Listening to the head of Daimler AG Dieter Zetsche at Google Zeitgeist

Dieter Zetsche who runs Daimler AG, tells a story of an experiment with mice. When they are placed in a new environment with 3 different corridors they explore them all til they find the cheese. But when they find the cheese, if the cheese is always at the end of the same corridor for a while, in the future they stop looking. So if the cheese is later delivered at the end of another corridor they don´t look for it anymore and surprisingly….starve. He says he wants his company Daimler AG not to behave like the mice. And he gives an example of what Daimler is doing to be innovative. His example is Car to Go. But as we know these services have existed for many years. Its like ZipCar. But I guess the novelty is that a huge car company may embrace a concept like ZipCar.

In the long run is either go green or go bust but then Dieter says that there are 800 million cars in the world and 2 billion consumers waiting for one. I don´t want to think what the global atmosphere would look like if we had 3 billion cars.

He ends his speech with an analogy with dinosaurs and the car industry. These people should not be allowed to talk about dinosaurs as the more they talk about them the more they look like them.

Kudos for Chrystia Freeland, she is so very pregnant and flew in last night to moderate this panel. She also has two other girls at home in NYC. But I also feel sorry for her. And for all of us who many times have to choose between children and work.