It is quite surprising. Even education, the mother of all disruptive innovations, is usually only discussed in soapbox speeches. In the wake of this, the topics of technological competitiveness, the implementation of research in products and processes in the economy, and the creation of new leading industries, are always neglected.

At the very least, the vast majority of people have no direct interest in this complex and abstract topic. And I can certainly understand that people want the problems in the here and now to be solved first. They want to live in security. And that's what politics has to provide.

Our country's capacity for innovation has been the subject of intense debate in business, science and politics for years, but rarely makes it onto the front page. The fact that the Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation was created almost exactly five years ago is also an expression of the concern that Germany is falling behind in modern technologies that shape the economy and prosperity.

Back in the early days, the state was very much involved in the establishment and success of domestic technology, proving platforms and spending money. Above all, it ensured that the path from research to products and processes was successful. And sometimes, it still works today. Think of the mRNA technology from Biontech, but not only from this company. This has brought great economic benefits – and not just for Mainz and the surrounding area.

The problem is that the three ecosystems that are crucial for innovation are working together and interacting less and less, and are more or less closed off from each other: That is the scientific system, the economic system and the political system. There is hardly any exchange of personnel between the systems, which would also promote mutual understanding. Careers take place almost exclusively within one system.

This can be explained in terms of cultural history and incentive structures. It simply pays to stay in the respective ecosystem. There is no return ticket. Once you've become established at a university, it's a damn big risk from the academic's point of view to change systems.

By changing the higher education laws, for example, offering a return option and, for example, making university careers based not only on purely academic merit, but also on whether you have been successful outside the system. Not only should the „Citation Index“ be the yardstick, but it should also be paired with a „Founding Index“ if scientists have founded a company, for example. Conversely, this should also apply to the other systems.

Yes, the TU Munich does it very skillfully and successfully. However, the system is not so easily transferable. The Ministry of Economic Affairs has now set up a programme that should make ten such startup hubs possible. However, the processes take forever, the bureaucracy is huge, and demotivates many. And, of course, the necessary incentive structures for financing are still lacking.

Things are already looking pretty good in Germany for the initial financing of start-ups. However, it is still too complex overall. There is a particular problem with growth financing. A financing vehicle such as a large fund is needed. The state should contribute something here, as should businesses and investors. Experience has shown that such a fund would be highly profitable. In this respect, there should be interest in it.

We had 220 million euros at our disposal this year. But that is nowhere near enough to develop all future technologies with disruptive innovation potential into profitable companies and industries. If we want to compare ourselves with the USA here, it would have to be more like 1.2 billion euros.

Why not use some of the money already planned for funded pension provision for this purpose? After all, it has to be invested somewhere. Especially as it is well known that high returns can be achieved in the technology sector. On the one hand, this will prevent companies and innovators from migrating to financially strong foreign countries, while at the same time stabilising pensions and ensuring future prosperity in Germany.

We have a cultural problem here in Germany. Too often, entrepreneurs are portrayed as bad people because they will exploit their employees. This is a socialist view of human nature that has nothing to do with reality. It is the entrepreneurs who create prosperity in the first place – who take risks themselves. This is not sufficiently acknowledged by the public. And young people are often not made aware of these connections. That has to change!

That may be one reason. Germans are more savers and less investors. As a result, they don't have to concern themselves with the capital markets, the opportunities and risks there, and how this relates to our economy. In the USA, ordinary people regularly talk about their financial investments for retirement. This also changes their attitude towards the capital markets.

You could look at it like this. Of the 4 trillion euros that are lying around here with financial intermediaries, a portion could, of course, be used as an investment for the future. Look at France, where President Emmanuel Macron has launched the so-called Tibi initiative, and agreed with institutional investors that they will invest billions in the domestic tech scene. That's why France is much better positioned in this area than Germany.

Perhaps with a separate asset class? The state offers risk protection to cover pension entitlements, which experience has shown never needs to be drawn. And the investor is rewarded with a higher return. If we had invested part of our pension provision in shares 40 years ago, as we did elsewhere, we wouldn't have the funding problems with the state pension scheme today.

That's one of the reasons why we have our Federal Agency for Disruptive Innovation. We are in the process of telling people that you have to invest in the future if you want to benefit from it later on. „Sprunginnovation“ is the name of a book (the English edition is called „On the Brink of Utopia“) which Thomas Ramge and I wrote three years ago. It is essentially about how we can use science and technology to solve the big questions of our time and create great prosperity in the process.

Absolutely. For example, we have a programme entitled „Alternative paths to general intelligence“. The idea of AI used today is already 80 years old. And it was only three years ago that there was a breakthrough here that triggered the current boom. But it all runs on traditional IT technology, on classic algorithms. We now need several nuclear power plants for the data centres. All the data has been processed on the Internet, and there is hardly any learning material for the AI models. But there are other, newer hardware architectures, so-called analogue computers such as quantum computers. They can do this much better.

Absolutely. Germany must prove that it is still capable of disruption. We just need to adapt the political, economic and systemic structures as quickly as possible so that we can succeed. Perhaps we have simply been doing too well over the past few decades, and have forgotten how to see opportunities for change. It should be clear that risks always become greater if we do not dare to take advantage of opportunities and endure temporary hardship.