What do 3D printed shoes, artificial intelligence and the future of sports have in common? More than you think! Welcome to Siemens Tech Minds 2026. Today with us on stage are the CEO of Siemens, Roland Busch, and the CEO of Adidas, Björn Gulden. In this panel discussion, personal perspectives on global trends will meet: from the role of sport in life, to modern productions, to the question of how modern technologies are changing AI for entire industries. And what role does China play? Local markets and investments in sports, infrastructure. Tune in and find out what is driving the next generation of producers and performers.
Welcome Roland Busch and Bjørn Gulden.
So, before we deal with AI, let's start with the sporty base. Roland, you run a highly complex technology company. You are CEO. What would you say is the biggest overlap between a CEO of Siemens and a competitive athlete?
So first of all, fitness. I think physical fitness is also part of my job. If you fly around the world once, within two or three days and then get off, have to perform, no matter what time zone you are in, then it's physical fitness. The other thing is to really perform when it matters. That's just the way it is with athletes, when the competition starts, you have to be at the peak. And that happens even when there are simply such events like this that you don't talk nonsense and are well prepared. And perhaps the last aspect is that life as a CEO, that's not a sprint, it's a marathon. That means you have to hold out for years. So working on substance doesn't work. And I don't think that works in competitive sports either.
Bjørn used to be a professional footballer. To what extent would you say do you still benefit from the experience gained in your work as CEO of Adidas?
For the club I was a bad signing. So that's not a good experience. But I also played in Norway. I think you have to deal with the pressure as a CEO and also as an athlete. And then in team sports, as a young person or even in competitive sports, you have to fit into a team. You play with players who are better than you, worse than you, who you like, who you don't like. And that's how it is in professional life. That's the way it is. You have to fit in. And I believe that the parallels to being successful in team sports, perhaps not only in competitive sports, but there also have a lot of parallels with life afterwards. I thought that my sports career, if you can say so, was the best education for me. The other things can be learned. I mean, we can go to school and study. But the social skills, how you can get involved, you can only learn that through experience. And that's where I think sport is very important. That's the basis. I know from Roland that he likes to be the first one in the in-house gym in the morning? Oh, may I ask, what do you do there?
So yes. You can also look this up on LinkedIn. My social media department, they made a really great comic out of it. So me. My focus is strength training. I do maybe 10, 20% cardio, mostly strength training. What time is it there? If necessary, even before 6:00 a.m., typically 6:00 a.m., 6:30 a.m. and during the week 1 hour 15, 1 hour 30 minutes. On weekends, it's better to do it a little later, but then just two hours. But that's good. And I do split training. So I train six times a week. A day somehow never works out. Usually it's Monday, when I'm picked up here early or something like that. And I do split training, so you really don't train the same muscles every day, but change through. And what I typically do is, I always take such a circuit, i.e. three exercises, which I then always rotate through, so five different muscle groups, so that you can actually go through without a break, so to speak. I then rotate them four times and then come four times in the next three exercises, the next ones and then the hour is over. And also well filled. Exactly. And that's the plan, that I just get as many exercises as possible in that time. And yes, then the day can begin.
You were just in the gym together, Bjørn. Yes, we were together in China. How was that? Was that nice or frustrating?
We were the only ones. The only ones in the entire delegation. Yes, exactly. That's right. But what does your sporting program look like? Yes, I'm from Norway. Well, we're good at winter sports. A little better than the Germans. Um. And I do roller skis every morning. So, if you see a crazy person running on skis in the summer, it's me. I think the only one. Around Herzogenaurach. Yes, yes.
So both gentlemen are very active in sports. I'll take a look at your shoes, Roland. They can be improved.
Well, I think. That's not the latest. Yes. No, it's not the latest. But of course they are super hip. In white.
Do you know where these shoes were produced and how they were produced?
You probably don't know either, do you?
China. China, in all probability China, Indonesia or Vietnam. One of the three.
How much Siemens is in it?
1.95 meters. 2 meters. 2 meters. So, I, I suspect a lot of automation. I mean, you know better, that's a, an incredibly mature supplier industry. There are a few companies that do- I think POU CHEN- the one company that we get to know later, which makes 400 million shoes a year. At least. Exactly. And there are a few of them. And they do that for many manufacturers. And consequently, we will automate. We also help with design, digital design and the like. We are part of it, but more in the production technology, so to speak.
