Inside CVC: Berlin CVC Open Innovation Summit, Part 2: From Urgency to Execution: Aligning Capital, Institutions, and Leadership in Europe

In Part Two of our special Inside CVC series recapping the CVC Open Innovation Summit in Berlin, the conversation moves from diagnosis to execution.

Episode One explored urgency.  Episode Two focuses on alignment.

As Europe faces accelerating technological change, geopolitical pressure, and widening capital gaps, the challenge is no longer awareness. It’s how leaders align capital, institutions, and organizational systems once the direction is clear.

This episode brings together perspectives from SAP, the European Stability Initiative, Roche, PwC, policymakers, and summit leadership to examine why execution breaks down — and what it takes to move from ambition to coordinated action.

The conversation culminates with a look ahead to Miami, where these themes continue at the next CVC Open Innovation Summit.

Transcript

Steve: 0:00

Welcome to Inside CVC, the podcast that brings together leaders in innovation and capital investment to explore the trends shaping the business of corporate venture capital. I'm your host, Steve Schmidt, and together with Philip Willigman, we're speaking to corporate investors, entrepreneurs, and ecosystem builders driving the future of innovation. InsideCVC is brought to you by UPath Advisors, helping corporations and startups unlock sustainable growth through strategic partnerships. To learn more, visit upath.com. That's the letter UNPath.com. And to catch up on all of our episodes, search InsideCVC on your favorite podcast platform or visit upath.com forward slash podcast. In part one of this special series, we focused on urgency, on capital gaps, on risk tolerance, on regulation policy, and the growing distance between ambition and execution. But as the European edition of the CVC Open Innovation Summit unfolded in Berlin, the conversation began to shift. Beyond the headlines, beyond the diagnosis, what emerged over two days of panels, working sessions, and side conversations was a deeper question, not just what Europe needs to fix, but how leaders actually align once the direction is clear. Episode two is about that transition, from diagnosis to coordination, from urgency to execution. Because the real challenge facing Europe right now isn't awareness, it's alignment. Alignment across policy and capital, across corporate strategy and technology, across national priorities and the shared European ambition. And few topics surface that challenge more directly than artificial intelligence. One of the voices helping shape that discussion at the European CVC Open Innovation Summit in Berlin was Florian Kunsky. You heard from Florian briefly in part one. He's the global director of AI strategy at SAP, working inside the company's global CTO organization, where he helps define how AI is developed, deployed, and governed across one of the world's largest enterprise software platforms. At the summit, Florian was a panelist on a session titled Applied AI: What is the Future of Humanity? It was a conversation that moved quickly past hype and headlines and into much harder territory. Questions about dependency, about sovereignty, about trust, and about what happens when technology moves faster than institutions are designed to. From his vantage point, working closely with enterprises across industries and geographies, Florian sees AI not just as a breakthrough technology, but as a forcing function for alignment. Here's Florian on why AI has become central to Europe's competitiveness and why the next phase of innovation depends less on invention and more on collaboration.

Florian Kunzke: 3:00

I think what we what we can undoubtedly say is that AI is really, really powerful and with these many evolving technologies and so many companies also now jumping onto that train as well and working on AI and actively driving innovation. You have a huge expanding ecosystem that is driving progress in that area. And I think that just shows also the economic value that's behind this, and this also this competition around who's number one in AI and who applies it best and who delivers the most value. This competition is so fruitful for the entire economy that it drives a lot of value and brings a lot of opportunity for the companies. But at the same point in time, I would say you also have these macroeconomic tensions. We don't need to talk about politics too much, but you have these tensions and you need to accept that. So I think it's important. And in Europe, we I think have recognized that we also need to drive more independent innovation, yeah, to decrease these dependencies to other providers, be it in the tech space or be it also in the manufacturing space or where whatever you have, whatever you can think of. We need to be innovative on our own and we need to decrease these global dependencies. I'm not saying that this should be forever. I like see the US companies and institutions as well as the Chinese institutions still as partners. And I think we also need to drive that collaboration further. But at the same point in time, it has become very clear that we need this sovereign innovation and that we need this independence. And I think this can also be a driver for a lot of innovation inside Europe and for a lot of expanded collaboration between the different countries, between the different institutions, as well as the companies in Europe that are really coming together and have understood this urgency and want to drive that into innovation really together inside Europe.

