My first visit to the largest industry fair in the world, Hannover Messe, was a powerful experience. I was impressed, energised, and euphoric from the positive vibe all around. Maybe I was just lucky, but it seemed to me that all people I met – exhibitors, visitors, speakers – were in the best frame of mind and inspiring. The atmosphere exuded innovation. I was able to finally experience and test what I had heard before only as abstract buzzwords: Automation & Robotics, Mixed Realities, IoT, Industry 4.0, AI. The digital transformation is on.

In retrospect I am happy that I took my time to visit the Industrial Pioneers Summit, as I had the opportunity to listen to and to learn from:  

• Matthias Roese, Chief Technologist Global Manufacturing, Automotive & IoT, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
• Georg Kube, Global Vice President industrial machinery and components, SAP
• Haifeng Cui, VP, Manufacturing and Automotive Industry, Huawei Western Europe
• and last but not least Eriksson’s SVP and Head of Technologies and New Business Asa Tomsons.

My key takeaways were:

• Data can transform businesses, through AI and advanced analytics; nevertheless, in the manufacturing industry around 94% of the data is not being utilized (HP Study)
• Learning when talking to customers is key. Target of the intelligent manufacturing enterprise is to create superior customer experiences through tailor-made solutions delivered at scale and as a service (SAP)
• The business challenges in digital transformation in the manufacturing and automotive are: business case identification; existing legacy systems; interoperability of different vendor solutions, high initial investment vs ROI, Big Data vs Big Information (Huawei)
• 4 tech directions are leading digitalization: 5G, AI, IOT, Cloud (Huawei)
• To succeed at all of the above you need optimism, passion, grit, speed, trust, and enormous innovation power from across industries and sectors (Eriksson)

All these professionals are doing an unimaginable complex work, making our lives easier. This is just a tiny bit of all that I experienced, but you can see more about the Hannover Messe programme here: https://www.hannovermesse.de/home

On the downside I did not make it to the 5G experience…  
On the upside though, we will have this experience during my Innovation for Growth Executive Tour in October in Finland – to be announced soon.