Digital
Opportunities are everywhere.
I am Wolfgang, a growth and innovation enthusiast. I find paths to business creation, change and transformation.
Innovate and Grow
Digital is a mindset. There are no singular aspects to focus on. You need a strategic vision to drive innovation and ensure the success of digital transformation.
It is not about missing knowledge or a missing specific technology. Digital opportunities are everywhere. To select opportunities that fit for your organization, your strategic vision must be adaptable and inclusive, fostering continuous exchange amongst people and partners.
A genuine strategic approach is a dynamic narrative (such as text) or a dynamic image (such as a drawing or model) that positions your company. It articulates a precise yet expansive vision, continually refined and aligned. Utilize scenarios to represent potential variables into the future.
A digital strategy not only sharpens focus but also synchronizes communication, providing clear justifications for why certain opportunities are pursued while others are postponed.
A digital mindset eliminates ambiguities and enhances team cohesion.
Principles:
- Appreciate challenges: Opportunities, innovation and growth happen where the difficult tasks, conflicts and fears can be found
- Success loves context: Define success clearly but carefully in context and adjust this definition over time
- Let go to create: Sort out unsuccessful paths to release forces that are beneficial for the new
- Find the third way: Alternatives between options uncover opportunities as well as desirable compromises
Focus on your strategic vision for better decisions towards digital growth.
> 15 years
Transformation projects with corporates
Automotive industry
- Global IT-program: Rollout execution across 14 locations worldwide of an Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) initiative
Energy sector
- Adoption of the public cloud (AWS, Azure): integration with the existing IT-organization and existing data centers
- IT Landscape transformation planning and Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM), KPI development
Finance
- Transformation of platform and data architectures (regulatory reporting)
- Core banking system replacement projects
Manufacturing (“Mittelstand”)
- New IoT product: Development of a product roadmap, including product positioning / strategy
- Positioning of digital opportunities in B2B and B2C, including strategy and planning
- Digital ledger technologies in logistic processes
- Digital solutions (apps, chat- & voicebots) to enhance customer experience in e-commerce
- New digital business models for existing (IoT) products
Pharmaceutical & Chemicals
- Adoption of the public cloud (AWS, Azure): Organization (e.g. account management, cost management) and processes, security and technical integration (e.g. network)
Summary of my experience collected throughout various projects between 2009 and 2024. Click on the list items to read more details.
Digital Change is Collaboration
Sensemaking and desire is essential for the persons involved to be ready to obtain knowledge and capacity.
You find strengths for digital change in any area within your organization. It is a combination of the sensemaking, capability and desire within individuals or teams.
Working on digital opportunities with people who do not want to change can be tough. But there are still options.
When there is missing desire or too much resilience towards change, it can be a choice to continue with the current setup, but simply striving for improvement. But this is not a real digital change.
Alternatively, forming a new team or venture alongside the existing setup can be a possibility. Collaboration can be challenging in this approach – I have seen it many times. Often, competition and tensions between the new and existing setup arise.
A third way is to build on the strengths from within the current setting. Persons can start collaborating on digital opportunities gradually, by introducing selected changes step by step with projects, teams, or product/service categories. Over time, additional teams or projects can be included.
The last option is to collaborate on digital change within the entire existing configuration. This is the most significant and difficult option, no matter how much or little desire to change there is. It requires a comprehensive overhaul of the entire setup in a given timespan.
Deciding whom to collaborate with first and how to approach it requires reflecting on both individual and organizational strengths in driving digital change.
Principles:
- Commitment comes with desire: The mission and goals must be coherent, specific, challenging, feasible and authentic.
- Sensemaking builds knowledge: Simplicity and storytelling support staying on track.
- Appreciate talent: Talented individuals collaborate in a healthy culture and flexibile environments.
- Expertise can be found everywhere: Supporting peers can be found in any environment.
- Follow objectives: Before investing time, money and energy, always check if your are on track with your objectives.
Know the desires of the people around and build on strengths together.
> 9 years
Selling and goto market experience
Leadership for sales and business development teams
- Winning and leading a sales team composed of various consultants from different technology specialities
- Sales execution with small and large accounts (including projects with a sales volume >500k EUR
Development of consulting service offerings
- Development of an overall concept, along with required skillsets and expertise
- Goto market and communication (events, online) planning and execution to win customers across Germany, Austria and Switzerland
- Support and design of partnerships with hyperscalers (e.g. AWS)
Brand planning and brand positioning
- Managing the development of corporate designs, communication plan and suitable channels
- Conception and implementation of re-brandings
- Steering collaboration with branding and communication agencies
SaaS product positioning
- Overall product taxonomy and positioning for 4+2 platform products
Summary of my experience collected throughout various projects between 2014 and 2024. Click on the list items to read more details.
Love the Process
There is no single piece or achievement missing for growth. Successful growth and success in innovation happens along the way.
Embracing strategic flexibility and effective communication are key to driving growth and innovation.
I have seen digital innovation being killed too often by defined milestones, tight or no budgets and pre-defined outcomes. It is the path to growth that counts to achieve growth.
If your organization does not embrace the process of growth and innovation but rather looks at numbers and milestones – success can become a gamble.
A good path to innovation includes continuous time to calibrate and reflect leaving space to connect and communicate with others. True commitment of leaders and participants as well as taking responsibility along the process are essential.
