Post by Dmitry Kharchenko

🌆 An evening with EY and ESMT Berlin and @Johannes Winkel(Member of the German Parliament) — and the kind of room that's hard to find. 👥 25 people. No panel. No audience. Business, politicians and academia — deliberately in one room, with the explicit goal of challenging each other. ✨ The format was refreshingly different. No keynotes, no prepared remarks, no one playing to a crowd. Just a confidential dinner where people who don't usually sit at the same table actually talked to each other. 🗣️ The agenda covered everything from demographics and pensions to defense, cybersecurity, AI and Germany's competitiveness. These aren't light subjects. But the format made participants actually engage. 💡 Three thoughts that stuck with me: 👉 Prioritizing investments in the future, consistently — We won't maintain competitiveness if we keep lagging on key technologies like AI and Cybersecurity. More willingness to take risks, more capital, and clearer incentives for innovation are decisive. 👉 Opening up new growth areas with conviction — Competitiveness emerges where there's targeted investment in future technologies and new business models — not in clinging to what already exists. 👉 Rethinking Germany as an export nation — Germany remains an export-driven economy, but in a world where trade is increasingly used strategically. The answer can't be retreat — it has to be smarter, more diversified partnerships and a more integrated European single market. 🙏 Grateful to Henrik Ahlers and Jörg Rocholl for curating this evening alongside impulses from Johannes Winkel MdB, and to Dr. Katharina Ludewig, MBA, Paul Hopton, Lana Lanets, Liubov Juhasz, Natalya Nepomnyashcha, Jovana Panić, Martha (Molly) Ihlbrock and Romana Holzem for making it possible. Thanks to all participants for the atmosphere and the discussion — and to Anne Barth for the photos. Because in the end, competitiveness isn't decided by strategies on paper, but by whether the right people have the right conversations at the right time that lead to doing innovation. #Berlin #AIPolicy #Competitiveness #Leadership #EY #ESMT #Cybersecurity