This week I was at a conference on automotive where the lack of radical innovations and market breakthroughs in the automotive industry in Europe was raised as the key problem. On the one hand, we have international competitors that bring cars with comparable features to the market at a fraction of the price. On the other hand, we have international competitors that offer vehicles with feature sets and approaches to delivering value that European players have not mastered yet. The industry seems to be stuck in a fundamentally uncompetitive place due to lack of innovation. We are stuck in a rulebook that should have been thrown away years ago. The question was how we break out of this vicious circle and several people mentioned that it is actually hot wars that drive a lot of innovation, as we’re seeing in Ukraine, among others. I just would really like to avoid having to enter a war just to drive our pace of innovation up again. But the current situation is on course to bring Europe to an economic backwater that ends up kowtowing to whoever wins the current technology war on the world scale. So, as a reflection, challenge and call for help for today: how do we reignite Europe?