What is the status quo, Bjørn? How does Adidas produce today? How much of this is already automated and what are the steps to add the question that actually still require craftsmanship?
This is not an easy question. There is still a lot of craftsmanship in development. You still need shoemakers, in the sense that you also understand the product. And the further you go into production, the more you can automate. Um, I don't know if I'm allowed to do that, but that's commercial television, isn't it? Yes, you can do everything here. This shoe, for example, is fully printed. So that means now fully automated, it is programmed in a printing machine and then it prints out the shoe finished. There is no manual work at all and there are many versions of it. The problem so far is that the material and the feel of the shoe is not better than of normal shoes. Because you're not yet at the point where you can get the combination of softness and firmness, and you need both, better than with normal shoes. But that's only a matter of time. This means that there is still room for improvement, which we have. Yes, everything can be expanded. But that's cool and people pay well for it. But that doesn't make you better. How much does it cost? It costs 160 € in Germany. Okay. And it comes out of this 3D printer as it is. One comes, not two, but one each time. That will take a very long time. So that's still expensive. We don't make a lot of money from it. And anyway, it's more to show innovation. Yes, you have to go on the journey at some point. You have to initiate it at some point so that it works afterwards. You also know that the shoe sizing system is actually wrong. I'm not really allowed to say that. But, the way we define sizes, it's not correct. The proportion of a foot is much more than 38, 38 1/2, 39. Because the shape of a foot is actually quite different and in the future it will be 100% the case that you scan your foot in the store and you produce your foot 100%. We'll get to that later. This is already a step further.
First of all, I'm interested in the question. The overall goal in industry is fully digitized production lines. Sometimes it is the case that you make an offer, but the demand is not there yet. For how many companies is this even an option?
So it does indeed depend on the product you manufacture. I'll say something about shoes in a moment. In many other areas, electronics, manufacturing, assembly of parts that are not fabric, but where things are assembled. It's already extremely highly automated, you can find fewer and fewer people. Let's go into the semiconductor sector. As far as production is concerned, almost no one cares about it anymore. The people who are there on the shop floor are all engineers who are actually only there to make the machines work and run. But nothing is touched at all. And it's like that with shoes, it's complex, of course. So also the fabric, it has to be stitched, that's difficult. What is extremely difficult, for example, is threading shoelaces. I was there the other day. Mine are too long, but they came that way. In any case, I recently met a robotics company. They do indeed have a Tele Operating Gym, where robots are trained. So robots need data with which they can then be trained. And they have indeed threaded shoelaces. So someone sits there who has such a teleoperator and he uses it to operate a robot. And he then threaded shoelaces with the thing. That didn't look good yet. So that will take a while, but at some point they will get it done. Of course, that's solved here. Yes, just a slip-in shoe. Wonderful.
You just said that it all depends on what it is. With, with shoes. Adidas doesn't just make shoes. And I ask myself, what is Adidas in the end? A fashion brand or a technology company? Because, as you just said, the designers still have to exist. This AI is not creative. How, how challenging is that? What are you?
Well, there are many opinions. My opinion is clear, we are a sports company. I think the soul of Adi Dassler was that we are there for the athlete and the extended athlete is then the consumer. We must never forget that. Because if we say we are technology or we are fashion, then we totally lose the spirit. So, we are clearly a sports company. Now we are lucky that sport is also considered fashion. If you see the shoes here, most people don't wear sports shoes to do sports, but because they are also the most comfortable shoes. The industry is so much, much bigger than those who only do sports. But for us, the athlete, no matter what he or she does for sport, is in the foreground. And, if we lose that, and I think Adidas had lost that a bit, and defined that they are technology. But then I think we're totally lost. But, but sneakers have become absolutely fashionable in recent years. Absolutely en vogue you can now wear them anywhere. That must have paid off for you, right? Yes. So the industry is much bigger than those who only do sports. The best example is: Market research says that in America every American has 4.3 pairs of running shoes. How many Americans do you know who even run? So, the lasts, the materials, the cushioning, the comfort is much, much better in sports shoes than in a shoe he has, for example. This means that people like to wear comfort and that means that more and more people are buying sports shoes, not for sports. Go to Florida or Arizona, where an older demographic lives. Everyone has running shoes and no one runs there. And innovation in the shoe sector is a bit strange, because it only comes from sport. When you see the formal shoes that men wear, they look exactly like they did 50 years ago. It also hurts when we wear them. With ladies, it is also the case that walking on heels is not very comfortable. You like to walk flat and flat you have sneakers. And they come from a sports brand. It's very good that it's like that.
