At $200 billion in global revenue, video gaming is now a bigger business than music, video streaming and movies combined.

One of the fastest growing sectors in this field is esports, which captures huge audiences worldwide and is enormously popular at every level of society – just like traditional sports.

In both worlds there is a surprising lack of diversity when it comes to who’s running the show.

This DLD Sync conversation took a close look at today’s reality in the world of sports und esports. Neda Tabatabaie, Vice President Business Analytics & Technology for the U.S. National Hockey League team San Jose Sharks, and Alexander T. Müller, Co-Founder & CEO of SK Gaming, Germany’s foremost esports organization, shared insights from their fields.

Do these industries – which play an important role in society and business – have a blind spot when it comes to openness, inclusivity, and diversity? And if so: How can this be changed?

Where do they face similar issues, and where do they differ, when it comes to closing the diversity gap? Which initiatives and role models are fostering change? And how are they perceived within, and outside, their respective communities?

Urbanization is one of the defining trends of the 21st century: Cities continue to grow and will play an even more important role in shaping our future. They are economic centers and provide opportunities for large parts of the global population.

At the same time, cities are vulnerable to climate shocks, to pandemics and social inequality. They produce a large share of carbon emissions and – without appropriate planning – could fail to provide suitable living and working environments for citizens and businesses alike.
 
In this DLD Sync conversation, Francesa Bria, President of the Italian National Innovation Fund, and Lauren Kiel, General Manager at Bloomberg Green, shared strategies, insights and concrete examples of how to mitigate these challenges and actively shape cities for a smarter, greener and more liveable future.

Luxury as a state of comfort and enjoyment and connected luxury goods have been desirable to people throughout the ages. Apart from the materiality and scarcity of a luxury good, values, attitudes, and emotions play a major role in the perception of luxury. In our times of dealing with mega trends like technological change, societal transformation and the challenges of climate change, the role of luxury is evolving just as quickly.

Luxury brands, built on trust, innovation and values have the opportunity and the responsibility to provide guidance, to offer solutions to new customer expectations as well as to larger goals and visions, and to take a stand when it comes to addressing topics such as sustainability, inequality or diversity.

This DLD Sync conversation between Diana Verde Nieto, CEO & Co-Founder of Positive Luxury, and Bettina Fetzer, Vice President Communications & Marketing at Mercedes-Benz AG, explores how brands can make a difference and make sustainability desirable at the same time. Introduction by DLD Founder Steffi Czerny.

In this DLD Sync session, two of the world’s leading chronobiologists put their research into perspective with regard to technology and the future of mobility. Elizabeth Klerman (Harvard Medical School) and Till Roenneberg (LMU Munich) explained what chronobiology is – and why it is vital for all of us to know more about it.

They also gave tips on how to avoid common misconceptions and what you should know about restful sleep and sleeping patterns.

Evolution has given humans an inner clock that used to be in tune with natural rhythms like sunrise and sunset, the researchers pointed out in conversation with DLD founder Steffi Czerny. “We should always consider that everything that goes on in our body is controlled by our very individual biological clock”, Roenneberg says. “And therefore it's a very important thing to know about.”

But modern work hours and lifestyle choices often interfere with our inner clock. Staying up late to finish a movie, getting up early to rush to the office, flying around half the world and across multiple zones – none of this is healthy from the perspective of a chronobiologist.

“There’s a huge amount of evidence that if you get insufficient sleep, it’s bad for every aspect of your physical, including mental, body”, Elizabeth Klerman says.

Trying to ignore the body's needs can be downright dangerous, for example when people fall asleep at the wheel. “There are a number of studies that show that lots of accidents happen within two miles of home”, Klerman observes. “People need to recognize that when you need to sleep is not a good time to drive. It might be inconvenient. But it’s better to be alive.”

At some point, autonomous cars may solve this problem. But already engineers should consider making the passenger cabin brighter, Till Roenneberg suggests. “Give the people in the car as much light as possible during the day”, he demands, to help the body clock stay in tune with the day’s natural cycle. “Biology should always be on the mind of the technology builders.”

The discussion also includes benefits of the home office, why it’s bad to stress out over your alarm clock, how astronauts keep a healthy sleep rhythm, and much more. Watch the video, below, to find out.

Countless cyberattacks are launched globally every day. They pose an immeasurable threat for business, public institutions, and individuals alike. Increasingly, they come from unexpected directions – ranging from teenage hackers and criminal syndicates to government-sponsored strike forces of highly trained specialists.

It’s imperative for any organization to strengthen their defenses. But what are the key factors for defining and implementing a cybersecurity strategy? Is it all about cutting-edge technology? Or are there other considerations to take on board?

In this DLD Sync session, Siemens Cybersecurity Officer & Chief Diversity Officer Natalia Oropeza and Zeina Zakhour, VP & Global CTO for Digital Security at Atos, discuss with The Innovator’s Jennifer Schenker why diversity and values play an integral role in cybersecurity.

Oxford economist Ian Goldin is one of the most astute observers of society in times of change. Many of his books have been international bestsellers. In his latest work, Rescue: From Global Crisis to a Better World, he analyzes the Covid-19 pandemic in the context of globalization, sustainability and social justice.

Our longing for things to go “back to normal” may be understandable, he argues – but it would actually be detrimental. “We need to do things differently”, he pointed out in his DLD Sync presentation. “It’s business as usual which created the pandemic.”

