SIEMENS

Dennis Meadows, the keynote speaker at the Future Dialogue discussion forum, looks around the auditorium. The room is filled with approximately 500 decision-makers from the areas of politics, academia, and business from all over the world. They have gathered in Berlin to discuss some of the most pressing issues that are haunting mankind today - questions such as climate change and advancing resource depletion - and how megatrends like increasing urbanization and demographic change are affecting them. Meadows, co-author of the controversial book The Limits to Growth, pauses in order to emphasize what he is about to say. No one budges, no one coughs. Meadows then goes on. “We are already beyond the limits, using 1.3 Earths instead of one. The habits that gave us growth and progress in the past will not give us growth and progress in the future,” he says. “We will see more change over the next 20 years than in the entire past 100.”

Sentences like this spurred controversy in follow- up panel discussions and break-out sessions at Future Dialogue. It was controversy that led to results. Future Dialogue, which took place for the first time in late 2009, was initiated by the Max Planck Society and by Siemens in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit - a globally leading consulting company for economic analysis that has its headquarters in London. The line-up of speakers was impressive, including, for example, star architect and urban planner Daniel Libeskind and Lord Nicholas Stern, author of the Stern report on climate change. In breakout sessions, clear requirements were defined regarding the responsibilities of government, business, and science. Government, the participants concluded, ought to measure all initiatives according to the clear goal of reducing the global carbon footprint, engage voters with the attractive side of shifting to a low carbon economy, and ensure that basic research receives adequate funding, thus giving it a chance to develop breakthrough innovations.

Businesses, in turn, should work more closely with researchers to improve the connection between invention and innovation, an effort in which Siemens is actively involved, particularly with regard to green technologies. “When I think about water treatment and energy efficiency, for example, Siemens’ (technology) portfolio comes to mind,” says Paul Pelosi Jr., President of San Francisco’s Environment Commission and a speaker at the Future Dialogue conference. “Many of these technologies open the door to greater decentralization. The smart grid, which Siemens is promoting, is going in that direction. Decentralized production and consumption help us to diversify our energy sources and enable communities to develop their own unique solutions to local challenges.”

Conference participants unanimously agreed, however, that it’s not only businesses and governments that need to do their homework - science too has to make sure performance incentives encourage scientists to spend more time communicating effectively with the public. For the science community, that means looking beyond basic research and toward application-oriented solutions. As Peter Gruss, president of the Max Planck Society, stressed: “Science in the ivory tower is a thing of the past.”

In order to make innovation resound in society as a whole, creating a compelling vision that engages the public and shores up its support is crucial. Or, as one participant put it, “The Apollo program fired up the imagination of a whole generation. What could be the Apollo programs of the 21st century?” Peter Löscher, CEO of Siemens AG, was not shy about giving examples by referring to just a few visions linked to the Siemens portfolio: Desertec; electromobility, including all of the infrastructure it will require; smart grids - the intelligent power distribution networks; and personalized healthcare. “The key thing is that you have a long-term, reliable framework you can work towards,“ said Löscher as he summed up the discussions.

Toward the end of the conference, participants agreed that market-based solutions have the highest probability of success as long as government establishes a practical framework. “Government influences the market and sets the framework,” said Joschka Fischer, former German foreign minister and former leader of the Green Party. “If, for example, you switch the framework of markets by pricing carbon at a global uniform level…you change the markets, and this could have a tremendous effect in changing behaviors toward goods, services, and the overall approach to the use of energy.” At the same time, targeting individuals and their everyday choices is the other key element necessary to making change happen on a large scale, as was pointed out by Meadows: “Sustainability is not a question of devices, but of attitude.”

The upshot of the conference could not have been clearer: Neither the market, nor government, nor industry alone can be the key. Instead, only when these three elements work together is it possible to achieve real success in dealing with the most pressing issues of our time. And that, in fact, was the purpose of the conference.