Let's go back to digitalization. This is also so desirable because it reduces costs. Roland, cost pressure prevails everywhere. How can Siemens help companies work more efficiently without sacrificing quality?
So the basic principle is that we are essentially building a replica of the real world, i.e. digital twins, of the product that is to be manufactured, of the production. In principle, even if the product is in the field. That we have a digital twin that lives with us, i.e. permanently generates data and fills the digital twin. And with that, you can simply increase the speed, the speed of innovation, that is in software that is extremely fast. You can get a software update every day or every hour. This speed can be transferred to the entire process. We have made it, with car manufacturers. Previously, the time from the start of development to the start of production was 36 to 40 months. We have reduced this to 20 months and less by building a product digitally. You then also build digital manufacturing. Optimize the whole thing. If something doesn't quite fit, you can also go back to the design and adjust it accordingly so that it can be made better. And that goes all the way to the supply chain. This means that the product not only looks like the real thing, but it also feels like it. It is also physics based. That is, when you stress it, when you drive a car into the wall. We simulate crash tests. We even simulate the software running on a semiconductor. And if all this is optimized and then built, then you get incredible speeds. So we save 20, 30 %. Sometimes even more than 50% of the time. And area productivity increases, variability increases, energy efficiency increases. And this works by connecting these two worlds, i.e. the digital and real worlds. That is also Siemens' strategy in one sentence. That is Siemens' strategy. And it can help everyone, including Adidas.
Every company faces major challenges in 2026. You have the impression that you are constantly being overtaken by the next development. We have, Bjørn, rising commodity prices. We have geopolitics, supply chain. What is currently causing Adidas the biggest headache?
Oh. You know, no matter how digital we talk, the hardest thing is always with people. We have 65,000 people and indirectly over 1 million people who work for us, if you look at the production. And I think the biggest headache you have all the time is caused by the question: How do you manage to keep the balance with people, that you motivate and improve at the same time. And the problems of the last six or seven years, or when you see the pandemic, when you see the wars, when you see the crises, is: They come at such a pace that planning is difficult. You then need a great speed for people to change. And I think that's the most difficult thing. How, how, how do you manage to take people with you that they have to do other things? We now stand for artificial intelligence. If you see a bit of what kind of discussions are going on. And what positives, but also challenges, that has for different jobs. That's difficult. I would say the biggest problem is not a problem, but the thing that worries us the most is always the people. 80% of your thoughts always have to do with people. Definitely with me.
Of course, the employees of Adidas and Siemens are doing particularly well when the company is doing well. Roland, if you just look at the customer Adidas. What is the biggest technological gap that could still be closed in this company? Only between us.
Only between us. First of all, it's like this. We've now talked about the shoe and it's still more of a kind of showcase at the moment. So volume is not behind it yet. Technology is not yet ready, may not yet feel as it should. But, technology is evolving, fast. That means you have to start with it and then see where the journey goes. What we had addressed, and this may also play a more important role, is, to what extent can you build a personalized shoe at the same cost as a shoe that is mass-produced? Always the same. And that, of course, is the challenge. I think it would be great if I could say that I can get a shoe for the same price that is made exactly for me and doesn't just come in two or three sizes. Maybe a width version, maybe even in different colors. And they are, they are. I think that would really be a customer benefit that you can generate, which may not apply to everyone. This will slowly catch on. But the prerequisite is to be able to do it at the same cost. Most customers are just not willing to pay more for it and it just has to work. Perhaps one more sentence about the challenge. I can underline it. In times when technology changes so quickly, it just happens that certain tasks no longer exist, certain skills are no longer relevant. That means people have to change. We have to take the people with us. We invest 430 million a year in training and development at Siemens to make people fit for the future and to ensure that they stay that way. Through AI, of course, it had developed at a speed that the world has never seen before. Perhaps, I've said this a few times: if you compare it to other disruptive changes, technological ones. It took 60 years for steam to change the world, so to speak. Electricity 30 years. Computers, Internet 15. And we're talking about seven or eight years now. Three are already over. And you can tell that. For example, the topic of software development. So I recently met tech companies that build models. They say software is solved. So you don't need people to write software anymore. And with that, an entire industry is lost, so to speak. These are the challenges. So AI continues to make many people very insecure because they simply can't imagine anything about it. So they feel threatened by it. This is a topic that I would like to take up again later.
