No Time for the Future

Claudia Pletscher fosters digital initiatives wherever she goes. After many active years as Chief Development & Innovation of Swiss Post, today she leads her own company, is on the board of? Metall Zug Group, serves on the digital advisory boards of universities and governmental divisions, and is a member of the Future Society Association and of the Innosuisse Innovation Council for ICT topics for the Swiss Confederation.

Claudia thinks and breathes the future. She is the proactive hands-on investor that every startup wishes for, and we are honored to have her as an investor in DART. I had the opportunity to sit down with Claudia for a chat:

Hi Claudia, how are you? You have such valuable insight into so many organizations and companies. What is on your mind right now?

Failure-Culture!

I just came from an event celebrating the launch of “Failbook & Success Book” that was published by the postfinance venture team (VNTR) ?in spring of this year, with insight into which business ventures have been successes and why - and which ones have failed, and why. The topic about failure & learning culture has been crucial for me, ever since I started my career in the ICT world some 25 yrs back. To analyze what went wrong and why and learn from it to improve next time is an attitude that I appreciate very much in the startup environment.??

Last month you were on stage at KKL at the? Swisscom Business Days with the title ?No Time for the Future? - what do you mean by that?

In the Thinktank for Future Foresight Thinking that I am a part of, we expect the dynamics of change to heavily increase in the coming years. Crisis Management will be a fixed part of our everyday life and hence dealing with uncertainty and risk will be a crucial skill for organizations. It is therefore important to set up the operational business in a way that it can better deal with unforeseen events, for example by increasing an agile mindset in the organization and doing scenario planning and preparation for crisis management.

Once a risk suddenly becomes reality – the organization is much better set up to handle it. To be prepared for change means to have more time to think about the future. If an organization is totally absorbed with its operational juggling and needs its energy to react to increasingly unforeseen events, the crucial strategic part falls short and with that, innovation and sustainable success.?

“No Time for the Future” also implies that even though no one has a crystal ball, there are always signals in the air that give us indications about how the markets, technologies, customers, or geopolitical situations might develop. To invest time into those signals and learn to better see and interpret them will help companies to be better prepared for the changes to come and to act in a more agile way when challenges and opportunities suddenly show up.

If you could send one message to Swiss organizations and companies what would it be?

Use your data! Use your vast pool of data and data sources that you accumulated to provide unique insight into your markets and make it accessible and interoperable. Don’t let it go sour in fragmented systems and separated business units. Companies usually use their data to look into the past and analyze their business backwards. However - the real value of data is to look forward to guiding the business and in making the correct decisions based on predictive information. Startups do that much better than most established companies. Hence, besides getting new solutions - working with startups can also be a way to get insights into their way of working and learn how to use data in a different and much more effective way.

And to startups?

Working on the E of ESG. It is not only that venture capital investments have significantly increased worldwide for climate tech and environmental topics like food systems, energy storage, renewables, carbon etc. but more importantly - the world needs your solutions in that area.

Next to all the work you do, you also invest in startups yourself. What do you look for when you invest?

Software, data, scalability. And then, what people are behind the venture, what skills & education they have and what strengths and passion they bring to the table. I like companies that come across as a team, rather than as a one-person-show, and I am a true believer in diversity in a team. With that I mean different backgrounds, insights, strengths. You usually don’t find that in a group of same-aged, same-gender and same-background people. I don’t have to mention the sustainability aspect as we widely see that companies that promote solutions that neglect that element have no base with current and even more with the future generations.

You and I have spoken about the fact that we need more female perspectives in investing, from angel investing to venture capital. If there are women reading this out there who are interested in investing in startups,? how would you motivate them?

Connect them with you!