Frankfurt School of Finance & Management has launched a new project-level tracker designed to show where companies are actually committing capital to Europe’s transformation agenda. Called the Transformation Investment Compass, the instrument has been developed by the Centre for European Transformation, or CfET, and is intended to map private investment activity across areas including the energy transition, digital infrastructure, industrial competitiveness, and security and defence capacity.
The launch lands as Europe’s economic debate continues to centre on targets, policy direction, and strategic intent, while many decision-makers still lack a consistent view of where businesses are investing in practice. Frankfurt School said the new Compass has been built as an evidence-based instrument that uses advanced artificial intelligence models to track real corporate investment decisions at project level across Europe. It will be presented publicly for the first time at the CfET Annual Conference at Frankfurt School on 12 March 2026.
The school said the tool is intended to support both research and public engagement by creating a more consistent map of transformation investment activity across sectors and themes, while also identifying where investment is accelerating and where gaps remain. Professor Sascha Steffen, Co-Director of the Centre for European Transformation and Professor of Finance / DWS Senior Chair in Finance at Frankfurt School, said: “Europe’s sovereignty will ultimately be decided by whether firms actually commit capital and build capacity. With the Transformation Investment Compass, we are moving the conversation from ambition to execution. The Compass provides a clear, structured view of where transformation investment is happening, where it is not, and what that implies for financing, competitiveness and resilience.”
That framing places the Compass squarely in the debate around how Europe turns strategy into deployable capital. Rather than focusing only on macro targets, policy statements, or headline commitments, the new tracker is meant to provide a closer reading of what companies are actually building and financing. Frankfurt School said that should help create more structured dialogue between corporates, financiers, and policymakers, grounded in measurable investment activity rather than declared ambition alone.
Professor Eckart Windhagen, Professor of Practice in Financial Transformation and Co-Director of the Centre for European Transformation at Frankfurt School, said: “In transformation, the hard part is not agreeing on objectives. It is building the capability to deliver at speed and scale. The Transformation Investment Compass brings discipline and transparency to the investment reality on the ground. It is exactly the kind of bridge between strategy, finance, and implementation that Europe needs now.” DWS also backed the initiative. Vincenzo Vedda, Chief Investment Officer and member of the Executive Board of DWS Group, said the Compass could help close the gap between announcement and implementation by offering an additional data point on real-world progress in Germany and Europe.
For CfET, the launch also broadens its role beyond analysing Europe’s financing challenges. Frankfurt School said the centre is positioning itself as a research-driven institution that builds practical instruments for decision-makers as well as academic insight. In that sense, the Transformation Investment Compass is being presented as both a research asset and a market signal: a way of showing where capital is flowing, where Europe’s industrial and strategic priorities are gaining traction, and where further financing attention may still be needed.
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