Clear principles of collaboration and, within that culture, continuous adjustments help to build an environment of growth.
Principles:
- There is no major achievment: Growth demands for continuous change and adjustment
- Calibrate & stay sharp: Take time to think, reflect, read and explore with others to calibrate your direction regularly
- True commitment is essential: Growth requires dedication which comes along with responsibility and participation
There is no destination in innovation. Pre-defined outcomes are a trap.
> 6 years
Startup and scaleup experience
Built-up a cloud technology consulting company in Germany from 25 to >400 employees
- Member of the core and management team with responsibility for 8 direct reports (as Partner)
- Focus on expansion and internationalization, established and operated the locations in Berlin (2017) and Lisbon (2018), planned the opening of Moscow (2021, not executed) with corresponding roles & processes
- Overall concept, processes (focus on sales), various consulting offerings (e.g. cloud transformation, digital innovation, UX/CX)
Managing director of a SaaS B2B corporate startup in the field of process digitization
- Built-up a team of 23 professionals for product development, platform development, sales / customer success, marketing and operations
- Integrated the company towards the investor (e.g. compliance, sales, strategy)
- Developed a microservice platform architecture with development teams in Germany, Poland and Vietnam
- Prepared product goto market in the key countries Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Netherlands, Belgium and Poland
- OKR driven strategy adoption and strategy execution
Summary of my experience collected throughout various projects between 2017 and 2024. Click on the list items to read more details.
Find your Field, select your Tools
Reflection on my upbringing (village life and frequent travels between Austria and Germany) taught me a valuable lesson: I find immense joy in exploring nature in different corners of the world. This passion and my continuous travel between places for work required me to come up with a thought-through set of tools.
In 2017, almost weekly travelling between Stuttgart and Berlin for work, I decided that owning a car was rather drawing me back than enabling me. I chose to trade my car for a folding bike that I could take along in the train for my commutes. What a great decision!
One summer later, I spontaneously took my folding bike and went on a bike tour across France for two weeks with over 60 km per day.
Oh my! Bike touring on that folding bike was far from a perfect setup. But that was most of the fun – and it kept me going.
A folding bike that was originally designed for cities and commuting works for bike touring in nature across the world, too.
I have now refined my setup. I have done bike tours in numerous locations across Austria, France, Germany, in Portugal from Porto to Lisbon, in Spain, Switzerland, around Taiwan, in the Netherlands – on the same folding bike. And what is the takeaway?
It is quite similar with tech components. With the stack, the IT infrastructure: Choose a foundation that is enabling you start. A foundation that is motivation for growth.
I plan and document some of my trips on Komoot. Get inspired by my collections or simply join me on a future adventure!
Principles:
- Be clear about what you need: Check technology that is matching your field and its requirements.
- Play: Play around with technology and tools to learn and explore.
- Be inspired: Think about possibilities and don’t focus too much on obstacles.
- Thrive to continuously improve: Be aware of possible dead-ends but do not look for the perfect setup initially.
Technology is an enabler. Perfection is an obstacle.
> 5 years
Corporate Digital Innovation Facilitation
Turning digital opportunities into implementation projects
- Digital Business Models
- B2B and B2C Apps
- Content strategies
- IoT Products & components
- E-commerce
- Voicebots
- Digital Distributed Ledgers
Introduction and facilitation of a corporate digital innovation hub
- Conception and operation of a Digital Innovation Hub in Berlin, continuously developing its capabilties further
- Leading 2 core teams composed of innovation architects, software developers, IT-architects, UX/UI designers
- Continuously winning additional members as visiting experts out of the core organisation
- Applying various approaches, e.g. based on Design Thinking, Systems thinking, Lean Startup
Summary of my experience collected throughout various projects between 2017 and 2023. Click on the list items to read more details.
Build on your Results
Building on a strong foundation is key. This applies for technology and infrastructure as well as knowledge and expertise.
No matter if in the field of internet of things (IoT), sensors in the context of smart buildings, or software for B2B process improvements: invention and growth from zero is rare. It builds on existing expertise and outcomes from the past as an iterative process.
Growth and invention in technology itself builds on previous outcomes. Cloud Computing was one door opener for Generative AI. IoT builds on inventions from connectivity. Great backends build on previously created microservices.
A strong foundation is hard work and requires expertise and knowledge to find the golden compromise between experimentation and boiling the ocean at the right time.
Know what you have to build upon. Even if this seems little: this is one absolutely essential part of digital opportunity.
Principles:
- Know your landscape: When success happens, appreciate it and learn
- Dig deep in your architectures: When failure happens, appreciate it and learn.
- Strong links and loose ends: Exciting things are all better when shared.
- Components make a difference: Prioritize clearly and let distractors and blockers go.
Digital expertise needs foundation plus iteration from results.
About eins 12
What is eins12? It is the aim to achieve one objective per month, towards a bigger step once per year.
To gain clarity on the ‘why’ behind your objectives, it’s beneficial to organize them hierarchically, enabling the identification and deprioritization of less relevant goals.
Maintaining a clear overview of your objectives, akin to a vision, can be achieved by structuring them in a table or schedule, ideally categorized per month alongside overarching objectives. This fosters transparency and facilitates the measurement of success.
A hierarchy amongst your objectives promotes clarity and facilitates progress towards multiple achievements simultaneously.
Continuous revision, making adjustments over time, is an essential practice.