Steve: 5:04

Florian's point was practical. AI is moving fast. Adoption is uneven, and the organizations that win will be the ones that turn capability into execution. But at the European CVC Open Innovation Summit in Berlin, the conversation kept climbing one level higher. Because AI does not land in a vacuum. It lands inside institutions, inside markets, inside democratic systems, and inside the rules that determine whether innovation scales, who benefits, and what kind of stability people can actually count on when the world gets noisy. And that's where Gerald Kanaus's perspectives connect. Geralt has been a guest on Inside CVC in the past. And in that episode, he laid out a clear argument about what he calls the European miracle. Not as a feel-good idea, but as a competitive foundation built on trust, voluntary cooperation, and the rule of law. I want to bring you back to a moment from that episode of Inside CVC and our conversation with Gerald Knauss.

Gerald Knaus: 6:06

Well, I think it's useful to step back for a moment because Europe, indeed all places in the world, are complicated. There are many countries, many histories. The history of Estonia is different from the history of Portugal and Ireland is not Greece. But there is a very big, accurate narrative of the European miracle of democratic peace. It's that between 1949 and 198, let's say 58, institutions were created for six or a few more countries in the case of NATO. A small group of Western democracies created the first European community for coal and steel and then a European Economic Community. And in 1949 they created NATO. And the insights behind these institutions were also very simple and clear and easy to communicate. The goal of NATO was to create an alliance that was strong enough to preserve peace because it would deter any attack. Don't attack us. That was the message. It wasn't aggressive, it never challenged the borders drawn in the in the Cold War in Europe. But it it was strong enough with hundreds of thousands of troops deployed in Germany, for example, West Germany, not to be attacked. And the idea of the European Economic Community was to say we create the biggest market, we'll expand it based on economic interests, common rules, common institutions, but the ultimate goal is to build confidence and peace. And what is remarkable about these institutions created more than seven decades ago is that initially there are few members it worked so well that everybody wanted to join. You know, Britain was at first skeptical about the European Economic Community. Other countries were at first skeptical about NATO. But both institutions grew and grew and grew. And after 1990, when the European then economic community or European community had 12 members, it grew to 27 today. Plus another 10 countries that want to join candidates today. So the great story of Europe in the last few decades is that some of the visionaries in the late 40s, early 50s established institutions that were so successful in fulfilling their primary purpose of peace, democracy, prosperity, and trust and confidence between countries that almost every European democracy either wanted to join them fully or almost join them, like Norway and Iceland and Liechtenstein and in a way even Switzerland. And this miracle, these institutions, the reason they worked is because they are not relying on force. It's all voluntary. You don't you're not forced to join the EU. You can leave the EU. And once you are in, there is no center that can send soldiers or police to a member state to enforce anything. But they were constructed in such a smart way that every country that joined became a lot richer. It was an economic motor like hardly anything else in economic history in the last hundred years. Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Greece, we forget how poor they were. And we forget how poor Poland used to be, or Romania, or the Baltic states. Well, they've all been catching up economically at dramatic uh speed. Um and and war among former enemies became unthinkable. So small European democracies, rich small countries, are not afraid because this framework has provided an umbrella of protection. And and that is really quite a remarkable story.

