Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Think Forward Ep 109 - Future of Innovation with Christian Mulroth
🚀 Ready to unlock the future of innovation? In Episode 109 of The Think Forward Show, I sit down with Christian Mulroth, CEO of Itonics, to explore how companies can thrive in a world of rapid technological shifts. From creating a game-changing Innovation Operating System to navigating the transformative power of Gen AI, Christian shares the secrets behind turning ideas into disruptive innovations. We dive deep into AI’s role in reshaping creativity, corporate ambition, and how businesses can stay ahead of the curve. 🎧 Don’t miss this insightful conversation that could redefine how you think about innovation and growth.
Below is an audio clip from the show. It was a fascinating conversation.
Tune in now 👉
cc: Christian Mühlroth
Here are the main links:
Christian's site: https://www.itonics-innovation.com
#Innovation #AI #Futures #BusinessTransformation #ThinkForwardShow
Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Welcome to the podcast.
Christian:Thank you. It's been a pleasure meeting you in person a couple of weeks ago. And it's it's, I'm, it's continuing to be a pleasure to meet you also virtually. So thanks.
Steve:You and I met with when I was at McKinsey and you interviewed me for your podcast, which I thought was, great job. And if people should check that out, I'll put it in the show notes. If you want to check that episode out, see Christian on the other side of the podcast So you are the CEO of Itonics. I know there's more to that, to you than that, but I'd love to hear your story. I always like to start like your background, what led you to become CEO of Itonics to create this amazing company. What's your journey?
Christian:Yeah, Steve. I think it was, more interested in computers. Already when I was a kid or a teenage kid and how the technology worked, then, in the stuff that was taught at school. So I'm not saying school is not important. So if there is young people listening, go to school. It's great. But I don't know. I just thought it's cool. You can give a thing, a machine, a command and then it actually performs the task. So back in, in my days, it was QBasic. I don't know if anybody remembers that. So I just thought, this was fascinating. And you give a prompt to something and a line of code and there's actually a machine performing a task, which is completely different to human. Yeah. And then from there, everything just unfolded. Course I did studies. Yeah. So I studied business administration, computer science. I did my PhD in statistics. And also in AI. And as for Atonix, I really just started the, when there were just a few individuals the company back then, including the founder Mike Durst and a few others. And then over the years, I guess it's just the, I don't know, maybe the no nonsense approach that both our customers and also my colleagues liked. So today we're 115 people with offices around the world. It's including Miami, Paris, Berlin, Cape town Kathmandu and also others. And that's where we are.
Steve:And now in Miami, I'm just about to open up your U. S. office.
Christian:Yes. Yes. It's going to be interesting.
Steve:So this journey what was the inspiration? Like what, what drew you to like innovation management? What, this is a particular field. Maybe you should explain before we get to that is what does Itonics do? What does it do for companies? What does it offer?
Christian:Oh, sure. Sure. We do, we empower innovation, let growth and business transformation. So that means, we enable, we support organizations to innovate in an effective way. So in order to achieve long term growth, long term success, whatever the goal is through innovation. That's the thing. So we have built and we're still building the innovation operating system, the Innovation os, which is really just the software as a service for everything innovation to do exactly that. Drive sustainable growth, accelerate business transformation you can use it to stay ahead of change, create trend radars. Tech radars do foresight work and futures work capture ideas, derive innovation opportunities, build roadmaps and track the progress. So instead of doing these different tasks and, a myriad of tools, some collaboration tool here some maybe customer insights tool there, some trend analytics tool, there is some broad mapping tool there and some ideation tool there. We bring this all together in one platform because we found it's much more easier for people to collaborate and actually drive change. Then, use six or seven software tools a day and basically be spend your time with managing those tools, managing data transport rather than actually doing the job. So that's why we said one thing, super clean, super easy to use to actually support humans rather than taking away their time.
Steve:So when you came across this did you work in innovation before you joined Diatonics? Did you do any of this kind of, innovation work, futures work, like before you came?
Christian:Yeah. It's, and you also asked me, and that's connected to this, how I got involved in all this. Innovation, management space, the bubble basically to be honest, it was not a big purpose or a big dream or, that I want to make true. It's much more simple. I've seen big corporates from the inside. And I noticed how they struggle with change. And of course there are so many problems of, all kinds out there that need to be solved. So many opportunities. So I thought that's interesting because from a very simple and naive point of view, there's so many people working there. So why is everything going so slow? And it turns out More people obviously doesn't mean more progress. The bigger the better? Probably no. It turns also out that, the bigger, actually you need more alignment. You need more processes. You need more bureaucracy. You need more meetings. And getting things done gets, sometimes displace a little bit. So to some degree, of course in favor of getting a line about stuff and then maybe politics. So I thought that's interesting that there has to be a better way. And then the conversations I had and the steps I took just led me there basically. And that's when I got involved.
