To meet the great challenges of our time, we must reinvent innovation. To do this, we need an optimistic picture of the future. Pessimism is a waste of time and puts people in a bad mood. A concrete utopia, on the other hand, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“Innovare” means “to renew.” It doesn’t mean “make a little better.” A leap innovation fundamentally changes our lives for the better, not just makes them a little more convenient. Leap innovators find a new solution to a relevant problem using the tools of science and technology. A leap innovation often destroys old markets and creates new ones. It has an economically disruptive effect and endangers those who innovate only incrementally in path dependencies, i.e. improve successful technologies in small steps.

An essay by Thomas Ramge

The first cultivated plant was a leap innovation, the einkorn, about 10,000 years ago. The invention of the sailboat 6000 years ago changed the world, as did the nail, cement and paper later. Letterpress printing and optical lenses were leap innovations, and of course the steam engine, electric current, the camera and airplane, the computer and the Internet. Was penicillin the greatest leap innovation in medical history? Or the water closet? Or the birth control pill? In retrospect, mRNA will probably be in the same league.

I am a technology optimist. I am convinced that science and technology will find many answers to the great challenges of our time in the coming decades. They will bring us green energy from wind and sun, hydropower and nuclear fusion in abundance. This could be so cheap that it will hardly be worth charging for it. CO2-free energy at less than two cents per kilowatt hour can radically reduce poverty and hunger worldwide. With it, we can remove large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and halt climate change. It will make the world a much more peaceful place. Fewer people will have to flee their homes.

With the help of genetic engineering and the health data revolution, we are on the scientific threshold of reducing the major diseases: cancer and dementia, cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, mental illness and paralysis, blindness and severe hearing loss. I hope that we will succeed in significantly slowing down the aging process of cells so that we can grow older in a healthier way. And maybe even spend time with great-great-grandchildren.

Technology optimist and his prognosis

Through science and technology, we will preserve biodiversity and strengthen animal welfare. Because ultra-intensive agriculture, preferably vertical and with resistant breeding, can reduce land consumption for food production. Hopefully, meat will soon no longer come from fattening farms, but from a few giant petri dishes. We will fly electrically, in autonomous drones that do not need roads. CO2-neutral fuels will be available for long-distance travel, and we may soon be taking a (time) shortcut through space on our flight to Australia. Digital leapfrog-innovated education will be as much fun as a good computer game, with robo-teachers and human educators coaching peer learning on a small scale. Maybe this kind of education will even be a little addictive.

And I’ll venture a prediction: in ten years, we’ll all be using AI assistants to help us make decisions, representing our interests, rather than those of Amazon, Google or Apple. In the next twenty years, we will develop a system to redirect large asteroids headed for Earth. And while I wouldn’t be willing to go along for the ride: We should establish a permanent colony on Mars by 2050. Why? Because that will help us humans rediscover our old spirit of discovery and regain the courage to take really big leaps. The launch pad for this was built in the 1940s by the philosopher Ernst Bloch.

Bloch recognized the constructive power of concrete utopia, and the role of wishes and desires on the way there. Let us wish for a good future. Then we can also develop this good future, with inventive spirit and technical expertise, on the basis of humanistic values and with the joy of progress.

Dr. Thomas Ramge: Expert for innovation and AI

Innovation and AI expert Dr. Thomas Ramge thinks and writes at the intersection of technology, economics and society.

Thomas has published more than 15 non-fiction books, including “Sprunginnovation – Wie wir mit Wissenschaft und Technik die Welt wieder in Balance bekommen” (together with Rafael Laguna de la Vera), “Mensch und Maschine” and “Augmented Intelligence“. His essays and reportages appear in Die Zeit, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, brand eins, The Economist, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review and Foreign Affairs, among others. Thomas Ramge received his doctorate in the sociology of technology on AI-supported decision support. He is an Associate Member at the Einstein Center for Digital Future and an Alumni Senior Research Fellow at the Weizenbaum for the Networked Society. Since early 2021, the trained ARD journalist has also hosted the podcast of the German Federal Agency for Leap Innovations.

His work has been translated into some 20 languages and has won numerous awards, including the German Essay Prize 2022, the Axiom Business Book Award 2019 (Gold Medal, Economics), the Best Business Book of theThe Year on Technology and Innovation 2018 (by strategy+business), the getAbstract International Book Award 2018, the Herbert Quandt Media Award, the German Business Book Award, and the ADC Award.