Steve: 9:53

If that clip from Girls Knaus resonated, go back and listen to the full episode of Inside CVC. It's one of those conversations that keeps getting more relevant as uncertainty becomes the norm. And speaking of uncertainty, that's where Martin Hullen's perspective becomes especially relevant. Martin has been a prior guest on Inside CVC as well. He was also part of this year's summit in Berlin. And long before the Berlin summit, he was already framing trust not as a value statement, but as a competitive advantage in a fragmented volatile world. What he shared on that episode connects directly to what surfaced again in Berlin. Alignment only works if institutions, markets, and leaders can be trusted to hold. Here's Martin Holland from his Inside CVC interview on why trust may be Europe's most underappreciated strategic asset.

Martin Hullin: 10:43

This whole notion of trust in a world that is highly uncertain, and this will not change in the foreseeable future. Or the world will be chaotic. It will be minted by uncertainty. Investing in a market that went through all of this before, that can be a trust anchor and that can potentially, with some of the innovations that will come out of here, be the first to be trusted for some of these essential building blocks or kind of this new world that we are entering.

Steve: 11:10

Martin talks about trust as a competitive advantage at the system level. Markets, rules, incentives, timing. But trust doesn't stop at policy or platforms. It either shows up inside organizations or it doesn't. In part one of this series, we heard from Caroline Crevan Fourier, who leads inclusion and belonging at Roche. Her perspective landed because it reframed execution not as a process problem, but as a people problem. In a separate Inside CVC conversation, Caroline went deeper on what leadership readiness actually requires when organizations are navigating constant change, geopolitical pressure, and long-term transformation.

Caroline Creven Fourrier: 11:58

And an acknowledgement of this three elements being the focus that is required. One is the organizational and human resilience. And the third one, the leadership readiness. If I develop each of those, I'll start with the organizational and human resilience. And there is this element of agility. Agility is a currency of innovation in a way. And leaders must transform their mindset towards flexible and innovative ways of working and be ready to at the same time orchestrate critical global strategy key votes in response to significant uh geopolitical changes because this is happening and this will continue to happen. The second element is integrating care and ESG. And here that's clearly a reflection that health management is no longer just a cost, but a component of ESG performance as well. So corporations must invest in initiatives that enhance buend trust and reputation through strategic programs. So you need also to be really clear on your parties, priorities that you don't want to do everything. You can't do everything. And the last element I see is this leadership readiness. And this is where agriculture makes the biggest difference, in my view. Leaders must be equipped to embed accountability. That means engagement metrics, influencing leadership, and as a C-suite down to frontline managers and the teams. This leadership readiness also speaks to driving cultural change. And here we we expect from leaders that they embed those new mindsets and practices within each of their functions and core functions. And there is probably also a need from leaders to be mentored, to be coached, to be guided. Because those are complex people and culture matters. So you you need to really invest that time as front with leaders as well. And the last element I would say when it comes to leadership readiness talks to how you act, acting inclusively. I do see a role from leaders as connectors, if not even integrators, to um enhance the collaboration within those matrix environments. And to foster this environment where a variety of backgrounds, I can contribute directly to the business impact. And so it's a it's a pretty big role that plays club leaders. And again, it's a journey and you need to accompany them.

Steve: 14:53

Caroline's point reinforces something we heard again and again across conversations connected to this summit. Strategy doesn't fail because of a lack of ideas, it fails when organizations aren't built to carry those ideas through. We first heard from Tanya Emmerling in part one, where she talked about the mindset shift Europe still needs around risk. But mindset alone does not move systems. In our follow-up conversation, Tanya pointed out something else. Not just what Europe lacks, but why this moment matters, why hesitation now is more costly than action. Here's Tanya Emmerling on why timing, commitment, and collective momentum matter right now.

Tanja Emmerling: 15:34

I think in that sense a bad time. So that's that's where disruption can happen. So the thing is the right moment that those that are interested in doing that and want to get into action, get together, really make up their minds to what's to do, where to put the money, what's the what's the innovation, what's the tech that we need. And that's why I think it's very interesting that so many get together and um that we also do that across Europe, right? So that we get ideas from the US. And I think that's very inspiring. And I think we need that energy and power to drive that along.

