DLD Video
Building Business While Minding the Environment
“We have decided to look not at barriers but enablers – we want to be positive here”, moderator Cristiana Falcone says at the outset of this DLD Summer session about the circular economy. The panel includes Lufthansa’s Chief Customer Officer Christina Foerster, HypoVereinsbank CEO Michael Diederich and Andrew McAfee, Co-Director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
“We’re learning to satisfy our wants and needs while treading more lightly on the planet that we all live on”, McAfee observes, pointing to smartphones which have replaced many other devices like cameras, music players or DVD players. “There are examples all over the economy, all the time.”
Christina Foerster encourages businesses to reconsider their travel needs. The Covid-19 pandemic “gave us time to reflect on when is it good that we see people digitally”, she says. Asking “how do I travel, what do I need mobility for and when do I use technology” could become a valuable aspect of making travel more sustainable, she argues.
As for banks, “we are the facilitator between people with great ideas and the investor side”, Michael Diederich says. To make products more sustainable, billions of components need to be reengineered “in terms of CO2 emission-free production facilities”, he points out. “And in all of that there is a huge chance for the economy, for the companies, for the founders – and we are in the middle of that.”
Christina Foerster
Lufthansa Group
As Chief Customer Officer of Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Christina Foerster is responsible for Customer, IT and Corporate Responsibility. After joining Brussels Airlines as Chief Commercial Officer (CCO) in 2016, she took over the position of Chief Executive Officer of the Belgian Lufthansa Group Airline in April 2018, as one of the few women globally to lead an airline.
Cristiana Falcone
JMCMRJ Sorrell Foundation
Cristiana Falcone has over 20 years of experience designing and implementing digital transformation, partnership and business development strategies working directly with the leadership at global corporations (SONY, Shell, Revlon), international governmental organizations (ILO, IFAD, FAO, UNDCCP, IADB) and the media industry.
Michael Diederich
HypoVereinsbank
Michael Diederich is Spokesman of the Management Board of HypoVereinsbank – UniCredit Bank AG as well as CEO Germany and member of the Executive Management Committee of UniCredit since January 2018. Diederich holds a doctorate in business administration and an auditor’s degree. He can look back on many years of experience in various management positions in the financial sector.
Andrew McAfee
MIT Sloan School of Management
Andrew McAfee is the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Initiative on the Digital Economy and a Principal Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He studies how digital technologies are changing business, the economy, and society. He is the author of More from Less and The Second Machine Age (with Erik Brynjolfsson).