Now we have something very exciting planned, because we have already seen this shoe from Adidas here, which comes completely from the 3D printer. And Bjørn has already said that this is the beginning. And of course, that's not the end of the development. And there is currently the Hannover Messe in Lower Saxony. And we now have the opportunity to switch to the Siemens booth. There is a shoe case as a showcase. And we see Carsten Heuser and Jens Hübner right away. They are there and they can show us what is presented to the visitors there.
Hello Hannover! Hello to Erlangen! And greetings from the Siemens booth in Hanover. I hope you can see and hear us well. Everything is great! Yes. We are standing here at the Innovation Hab at our booth. This is about how I can design and produce individualized and performance-optimized products in the future, using a sports shoe through 3D printing. The visitors here at the booth can experience this process live and that's why I ask Laura, by the way from Herzogenaurach, to show us this briefly. The entire process starts with the scan of a footprint. Together with various requirements, this results in the data that is then sent to various Siemens software tools in a fully automated process. Thank you very much, Laura. The special thing is that the running, jumping or cushioning properties of the shoe can be simulated in our software using a trained AI. At the same time, in another software, the construction of these grid structures is continuously adapted so that the shoe has exactly the user's requirements in the end, but initially looks the same from the outside. We then end up with a file that contains all the process instructions, all the material properties and the geometries. A completely digital product in 30 seconds and without our employees having to become experts in the handling of complicated simulation software tools. But, of course, a digital product is worthless if I can't produce it. And it's all about cost-effectiveness, adaptivity, flexibility. We also show that here in Hanover. Adaptive manufacturing. And for this I hand over to my colleague Jens.
Thank you, Carsten, and welcome to our adaptive shoe production, where we show how industrial AI, industrial 3D printing and robotics can be used to optimize the factory. Behind me, for example, you can see such an industrial 3D printer, which only makes it possible to produce these complex structures as a production technology. But, my production only becomes really adaptive through the use of industrial AI. This is a topic that is not only relevant for shoe manufacturers, it is relevant for all our customers and also for us as a producer. That's why we're showing how orchestrated AI agents can take over functions in manufacturing, such as rescheduling production in the event of a machine failure, in order to keep productivity in production high. In addition, you can see in the background how autonomously operating conveyor and industrial vehicles bring the material from A to B and thus make intralogistics tasks and the material flow more adaptive, but still automate them. So I think the interaction of industrial AI, industrial 3D printing and robotics shows very nicely how we at Siemens combine the real and digital worlds. And with that, back to you in Erlangen.
Yes, thank you very much, dear Carsten. Thank you very much, dear Jens: That's impressive, isn't it? What's the first thing that comes to mind when you see something like that, Roland?
That they do exactly what I said. Yes, so. They live our strategy. I mean, you've just seen that. This is a digital product. Completely digital and thus still customer-specific. Then it goes into a digital process, so to speak, which actually has no more people. The printer simply prints the product. The data is all transferred. And you could see it in the background. The logistics behind them are also robots, cobots, or humanoids, depending on what you want to use. And that is the complete chain that has been declined once. This is just one example. This also works for more complex topics where they don't just produce a shoe, such as cars or robots.
But we can still see the shoe. Carsten holds it up to the camera again. Can you tell us what it will cost approximately?
I think the question would be more likely to be addressed to Adidas. I can only say that this small series, which we have produced here with POU CHEN Group, will be made available for our booth via the employee shop at normal costs, as we have just heard. Unique here. But the question about market prices goes of course to the colleague from Adidas.
I'll ask right away. How does it feel? Does it feel, does it feel good? Does it fit well in the hand? On the foot?
Great. On the foot later on. Leads to a lot of visibility and interest among our visitors. Everyone wants to have the shoe.
I think so. What is of course totally in is the Siemens Petrol. You have to say that.
Yes, of course. Well, nothing is left to chance.