Steve: 16:13

Tanya talked about timing and momentum, but momentum doesn't organize itself. When the window is open, someone still has to move first. Someone has to align capital, leadership, and responsibility before hesitation turns into drift. At the Berlin Summit, that question came up repeatedly. Not whether Europe has ideas, but whether its institutions and corporations are willing to act together fast enough. Here's Summit founder and inside CVC co-host Philip Willigman on why this moment demands coordination, not caution.

Philipp: 16:47

I would say one which became clearer and clearer, and I think now it's everybody is in it now. First off, I think Europe is almost out of strategic time when it comes to making the right choices and getting themselves organized as a European innovation zone. I think that we also have to acknowledge that just investing in specific companies will not help. We have to really think about systems and how do we create these systems in Europe, like robotics. How do we create an ecosystem for robotics, human robotics in in Europe, in one area where we can all invest in? Otherwise, I think we will not be competitive. I think corporations they actually carry much more responsibility than they would admit. And I think there is a has been a reluctance in the last years because there was much more reliability on policy and government. And I think corporate corporate leaders have to really move to action and take on the role corporations had and also make sure we they navigate the future and create the future together and be the ones doing it and not waiting on others.

Steve: 18:00

Philip closed with a challenge. Europe doesn't lack ideas, it lacks alignment, conviction, and follow-through. But urgency on its own isn't a strategy. And momentum without direction quickly turns into noise. Several conversations in Berlin came back to the same operating principle. AI is not a strategy, it's the accelerator. Florian from SAP framed this shift with real clarity. Before chasing tools or pilots, leaders need to get brutally honest about what they are actually trying to build.

Florian Kunzke: 18:32

I think this when it comes to AI, right? Many organizations look at AI and they ask themselves, what should I do now with this powerful technology? So we have that hammer, but where is actually the nail that we want to hit? So I would think most of the time it should really be a reflective discussion of what is your strategy? What do you want to achieve? What is your purpose? And that conversation should be not so much focused on AI as a technology, but you should become aware of your core strengths and weaknesses, and you should have a clear understanding of where do you want to move. And then that AI technology can be an accelerator for you to get to that goal, right? So I would always advise to say look at your core strategy, look at your goals, look at what you want to achieve and your purpose. And then you can define how you take these powerful technologies like AI to get there faster or to also make up for your weaknesses.

Steve: 19:35

Florian's point lands on attention that ran underneath almost every conversation in Berlin. The technology is moving fast, the ambition is there. But execution gets harder when organizations, markets, and systems aren't built to absorb change at speed. You can have the right strategy. You can have the right strategy. You can even have the right tools and still fail if the environment around you starts to fracture. And that's where the summit widened the lens. Because execution doesn't happen in a vacuum. It depends on trust, on institutions, on rules that hold long enough for innovation, investment, and partnerships to actually scale. Once again, here is Gerald Knaus, founder of the European Stability Initiative and Berlin keynote speaker from our Inside CVC interview earlier this year on why Europe's rule of law framework isn't abstract politics, but the invisible infrastructure execution depends on.

