Philosophia non in verbis, sed in rebus est - A personal story on Digitalization and why corporates need to act instead of talk

When I started working in consulting my mentor at that time @Martin F?rster asked me whether I would be willing to build a consulting approach for B2B digitalization. I switched to consulting after a short time at PayPal working as marketeer and analyst and was, as today, a strong believer in the upsides of digitalization and digital commerce. So I said yes and, under his guidance, build one of the first digitalization frameworks for B2B management consulting in Germany.

For the next four years, I tried to sell this approach to hundreds of German hidden champions and DAX30 companies. In my humble opinion, all of them were in desperate need of digitization. We did small test projects here and there and supported one or two acquisitions where telco companies acquired eCommerce leaders in B2C. In other words, we could not score a single major digitalization deal. And it was not because of us, which I thought was the reason in the beginning.

Everyone kept telling us, that digitalization is not required in B2B, that customers value the personal contact and thus webshops are not required, that sales reps do not have time for filling data into CRM systems and that customers in B2B would never use their mobile phones to check for products. In the end, middle management was more interested in keeping the status quo than pitching an innovative idea to C-Level members.

In 2014 we were able to secure a huge deal with one of Germany’s largest biotech company at that time. As part of a sales restructuring program, we were able to place eCommerce as a major pillar for future growth in sales, simply because they were facing a significant sales rep shortage. This offered us the opportunity to present this topic directly to C-Level members.

Unfortunately, after defining a sales digitalization strategy and proposing the required organization to drive this change, we were facing a typical consulting issue: With the first cost-cutting the new initiative was immediately stopped and as external consultants, we were not able to push back.

Luckily we had a bit of project budget left and that got me and my colleague, David, thinking: What if we could prove the immediate value of digital sales measures by revenues with our remaining project budget and based on that pitch for a self-financing organization? In other words: What if we just did it instead of writing another concept?

I stepped up to the task and built a small team of managers in the customers' organization that helped to establish five initiatives in magic-time. With these initiatives we were able to prove revenue impact after just one month and repitched the idea of a digital organization, this time purely funded based on the incremental revenue we would bring in the same year: We got the funding.

Two months later I was asked by a Senior Management member to build this organization and teach him about digital approaches and enable him as a future leader of this digitalization unit. For the next two years, I built an organization of 50 people focusing on digitalization based on a few simple rules and one of them was to test ideas practically as soon as possible – to act instead of to talk.

This organization was named one of Germany's leading digital organizations two years in a row in 2017 and 2018.

I left in December 2015, because I still felt that we were not being bullish enough on this rule. Too often we were not allowed to act and many ideas could not be followed up on because of corporate strategy. I started to talk to my former colleague David and one idea got stuck in our head: A digital marketplace for biotech. Now, today that might seem like the usual approach: Build a B2B platform to ease access to information, products, and purchasing. But in 2014 this was very radical in B2B industries. Most German industry leaders were looking down on Amazon and their B2B approaches saying that their industry was never going to work that way.

We thought to ourselves, someone will come and do this. Maybe not Amazon (they actually do not fit in many specialized B2B industries with their streamlined approach) but someone will. Why not us?

So in 2015, we risked our career and salary and simply did it. Five years later ZAGENO is the world’s leading biotech market place, working with all major biotech brands as suppliers (the same that did look down on this approach five years before).

In November 2018 I left my startup and joined Bridgemaker, a venture builder. A company that builds startups together with corporates. Why did I do this? Because I hated ZAGENO and needed a change? Because I hated traveling to the U.S. twice a month establishing a global business model? Or simply because I needed a change? No.

Over the course of my entire career, I have experienced the fear of corporate managers to make mistakes. The fear of being fired for a single mistake rather than to be promoted for a ballsy decision to plant an idea.

I have also experienced the freedom of startup managers to act without asking for permission, to do what is necessary and sometimes act first and ask for permission later.

I sincerely believe that right now we have a unique opportunity. We have the opportunity to teach middle management an entrepreneurial spirit. We have the opportunity to enable them to act and not be afraid of making that one mistake that will destroy their career but to focus on the one great idea that will build their career. I am very aware of the responsibility middle management has to carry, on the number of people relying on their jobs. At the same time, I believe this must not determine the way middle and even upper management deals with innovative and radical innovative ideas.

This is why I left ZAGENO. I always left my previous jobs because of the lack of entrepreneurial spirit and the lack of opportunity to work on new ideas on a great scale. But this time I had achieved everything I wanted. I successfully was able to prove the value of our ideas with my co-founders. I was able to prove that this newly found entrepreneurial thinking works. Now I am able to help establish this thinking in corporates that are in desperate need for it.

To me, Digitalization is not about transforming everything from traditional to online business models. It is not about letting go 50% of your workforce and replacing them with young digital talent. Digitalization to me is not about fancy colors and consumer-friendly apps.  To me, digitalization is about lowering the barrier to develop, test and build new products in innovative ways. It is about lowering the barrier to doing instead of talking.