decision. It does everything it can to keep its leading position.


China, on the other hand, behaves like the successful self-made millionaire who is happy to play a game with friends from former university days. China smiles at fellow players, sometimes it calls and sometimes it folds, and a clear strategy is not always recognisable to outsiders. Above all, China always remains relaxed, because it knows, “I have the deepest pockets, I have the most money – and at some point during the evening, I will win.”


Europe is, in theory, best prepared. Europe has read every book on poker and has absorbed the mathematics behind the game. It knows exactly who bids how much and what (applying the rules of probability) the next move will be. However, Europe never bluffs. What’s more, Europe believes that none of the other players ever bluff either. Europe plays rationally at all times, never misleads and assumes that the other two players behave likewise.


You can probably guess how the poker evening will end. Europe leaves the table as the loser. At home, Europe confesses to its partner that, while it did not win, it always stuck to a mathematically sound game strategy and therefore actually played the best. The others had cheated or simply been lucky − and who would want to win like that anyway?


Similarities between the course of this hypothetical poker game and developments in the real world at the beginning of the 2020s are not coincidental. With its economic, technological and military strength and the dollar by far the most


important world reserve currency, the US dominates global politics and the world economy just as the chip leader dominates poker. In a massive race to catch up, China has emerged as the second global superpower, with a gigantic domestic market of 1.4 billion people and a political leadership that is patiently, but consistently and adroitly, exploiting its economies of scale. In doing so, China sometimes behaves cooperatively, sometimes adopts a wait-and-see approach, and can sometimes be threatening. At times the leadership goes ‘all-in’ – for example, in the case of Hong Kong, where there are no compromises.


Europe may also behave consistently as a rule, but this is especially true when it comes to adhering to rules, values and agreements. Even when others fail to comply with these rules, Europe does not change its behaviour – at least, it has hardly done so at all to date. This attitude may be due in part to the heterogeneous nature of Europe, or to a lack of unity within the EU27 circle of countries.


However, Europeans have a growing awareness that their strategy and the pace of its implementation so far are hardly fit for the future. Several global trends are having a considerable impact on the economy, shaking up previous structures, questioning traditional behaviours and setting a new course for the coming decades.


China has emerged as the second global superpower, with a gigantic domestic market of 1.4 billion people and a political leadership that is exploiting its economies of scale


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Drivers of change While some influencing factors are unique to individual countries, others impact the future competitiveness of companies and therefore require a significant transformation of many industries. In addition to a permanently low interest rate environment, these drivers include a change in consumer demand, ‘glocalisation’ (semantically, a combination of globalisation and localisation), the influence of digitalisation on business models and the inclusion of environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria in capital allocation.


Whether the Covid-19 pandemic has triggered or merely accelerated sustained changes in consumer behaviour can be passionately debated. Combined with societal trends such as the fight against climate change, which has an impact on both the demand for goods and the mode of production, the implications for the


development paths of different industries are enormous.


Comprehensive transformation programmes are the result. Industries that have been large and successful, such as aviation, now struggle to survive. All automotive manufacturers and their suppliers are reducing their focus on the internal combustion engine and − following corresponding political requirements and changes in consumer demand − are investing in electric vehicle technology. The automotive sector is probably the most obvious example of an industry that needs to reposition itself. But it is by no means the only one that has to follow a new development path if it wants to operate competitively and profitably in the future. Traditional industries and sectors are no longer guaranteed to survive in this new environment. Painful adjustment processes are sometimes unavoidable.


Another trend that affects an export- oriented economy such as Germany’s is the so-called glocalisation. In past decades, companies could assume that the world economy would develop more or less in step with ever-increasing globalisation. Some individual world regions may have grown faster, others somewhat slower, but any deviation from the dynamics of the world economy was limited.


After a phase of deglobalisation, Covid-19 led to a rapid renaissance of the local and regional. This was triggered by the fact that the lockdowns had severely disrupted international value and supply chains, with no quickly implementable alternatives. The very different growth and recovery dynamics in individual countries reinforce the local aspect of glocalisation. It is therefore increasingly important for companies operating globally to understand which local conditions, demand impulses, and also rules they have to follow for international success.


The fourth globally relevant trend is increasing digitalisation. In many cases, this means much more than just a further sales channel for products and services. In addition to optimising and accelerating existing processes, it is creating entirely new business models or ways of doing business.


One major development enabled by digitalisation is service-based business models, the so-called ‘Asset-as-a-Service’


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