TUM Talk: “The future won’t wait for us!”

Your inner compass points to the future

The panel was unanimous in its conviction that our inner compass is crucial: “You have to be an optimist,” said Christine Steger, CEO of cosmetics manufacturer Mann + Schröder, based in the Heilbronn region, “you don’t become one if you don’t have this attitude.” It is important to believe that you can make the best out of even difficult phases. The certainty that everything that exists can be made even better – “that drives us as scientists and it’s the same for companies,” said Prof. Dr. Daniel Cremers, Chair of Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich. “We have to ensure that ambition becomes a prerequisite for employment,” said Dr. Gerald Karch, CEO of the heavy-duty logistics specialist TII Group.

AI as a helper in the future?

Because for all the crises, companies today also have a multitude of tools at their disposal with which the future can be shaped. Artificial intelligence (AI) is gradually finding its way into medium-sized companies. Often, the technology works its way slowly from repetitive peripheral processes towards the core business. In his keynote speech, scientist Cremers, who has also co-founded several successful start-ups, explained how rapid technological advances have been, for example in the field of image recognition.

Too much hesitation can be detrimental on the road to the future: “Some of the fog will soon lift, but we don’t have the time to wait for the fog to disappear completely,” said Nicole Büttner, investor and co-founder of the IT company Merantix Momentum, which specializes in AI.

Action instead of hesitation

This year, the traditional TUM Talk marked the conclusion of the all-day “Rethink Mittelstand” conference. The TUM Campus Heilbronn and the ZEIT publishing house had invited guests to attend. More than 300 representatives of medium-sized companies from the Heilbronn-Franken region and across Germany, from start-ups and corporations, as well as from the Technical University of Munich, discussed, among other things, how their own business models can be secured or improved with the help of artificial intelligence.

At the end of the TUM Talk, TUM President Prof. Dr. Thomas F. Hofmann emphasized the strength of the joint exchange. Together with Prof. Dr. Ali Sunyaev, who has been TUM Vice President responsible for the Heilbronn campus since October, he called for an intensive dialog between business and science, which was actively pursued after the panel discussion: “The TU Munich is not a cloud, there are real people behind it,” said Hofmann, “come and connect with us.”