Category: Talks

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Deciding the Undecidable: Why Strategy Needs “Urteilskraft”

tl;dr: Under deep uncertainty, strategy confronts questions no method can settle. Urteilskraft is that capacity: it frames what can be calculated and judges what can be justified.

This essay expands on a talk I gave at the Wissenschaftsfestival Stuttgart 2026, held at ISM Campus Stuttgart under the title “Zukunft, Zweifel, Zuversicht – Future Skills in Zeiten des Umbruchs.”

If there is one place in Europe where nobody needs “times of upheaval” explained to them, it is the Stuttgart region.… Read more

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Green AI Beyond Bullsh*t

tl;dr: Green AI can only matter if it moves beyond hype—toward truth, transparency, and regeneration within planetary limits.

Over the past months, hardly a day has passed without headlines about artificial intelligence: new models, astonishing breakthroughs, and dire warnings. At conferences, in boardrooms, and in policy debates, AI has become a kind of secular promise—of productivity, control, even salvation. And increasingly, it comes wrapped in a green label. That convergence between sustainability and digital technology is fascinating, but also deeply ambivalent.… Read more

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Notes from AOM 2025

tl;dr: AOM 2025 brought planetary boundaries, postgrowth, and critique closer to the centre — but the structural tensions remain. Hopeful shifts, unfinished conversations.

2025 in Copenhagen marked my first in-person AOM since 2019 in Boston. I had joined the virtual meetings in 2020 and 2021, but skipped 2022 and 2023. Returning felt both familiar and strange — especially since this was the first AOM Annual Meeting ever held outside of North America. With around 13,000 participants, it was also the largest in the Academy’s history.… Read more

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Sustainability: From Science to Politics to Ethics: Laudation for Jeffrey D. Sachs

tl;dr: Doing sustainability science requires transgressing science, politics and ethcis – and Jeffrey D. Sachs is a role model how to achieve that with integrity and professional excellence

Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbank, 9 November 2017

Dear honoured guests, dear ladies and gentlemen,
Dear Wilfried Stadler and the entire GLOBART team,
Dear Sonia and Jeffrey Sachs:

More than 6 years ago, in the springtime of 2011, the 17th International Sustainable Development Research Conference was held at Columbia University’s Earth Institute in New York.… Read more

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17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference

It is the final day of the 17th Annual International Sustainable Development Research Conference in New York City and I am trying to get the mixed soup in my head together. The first day was really a shock, as Nina Fedoroff was seriously advocating genetic modified organisms as the future hope for sustainable agriculture. In a similar, although more balanced vein, Klaus Lackner argued for clean energy. Now that might at first not look like a bad thing, and I would surely love to see heavy investment in it.… Read more