Bjørn has become quite reverent. It's cool what they're doing in Hanover at Siemens. Do I have to be honest now? Or should I praise them? They don't have the stripes, right? No, be honest. So first turn the shoe to the heel. Siemens is on the heel, right? Turning. That's where Siemens stands. So, that would be about half the price than if Adidas was standing there. That's the first thing. That's emotion. The other is a bit of a cheat, because what they print is only the sole, not a shoe. I guess the shaft comes from Asia. Well, it's fully printed. We're already further along. And the other thing is, if you've seen this, it's on a plate. And then you measure that. You don't buy a shoe to stand if you are not a baker, or something. You, you're running. And that means that if you want to do all this right, you also have to understand your business in such a way that you build your shoe according to the requirements that a shoe has. So a movement. And of course you have to print the whole shoe, because if you only print the sole, you have to import all the other components. But we will, we will find a solution on how we can do it at Adidas. And our designers are also a little better than them. It has to be that way.
Exactly. Sure. So, first of all, we say thank you to Carsten and Jens in Hanover. There you go. Adidas would be crazy if it didn't think about how to launch something like this as soon as possible. Bjørn, how long will it take before a customer can buy a shoe that exactly reproduces his foot, I would say, and yes, in the best case it was also produced locally?
Well, you can do that today with the technology. So that already exists, technologies that can do that, but it's so incredibly expensive that it's not commercial. I do believe that you will soon see the first stores where this is feasible. Probably not in Germany. It is also the case that these technologies, I believe, come earlier in China, for example, than here.
So what you see today to address the topic of printing. You said earlier that it is incredibly slow until printing. And at the moment it is like this, in case of doubt, if you produce in a certain volume, then conventional production methods are still cheaper than making a model and then printing or something similar. So punching or whatever or injection modeling, so practically pressing plastic into a mold. What you can see, however, is that there are now companies in China that have incredibly large football fields of printers. They are now scaling the topic of 'printing' and are already in a position to do so by scaling up. And it's not one machine that prints one shoe after another, but hundreds of them that print. And then the costs actually go down. Scaling, China does that extremely well. They also scale the whole ecosystem behind it, the supplier base. And China is unbeaten on very, very different topics. And they really do produce on demand. So if I say, I need 200 pieces of something, they'll do it quickly. And it's enough, essentially, that you send your CRD data and then you get the product within a few days. But China is China and far away and Germany is also quite beautiful. What year are we talking about? When, when will we be able to produce this in such a way that everyone benefits from it afterwards? So that depends a bit on demand and how the trade reacts to it. I think you can see the first steps here. And you shouldn't forget that we use the same technology to make the individual shoes for our stars. So everyone, let's say national soccer player gets his foot pressed as a last and then we build the shoe around his foot. Someone like Messi does not play with size 38 1/2, but plays with size 'Messi'. And that's what we're doing in Scheinfeld. It's not that far away from here. About 5,000 pairs of shoes made to measure for our best athletes, including the Germans. And that means we are already using these technologies. And the question of when to do it commercially so that they can get it in a store, there are many variables to decide that. Unfortunately, however, I believe that the innovative strength and scaling is not the greatest thing in Germany. That's the way it is now. You know, the Chinese are a little bit more than us and it's just that you can scale up immediately from research or from your development. And here it goes a bit slower when it comes to our products. But 100% in ten years, maybe in five. And in the beginning it won't be to make money, but to show it. And what you are doing in Scheinfeld, these in smaller numbers for the stars, will always exist in this form? Yes. So in football, you don't just make the last for the player, but they want to have the name of the wife or girlfriend or child or all three at once on it, for example. That also exists. Each pair of shoes is then only made for them and they get four or five pairs of shoes every quarter and that is their property. We have been doing this in Scheinfeld for years and it will stay that way. At least as long as I have something to say. because this feeling that you make your best products for your best athletes half an hour from the headquarters and everyone can see that, that means much more than the commercial. We will continue to do so.
Bjørn also brought us a shoe, which he showed us briefly earlier, marathon runners probably already wear it. It weighs. Exactly, please let it pass. It weighs. How much does it weigh? 97 grams. 97 grams. And he says that a runner could be four minutes faster on which route? What else was that?
So the top, so it depends on what you compare, a marathon runner with carbon and this shoe with a normal shoe, then the four minutes run faster. And these are people who run 202.
How fast do you run marathon?
