation, and follow-up interlock professionally.

The change of scenery alone does not yet make for success. But combined with clear focus, methodological depth, and neutral leadership, the offsite becomes a lever for the most important decisions of your company.

Book offsite facilitation for executive boards and executives

Are you planning an offsite on topics such as future strategy, scenario planning, or the customer view – and would you like it to truly have an impact? Experienced external facilitation ensures that your valuable time at the C-level leads to concrete results.

Arrange a no-obligation conversation now and have your next executive board or executive offsite professionally facilitated.

Jan David Ott and Carina Stöttner are a well-coordinated team when it comes to facilitating your executive board or leadership offsite. Request a no-obligation initial conversation.