For 30 years, digital technology reshaped the global economy. It famously flattened the world. Markets, trade and production became more connected across borders. From cars and smartphones to semiconductors and industrial robots, almost no complex product is created in one place alone. (View Highlight)
Then came the pandemic, energy crisis, labour shortages and geopolitical tensions that exposed how fragile this flat world of ours really is. Companies are now rebalancing, weighing resilience alongside cost and efficiency in their decisions about investment, sourcing and production. As a result, a more regional form of globalisation is emerging. (View Highlight)
While the first digital revolution helped companies co-ordinate global supply chains, this one is helping to make production more local again. Manufacturing is moving closer to customers, held together by a patchwork of digital connections in software, data and AI. (View Highlight)
At “lighthouse factories”, a World Economic Forum designation of more than 200 smart manufacturing sites, these new approaches have raised labour productivity by around 40 per cent and cut the time to adapt production lines roughly in half. But scaling these gains depends on whether machines, factories and companies can exchange data and reuse solutions. (View Highlight)
Software, data and AI have different economics to concrete and steel. Factories, machines and infrastructure must still be built and adapted in each market. But a digital model, software application or AI tool can be improved in one place and reused in many others, provided systems can exchange it and have access to the relevant data. If the conditions are right, factories can adapt designs that they know work for local needs, better processes can spread and products can reach new markets without having to rebuild from scratch each time. (View Highlight)
That logic is strong enough to encourage corporate competitors to build connections that will allow technology to work across national boundaries. (View Highlight)
Shared standards are the cleanest way to do this: everyone works to the same rules from the start. Interoperability is the next best solution, allowing different systems to work together without becoming identical. Take a recent European-Japanese effort that linked separate automotive industrial networks while each retained its own architecture. (View Highlight)
Yet while companies are building bridges, geopolitics is increasingly drawing borders. The US-China technology divide is reshaping the landscape worldwide as governments seek greater control over technologies, data and supply chains. Export controls, data localisation rules and diverging cyber security requirements are drawing new lines through global technology. (View Highlight)
Every new barrier makes it harder to connect systems, scale what works and bring better products to markets. If this trend continues unchecked, digital borders could harden into a digital iron curtain — slowing progress, trade and the exchange of ideas between societies. (View Highlight)
This is a global challenge. But Europe, caught as it is between the two technological superpowers, has a particular stake in the answer — and a unique opportunity to shape it. Rather than building yet another walled garden, it can become a trusted connector: a place where companies, technologies and data from different regions work together. (View Highlight)
But that will require building an ecosystem that others want to join. Europe cannot become the world’s connector if it is primarily known for regulating technology rather than creating it. It must now create the right conditions for companies to do what they do best. (View Highlight)
Interoperability must become a strategic imperative for the EU. Enlarging the single market — for digital products and services as well as everything else — is a necessary step in building both credibility and capability. Wherever common standards are absent, the priority must be developing interfaces that can switch between different systems, whether through companies, industry alliances or public-private partnerships. (View Highlight)
Finally, Europe should make interoperability a cornerstone of its economic diplomacy. This connected world cannot be built alone. The emerging digital trade partnership with Pacific economies, including Japan, Australia and Canada, could become a promising model for how to bring different ecosystems together. (View Highlight)
The biggest question remains a global one: will resilience be built on connections or on systems designed to keep one another out? The answer will determine whether our more regional world can remain connected. (View Highlight)
