“Europe is standing at a crucial turning point in its history. After centuries of global dominance, we have, over the past eighty years, been downgraded to a player operating in the shadow of the US, China, and other emerging powers. Yet Europe undeniably possesses the potential and talent to take back the reins. The main reasons we are losing ground in defense, economic dominance, and technological innovation are rooted in the operational and political model that Europe has embraced since World War II—largely the result of how the US positioned us within their view of the global order. With today’s shifting dynamics and the restructuring of that global order, Europe now has the choice, or even the duty, to take on a different role. Our strategic dependence on the US forces us to reconsider our position, and Europe seems to be (at the time of writing) creating momentum to do so.” That’s what Jo Caudron writes in his new book ‘Fuck the system’.
However, achieving this will require more than promises to invest more money through initiatives such as Readiness 2030 and increased defense budgets as part of NATO negotiations. To successfully transform this momentum, ambition, and budget into the desired outcome—a strong Europe at the table of the new world order—we will need to approach innovation in a smart and fundamentally new way.
This smart innovation will require an unprecedented mindset shift from everyone involved. Yet, after twenty years of experience in digital transformation, we have learned that such shifts are not impossible. There are strong parallels between the dynamics of digital transformation in business and the societal transformation that Europe must now undergo. When I began advising companies on this topic, a Babylonian confusion arose—one that persists to this day. Simply put, most so-called “digital transformation projects” have nothing to do with actual transformation. It has become the sexy label for any large and expensive digital project, allowing it to be sold more easily to a board of directors who do not understand it anyway. A new version of your ERP system, migrating your infrastructure to the cloud, mobile apps, a transactional platform, customer support through social media, or placing your contracts on the blockchain—none of this constitutes real digital transformation. These are examples of digitization and digitalization, sometimes with a hint of innovation. If this is how we plan to lead Europe into the future, it will not succeed.
Digital transformation is a fundamental transformation of business triggered by digital disruption. Digital is the trigger; transformation is the outcome. What does that mean? We can only speak of real transformation when the core of your solution, product, or service changes—often accompanied by new value streams and new ways of generating revenue. The evolution from a combustion-engine car to an electric car is not a transformation: the product (a car) stays the same and we continue to sell it as before, simply at a higher price. Compare that with a model like Uber, where fleets of cars are used and not sold. This creates a fundamental business transformation: the mobility problem is no longer solved through an ownership model of selling individual cars, but through a usage model with on-demand, collective fleets. This is a radically different way of thinking—true transformation at the core of the business.
The lesson, therefore, is that if Europe wants to succeed, it must radically rethink both the solutions it pursues and the way these solutions are organized. We will never fully succeed in this: hundreds of millions of citizens, dozens of countries (inside and outside the EU), and the deeply rooted institutions and structures make it a Herculean task to change the way this enormous system thinks and operates. Yet we must aspire to shape Europe’s future through this kind of bold, transformative innovation—supported by an ambitious innovation policy and by investing in the right sectors. Even if we only partially succeed, striving toward transition innovation will become a powerful lever for positive change.
It is useful to draw inspiration from the radical nature of digital transformation, but it would be a grave mistake to force European innovation into American or Chinese, norms. We are talking about rethinking our society, economy, and defense. If we learned anything from Elon Musk’s DOGE debacle, it is that a government is not a start-up. *Move fast and break things* works perfectly well if you are burning someone else’s billions and know you have a 10% chance of success. But when you are reforming education or pensions, you cannot afford a start-up-style “fuck-up” that results in losing everything. So, while we must innovate rapidly and radically, we must do so within European values, norms, regulations, and laws. This is not a limitation—on the contrary, it can even foster more innovation.
The core of a strong Europe is the development of strategic sectors. Some of these sectors already exist but must be viewed through a fundamentally different lens; others we have allowed to disappear or never developed at all. In Chapter 7, I introduced the concept of transition sectors, with energy and defense as the first examples. There are several other sectors that lend themselves to a transition-innovation approach, allowing Europe to compete with the rest of the world: housing, mobility, food, agriculture—centuries-old sectors that are now facing urgent climate-driven transitions. Europe must understand how to develop new solutions in these sectors, moving away from today’s imposed limitations and scarcity, and instead leveraging opportunities and scalability through technological approaches.
Next to transition sectors, there are domains in which we must reclaim our position to regain control. In the fields of AI, digital platforms, social media, and communication infrastructure, we must pursue strategic sovereignty to eliminate a fundamental vulnerability. I cannot stress enough how dangerous it will be for Europe if we no longer control our own narrative. Nearly all the information we access today, the AI tools we use, the ways we entertain or inform ourselves, the tools we work with, communicate with, or create with—they all pass through American or Chinese platforms that largely escape European democratic oversight. Recent history has already shown how foreign actors influence elections or the opinions of citizens. We can no longer afford to ignore these risks.
Jo Caudron Jo is a transformation strategist, passionate about navigating the impact of technological and societal disruptions. He has been assisting organizations in all sectors throughout Europe in understanding how their world is changing and how they can adapt their core business to be ready for the future. He wrote seven books and is great keynote speaker.
