Slush 2025: AI against the paper jam

Slush in Helsinki is a different world. Tens of thousands of people, an entire hall full of energy, and conversations everywhere about technology that is still considered a distant prospect back home. I came back with one insight that has not let go of me since, and it has less to do with tools than with mindset.

A different world

Internationally, digitalisation is far more advanced than the typical German mid-sized company likes to admit. In Helsinki, people talk about AI in day-to-day business as a matter of course, about agents that take over entire workflows, about data that prepares decisions. Back home, the paper jam still rules in many places. Receipts are retyped, approvals run back and forth by email, and the most valuable thing in any business, the time of its people, drains away into routine.

At Slush it became clear to me just how big this gap really is. It is not about being a few months behind, but about a different way of thinking. There, people ask "what can we build with this", here often first "what does it cost us if it goes wrong".

The paper jam is not fate

That sounds sobering at first, but it is the opposite. The gap means the lever here is enormous. Anyone who automates their first process today often gets more out of it than a digitally advanced company on its fifth optimisation project. The low-hanging fruit is still on the tree for us.

I see this in almost every first conversation. There is that one process that eats up hours every day, and no one has touched it, because "that is how we have always done it". That is exactly where I start. Not with the big transformation programme, but with the one step that brings noticeable relief right away.

What really impressed me

In the end, it was not the stages and not the start-ups that moved me the most. It was the people. So enthusiastic about new things, so open to simply trying something out, without the German reflex question "and what if it goes wrong". This curiosity is contagious, and honestly, it is what I sometimes miss here.

I do not believe you can import this mindset one to one. The concerns of mid-sized companies are real: data protection, dependency, tight budgets. But you can translate the enthusiasm into something that feels safe.

What I take away from it for mid-sized companies

That is exactly my job. I take the spark from places like Slush and translate it into the reality of a business in northern Germany. Into pragmatic steps instead of grand promises. Into a fixed price instead of open risk. Into German data sovereignty instead of a black box. And into the certainty that you stay in control, even as the technology gets smarter.

That is how "exciting, but risky" turns into a project that a mid-sized company actually launches. This translation is precisely why I travel to events like this.