Hotel Bayerischer Hof

Conference Room Konstanz 1–2

Access for Nobel Laureates and pre-registered Young Scientists only
Please see your personalized schedule for details

Steven Chu
Stanford University, United States of America

Sabrina Curtis
Founder/ CTO, Khanjur R&D, LLC

Jürgen Kluge
Foundation Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings, Germany

Jan Rinnert
Heraeus Group, Germany

Moderator: Martina Gieg
Heraeus Group, Germany

We start our discussion by characterizing corporations along the lines of Joseph Schumpeter. They contribute to societies in two fundamental ways: through creation of prosperity and through innovation. To see how prosperity
is generated, we first discuss input factors companies need to be successful. Prosperity then is generated as companies distribute their returns between the contributors of these input factors. A successful business typically requires constant injections of capital from owners or other capital providers. In addition, it is the reality of almost all businesses that unless they constantly renew their product portfolio and improve their processes, they will lose competitiveness and disappear. We will give concrete examples how innovation helps us to constantly refine products and technologies from our ‘old industry’. We emphasize, the role of the state to put a ‘playbook’ in place. Traditionally these rules have been focused a lot on protecting the consumer from monopolies through antitrust regulations. Over the last years other guidelines, e.g. on environmental, social and governance (ESG) aspects, have increased. All responsible firms embrace the importance of ESG, but currently there is a debate on what level of regulation is appropriate and whether different regulation intensities in different jurisdictions can lead to an uneven playing field.

If we look at today’s discussion of the role of corporations in society, we observe two – potentially related – phenomena: On the one hand we see an increased skepticism in the western world concerning corporations. Work is considered to be less fulfilling than other activities in life. Also, corporations are increasingly perceived as rogue actors with detrimental consequences on societies. The positive connotation of Schumpeter of corporations
as drivers of prosperity and innovation gives way to a much less positive image of business. The second observation is that, while corporations are good at driving incremental change, they are unable to independently address the fundamental and disruptive challenges of our time. We will use the example of climate change to argue that many actors in our society need to collaborate: we need a coalition of politicians, business and academia, as well as other parts of the society. As company we want to actively contribute and participate in this dialog. Also, we are willing to step up in terms of our engagement and go beyond our comfort zone. However, we also need other players, in particular legislators and politicians to step up, too. We hope that our engagement in solving these challenges will motivate others to contribute and over time lead again to a more positive perception of corporations.

In the last part of our discussion, we explain how important scientists are for corporations and what roles they can play. We reflect on the fact that, although the work in enterprises typically is less fundamental, it also requires ingenuity and intellectual acumen. But we also emphasize that oftentimes the challenge lies not so much in the complexity of an individual problem, but the systemic complexity in a large organization. We explain ways to address this complexity, in order to drive an organization towards the desired outcome. We will lay out the different career paths that typically exist for scientists in corporations, including the possibility to move into general management. We will emphasize the importance of leadership skills and how they can be developed over time. Finally, we conclude with a few concrete recommendations for the scientific community and reflect on how specifically physicists can contribute in a significant and meaningful way.