Gerald Knaus: 20:33

You know, businesses work in a world of disruption. Disruption is permanent. We can never predict what will happen. Just what happened the last 10 years from the pandemic to Russia's attack to uh various economic crises. We know that things will happen that we don't anticipate. That makes it all the more important that there are things that businesses and citizens can rely on. Now, in last in the recent decades, they could rely on the fact that in Europe uh we had a single market, long the biggest in the world, now the second biggest single market in the world, in which rules would be made that would apply everywhere and would be enforced everywhere. And that you could rely on the rule of law in this single market. There would be no borders for goods and services and people and capital. And so this wasn't just a big economic market, it was also a big jointly regulated institution. And now we come to the myths. The myth is, oh yeah, but if we wouldn't have had the European Union, perhaps we could be more nimble, more flexible. It's this empire of bureaucracy in Brussels. I mean, you know the stories. Well, actually, if you look at the most innovative economies in the world, uh, you know, the global innovation index from this year, I mean there are many, many ways to look at this. And I I look at this and I look at the countries among the top 20. You have number one, Switzerland, number two Sweden, and among the top 10 Finland, Denmark, among the top 20, Estonia, Ireland, Austria, Norway, small European countries that show you can be very innovative in this Europe of common rules. Not everybody is, right? Not all countries are. And some countries, and there is a serious debate in Germany, in what respect things are over-regulated in Germany. But that's not because the EU forces you, as the Finns and Danes and Austrians and and and uh Estonians show us. But what we all have in common is this framework on which you can rely. And imagine for a moment, and I think this is where it touch uh affects businesses, and why businesses need to keep that in their mind. Imagine for a moment that you can no longer be sure that these rules apply in all EU countries.

Steve: 22:50

Canals puts a sharp point on something many leaders feel but rarely name. Execution doesn't break down only because strategy is wrong. It breaks down when trust erodes. Institutions weaken, and the rules people build against stop holding. And once that foundation starts to shift, even the best strategies struggle to travel. Not because leaders lack intent, because the system underneath them cannot carry the load. A real-world example of that breakdown shows up clearly on the front lines of healthcare. It's one of the most complex operating systems there is: high stakes, tight margins, constant change, and no room for failure. But the lesson isn't about healthcare alone. It's about what happens in any organization when strategy outpaces structure. We spoke with Katarina Yanos, founder of Fourth Quarter Life, in a separate conversation that will air as a full Inside Inside CVC episode in 2026. She was also on the Berlin Summit agenda, but this audio comes from our full interview. Her perspective lands squarely on the same fault lines as Kanaus is describing, just at the organizational level. Strategy doesn't collapse because people don't care. It collapses when systems, incentives, and cultures aren't designed to carry it. Here's Katerina Yanos on where execution really breaks down.

Katharina Janus: 24:34

But would ensure a wise use of existing resources. So that is one point. And also what you see in healthcare is just um historical fragmentation of all different elements that should ideally work together and they don't. And uh so this idea of one-stop shopping would be important. So this is kind of the classical, you know, take the good sides of management and actually apply it to healthcare.

Steve: 25:07

YANOS makes the execution challenge tangible inside organizations. Systems matter, incentives matter, design matters, but those systems don't exist in a vacuum. What organizations can execute against is shaped by the environment around them. Capital access, market structure, policy decisions that either compress or compound risk. We first heard from Katarina Beck in part one of this series. She's a member of the German Bundestag and financial policy spokesman for Alliance 90, the Greens, with direct responsibility for startup and scale-up funding policy. At the summit, her perspective connected the execution gaps leaders feel inside companies to the structural realities outside of them. Not whether Europe has ideas, but whether the system is actually built to carry them forward. Once again, here's Katerina Beck.

Katharina Beck: 26:00

I think with regards to investing, is also very important is to see the chances. So, of course, there will be chances in climate adaptation investments, but also, of course, still mitigation as well, new technologies or even existing technologies and scaling these. I believe that we still, with regards to our engineering background in Germany, have a lot to offer when it comes to deep tech, for example. And um there we also see a big financing gap still. So after the first um pilots, uh, when you really want to scale, you need a lot of um capital for that, uh, both VC equity, but also maybe uh venture debt a long longer term, and and a lot of different uh financing mechanisms. And we need that in in Germany and in Europe, and there's a big, big chance in deep tech. We we have a lot of abilities and we need to scale it better, and there's a lot of investment opportunity.

Steve: 27:03

Up to this point, the conversation has made one thing clear: the pressure isn't abstract anymore. Institutions are strained, trust is harder to maintain, execution is getting more expensive, not less. And that pressure shows up most clearly where leaders actually have to make choices. Not in vision decks, but in capital allocation, because every organization is now facing the same trade-off. What do you fund to stay competitive this year, and what do you fund to still matter 10 years from now? That tension came up repeatedly in Berlin. Here's how PWC's Florian Knoll framed it when the conversation turned from risk to responsibility.

