Davos Man: Christian Klein

Unlocking Growth by Embracing the Paradoxes of the Intelligent Age

SAP CEO Christian Klein tries his hand at being a philosopher and mathematical logician. He claims to have discovered a paradox in the world of AI and believes that solving this paradox will allow SAP's existing customers to grow unhindered. Well-meaning readers of Christian Klein's text, which can be found on the website of the World Economic Forums see parallels with the presumptuous claims made by US President Donald Trump.

In his text, SAP CEO Christian Klein addresses the atomization of society without, however, mentioning the originator of this phenomenon. For orientation: Wikipedia states that Georg Simmel (1858 to 1918) was a German philosopher and sociologist. He contributed to the philosophy of culture and was the founder of „formal sociology“, urban sociology and the sociology of conflict. Simmel stood in the tradition of the philosophy of life, but also that of neo-Kantianism. In one of his main works, the Philosophy of Money (1900), he assumes that money is gaining more and more influence on society, politics and the individual.

Christian Klein writes: „We may be more networked, but we are still more isolated. We are inundated with information, but cannot trust its veracity.“ SAP CEO Klein describes the supposed paradox as follows: „As companies and governments face challenges in terms of sovereignty, security and competitiveness, they must take approaches that at first seem contradictory: investing boldly despite limited resources, sharing data while protecting it, and competing with others while collaborating with them. But these are not contradictions - this is the new operating model.“

In his text, Christian Klein confuses „paradox“ with „contradiction“ - which may still be valid colloquially, but philosophically and mathematically is a veritable blunder. A paradox is an initially logically derived function that ultimately contradicts (sic!) the real world.

Achilles and the tortoise in the S/4 Hana release change

One of the best-known paradoxes is the race between Achilles, the fastest runner of his time in ancient Greece, and the tortoise: because Achilles is aware of his victory, he gives the tortoise a veritable head start. The starting shot is fired and while Achilles moves quickly to where the tortoise started, the tortoise naturally moves too. Achilles then covered the distance between himself and the tortoise again. During this time, however, the tortoise also moved further and so on and so forth. The result is simple and logical: the distance between Achilles and the tortoise gets smaller and smaller (mathematically: an infinite series), but Achilles never reaches the tortoise for all eternity.

The image of Achilles and the tortoise with the never-ending line - so it seems impossible for Achilles to reach the goal - is not unlike the eternal quest of SAP customers for the final release upgrade. There is still a release change, an Abap modification and an update!

Cloud, AI and share price

After the absence from the AI show CES in Las Vegas (The Most Powerful Tech Event in the World) at the beginning of the year, the SAP community was hoping for understandable and explanatory words on the topics of cloud computing, AI and the disastrous share price from SAP Executive Board members Christian Klein and Thomas Saueressig in Davos at the WEF. In the Swiss mountains, however, US President Donald Trump has eliminated the „Davos Man“. See also the book by Peter Goodman from 2022: Davos Man - How the Billionaires Devoured the World.

Naturally, Klein, Saueressig and many other captains of industry had no voice against the loud cries of Trump. Staying away from Las Vegas therefore proved to be a double mistake. SAP made a strategic mistake by not using CES as an AI marketplace, as not only all US IT and AI companies were represented, but also leading German industrial companies such as Siemens, Bosch and Mercedes - all of whom discussed the future of AI with Nvidia, except SAP. Does this ignorance explain SAP's disastrous share price or does SAP simply not have an AI story?

SAP CEO Christian Klein made his own share price fly with cloud computing. In the current age of AI, SAP is plummeting on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Does SAP need a new AI strategy or a new CEO? The fact is that SAP has many answers in the field of AI, but hardly a consistent strategy. Christian Klein is doing AI in the same way as many other IT companies - but that seems to be too little for financial analysts and also for many existing SAP customers.