I am convinced that we will cope also with future economic downturns in as timely and appropriate a manner as we did with the recent period of high growth. In the same vein, I am equally confident that European governments will also during times of weaker economic growth stick to their strategy of medium-term balanced budgets and structural reforms.
Technologies are disruptive if they not only make individual processes more efficient but also render entire business models obsolete. Once music started to be spread over the internet as compressed files, a whole value-added chain was suddenly rendered superfluous – from the CD pressing machine to the record store. Smartphones, with their highly developed lenses, are currently putting pressure on the camera industry.