Florian Noell: 27:43

So if the pressure is going up, everybody's looking for faster results. And that's that's one thing. Another thing is companies have to invest a lot of money into AI and all of these on many related topics. So they have to raise the question of allocation of investments and do your investment to your today's AI strategy, which is maybe a must-have to stay competitive within the next 12 months or 24 months. That's that's the key, of course. Very fast adoption of of all kinds of energetic AI topics, for example. So that's one thing. Or do you invest into two or three venture capital deals which will pay off in 10 years, maybe? And if you ask me, you have to do both, of course. There's there's this this old saying or quote, yes, uh, execution pays your salary, innovation pays your pension. So take care of your pension, take care of your future business model.

Steve: 28:47

Across these conversations, a pattern emerges. Europe doesn't lack ideas, it doesn't lack talent, it doesn't lack urgency. What it's wrestling with is alignment across capital, across institutions, across leadership. That question, how leaders move from insight to coordinated action, didn't end in Berlin. It's exactly where the conversation continues next. Here's Summit founder and Inside CVC co-host Philip Willigman on how these themes carry forward as the dialogue shifts from Berlin to Miami.

Philipp: 29:18

Obviously, US, slightly different conversation, slightly different topics. We we did a survey from from last year or like this year, and asked what people were wanting to do. And there they specifically asked that we would like to actually work more. We like the working session, but we actually want to want to go deeper on certain topics. So that's something we are reflecting on and making sure that there's more time to work together and also to network. When it comes to the topics, topics are yeah, there's a definitely overlap. I mean, energy is gonna be a big topic in the US, energy resilience, specifically in Florida, with huge semiconductor industry, defense industry, space industry, so very, very energy-rich sectors. Artificial intelligence, AI, of course, it's gonna be on the agenda. However, we want to take a different spin on it, really talking about what is what is really happening, what is happening in corporations. There's a lot of talk, but when you when you see the initiatives and with some of the bigger corporations who are not on the tech space, doesn't seem like so much really impactful happening there. So, what is true? What is the myth? Um, and having a conversation around that. And also what is what does really a transition look like? We do want to talk about workforce. It's a kind of a topic on every panel. What is really going to happen to the workforce? We we had somebody in in Europe uh sharing that countries who are very active, like in Asia, were pushing AI and automation a lot. They're at a point that they realize we are not ready for the people to leave the workforce. We don't know what what to do with some of those people. So that's a question, like a responsibility we we have to solve as corporates. We're very excited about, you know, we have a geopolitical panel again, bringing in European voices, voices from Asia, and also this time from Latam, from Latin America. The state is going to be there again supporting it. This the city of Miami or County of Miami Date. Extremely humbled by the support. We have now long-term partners who have been supporting the US edition for four years, some for three. Thank you to Greenberg Trieric, to KPMG, Bank of America, who have been longtime supporters. There's a few new partners joining us uh next year. On the co-host side, we have seen this in the last editions. We always, you know, we're always switching, which is actually quite nice, getting always new perspectives into the mix. We have Manen Hummel is part of the group again. We're excited for that, as well as Borg Warner. And we have Mitsubishi Promoters joining the co-host team, uh, as well as Oshkosh. Then we have again Batsko, which is an air conditioned distributor based in Miami. A great support specifically for the ecosystem. So yeah, very humbled for the group and uh looking forward to a great event.

Steve: 32:14

Thank you for listening to this two-part Inside CVC series recapping the conversations from the CVC Open Innovation Summit in Berlin. To learn more about the next summit coming up in February in Florida, visit upath.com. That's the letter u hyphenpath.com. And to catch up on all of our episodes, search InsideCVC on your favorite podcast platform or visit uPath.com forward slash podcast. We'll see you in 2026.