By learning from our mistakes, and by rethinking the way we live, and do business, in a globalized economy, “we could take a road to shared prosperity”, Goldin argues. In this sense, we should see the pandemic as a unique opportunity to tackle current and future challenges. “Why don’t we have a NATO-type organization to stop pandemics?”, the Oxford scholar asked.

After his presentation, Goldin spoke with DLD founder Steffi Czerny about his faith in science, why he thinks globalization is here to stay, and how lessons learned from the Covid pandemic could help mankind tackle climate change.

In times of social distancing, we all miss face-to-face meetings with friends, colleagues and business associates. In her latest book, The Lost Art of Connecting, communications expert Susan McPherson argues that this is just the tip of the iceberg. The pandemic has only escalated an enduring feeling of disconnection.

While we all have large networks on social media and business platforms, real connection and long-lasting, meaningful relationships remain rare and exclusive – especially in a business context. In this DLD Sync session, Susan discussed with DLD’s Founder and Connector-in-Chief, Steffi Czerny, what the key elements for forging real relationships are, and why they are important not just in our current situation but for our success in business and life as well.

In January 2021, the European Commission launched the New European Bauhaus – a creative and interdisciplinary initiative to drive the green transformation of our continent. The New European Bauhaus sets out to support, facilitate, and accelerate innovations at the crossroads of art, science and technology. It is a call to action and a collective effort to imagine and build a future that is sustainable, inclusive and beautiful. To build this future, it needs a team of architects, makers, operators and supporters with many different skill sets. Therefore, fostering entrepreneurial ecosystems which thrive through cross-disciplinary collaboration is a key factor for transferring this ambitious vision into real-world solutions.

In this DLD Sync conversation, we heard from Francesca Bria, member of the New European Bauhaus high-level roundtable and President of the newly created Italian National Innovation Fund, and Helmut Schönenberger, CEO of UnternehmerTUM, Europe’s largest, highly successful entrepreneurship center. Drawing from their profound expertise in innovation management, they gave us insights into their own ecosystems and discuss ideas how the vision of the New European Bauhaus can be a catalyst for a new wave of entrepreneurial innovation across Europe.

The Covid crisis has not just highlighted the failures of certain governments; it is accelerating a shift in the balance of power from West to East. Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, political editor of the Economist and author of its Bagehot column, discuss main aspects of their recently published book The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It with Tom Enders, President of the German Council of Foreign Relations and former CEO of Airbus.

After a decade where politics in the U.S. and the U.K. were consumed with inward-facing struggles, a new Asian model of government has been gaining ground in countries like South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. China too has been climbing the league tables in education and health. The recent events in Washington, D.C., have highlighted the problems in the West’s most powerful democracy; but the EU, which has been through Brexit and Covid without fundamentally changing its structure, also faces challenges. This session examined the major question facing the world right now: can the West wake up before it’s too late?

It’s a cliché that data is the oil of the information age, but it highlights the importance of data to the digital economy. Unlike oil, data is an infinite resource. In fact, it comes in such abundance that it is harder to refine than its industrial age counterpart.

One of the key challenges for enterprises is to put their data to good use. This means defining, measuring and analyzing the right parameters. It means turning data into a competitive advantage, into smoother and leaner processes, and better products and services – which drive market value just as much as customer satisfaction and, ideally, use fewer limited resources.

Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi, Senior Portfolio Manager and Partner at Tudor Investment, took a deep-dive into how data, AI and automation are key shapers of the enterprise of the future with Ali Ghodsi, Co-Founder and CEO of Databricks – a unified platform for massive-scale data engineering, collaborative data science, full-lifecycle machine learning and business analytics with a customer base of more than six thousand organizations worldwide.

Young companies are the lifeblood of a thriving economy, especially in times of rapid change. In this DLD Sync session, investors Mattias Ljungman (Moonfire) and David Helgason (Nordic Makers) assessed the state of Europe’s technology and startup scene, and explored where the greatest opportunities lie. Drawing from their wealth of experience as investors and entrepreneurs, David and Mattias discussed seed investing, innovation clusters, the secrets of success and more in conversation with moderator Karsten Lemm.

David co-founded the game technology company Unity Technologies in 2003 and served as its CEO until 2014. Now based in Copenhagen, he’s a partner at Nordic Makers, a VC group specializing in early-stage investments. Mattias co-founded Atomico in 2006 and built in into one of Europe’s most successful venture groups before launching Moonfire, his own venture fund, in 2019. The new company aims to team up with Europe’s most innovative founders, leveraging data and a network of angel investors to create exponential growth.

What are we losing as we go remote? We spend a lot of time worrying about the impact on companies, but what is at risk for individuals, couples, families and co-workers when real life connections become viewed as dangerous? Will eros – the feeling of aliveness and vitality – find itself a fatality of Covid-19 alongside mystery, happenstance and physical connection?

Iconic psychotherapist Esther Perel and Scott Galloway explored the long-term meaning of Covid-19 for relationships as we navigate the new normal, prolonged uncertainty, the collapse of boundaries between home and work – and a safety-first mentality that leaves little space for the unknown, surprise and serendipity. DLD founder Steffi Czerny filled in for Scott when the “WiFi gods” turned against him, as he later put it.