II. Introduction Digitisation is changing the rules. It is causing enormous shifts in business and society, the working environment, consumption, cooperation and communication. And, in digitisation, more than in any previous transformation, the fastest will win. Those who open up new markets early and quickly set new standards will be successful. We must see the digital transformation as a high priority area for political and economic action and develop new answers to the following new urgent issues: •H  ow can we create the necessary infrastructures required to even release the potential provided by digitisation and use it? New distribution channels and logistics processes, the Internet of Things, autonomous driving and Industry 4.0 – all of this requires broadband real-time communication in the gigabit range. We must therefore quickly start building an optical fibre network with wide availability in Germany. •H  ow can we continue to develop a regulatory framework based on competition, administrative and cartel law such that digitisation can be a creative and far-reaching process for business, while at the same time ensuring fair competition and strengthening rights of the individual data subject? Regulation must make investment and innovation possible, prevent abuse of dominant market positions, ensure informational autonomy of consumers and guarantee an open Internet. Special services must be made possible, accompanied however by creation of additional network capacities. •H  ow can we encourage and enable entrepreneurial capability and creativity that will fully maximize the possibilities of digital technologies, create new companies and realign established small and medium-sized businesses without hesitation? •H  ow can manufacturing companies, production and value creation processes be radically reorganised and improved so that they can compete with new market players that are not manufacturers themselves, rather have control of customer interfaces and are pushing to the forefront with superior data know-how – such as large IT companies and platforms? Access to customers is becoming increasingly important, even in industrial sectors. •H  ow can we make direct access to customers possible, even in our very heterogeneous service economy where companies are frequently very small? We must avoid creating dependency on online platforms with huge network effects.