Steve:So when. You mentioned some of these common challenges that organizations are facing. Like how does itonics address them? Like, how did they this goes to like simplifying, it's cause it's a broad field, like the simplification process for people. If we can unpack that a bit, that would be great.
Christian:Yeah, Steve, 100%. And thanks for asking about simplifying it because I really think that's what we need actually. So 100% agree. Let's take a few of them. Let's take. Ambition, for example, innovation, ambition we believe no, that innovation is not just solving customer problems and crowdsourcing ideas. Who asked for chat, CPT? I don't know if there's a, there was actually a team that says, Oh the custom problem is that I don't know he or she, or it needs a, I don't know, chat interface to actually solve. Problems and talk to a very large language model to do anything. Yeah, that's if you would tell this to a corporate innovation unit, they'd probably go, yeah what's the customer. And it's also, I don't think it's about crowdsourcing many times. It's not about crowdsourcing new ideas. It's actually, maybe a few people, smart people people with ambition put them in the room and think about, doing great stuff solving a problem maybe, but also maybe just developing a very cool technology with a big ambition. One of the common challenges is ambition in your organizations because Making things better is great and incremental improvement is needed. I'm not saying, skip that part, but to make leaps forward, to read us off some challenges, you need some sort of vision and not every big enterprise is made to encourage ambition. That's the thing, corporate innovation.
Steve:Great. So
Christian:it's just,
Steve:yeah, sorry. Did you want to say anything else?
Christian:We can probably make an entire podcast serious.
Steve:Super long form. I think what's also been a game changer kind of playing on, extending that, technology's evolving in the innovation space. We've seen a lot of the tools over the years. A lot of them focused on really the. Idea collection and voting the movement through very little on portfolio, very little on trends, mappings, the futures work, which we'll talk, touch on in a sec, but the game changer on everybody's tongue is gen AI, right? You've done some studies. So I saw this at your talk is. fascinating. And I don't know if you're gonna do a paper on it, but I think it's very compelling. And I've seen this in design workshops and ideation is gen AI. I view and I want to ask you this. I'm prefacing this is that I used to be very anti AI about it, especially from an artist perspective, but I've seen it to be a collaborative partner. And I think if you use it it can be, it can wield better results than he just humans themselves. They can be that partner. So what do you see? Tell me about the studies and what you've learned from using Gen AI and the innovation process.
Christian:Yeah, it is, frankly speaking, it is unbelievable how far we already are. It's, what is it? Mid of 2024. So for anybody listening to this in the years to come, we have mid 2024 and it's unbelievable how fast We made progress. Sometimes we, tend to forget that. So when I was doing my PhD studies already quite a few years ago, we had access to the very first quote unquote, large language models. And we, we had the public funding research funding from the German government. So I was able to play around with them, actually acquire some of them and understand or try to understand at least the potential. Now, fast forward and you already mentioned that Steve and I couldn't have said it better. I think the most revolutionary thing about AI right now is that an algorithm is actually better at coming up with ideas. than I am. And as we see in the research, and yes, we're going to publish a scientific paper soon. It's actually not even better than I am, but even better than a collective of 10, 15, 000 people in the corporates. That's interesting. And I think in a few years from now, actually, we will look back to today and at the way companies innovate and think it was medieval. Very medieval.
Steve:So it's basically, so if I could do a funny analogy innovation is, right now is like putting leeches, like doing leeches and bloodletting to solve the problem. It'll look we haven't discovered antiseptic, or, bacteria. That's a very, it's very funny because it's, It is this is being recorded in August of 2024. So whoever's listening to it and, a month from now or a year, a couple of years, it's going to sure. It won't, we'll see how well it ages, but it'll be interesting to look retrospectively because the rate of change is futures. We look at that rate of change, right? Like every industry is different. Everything you have to get it in perspective that one industry or sectors three years is somebody else's 10 or 20, right? And it's even accelerating.
Christian:I don't know if it's going to be large language models actually solving that. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Nobody knows, but there is inherent issues with them. And sure right now, again, in August, 2024, yes, we're discussing hallucination, all that stuff. Maybe that's going to be solved. Maybe not, we don't know if it's going to be or large language models. Let's see. But the sheer capability that we see today and even connecting the dots is, in all the innovation work that is understanding custom, understanding trends much more faster, uncovering emerging technologies much, much earlier than competition, for example, is already providing companies a headstart. Against the companies that don't use that sort of technology because they're still trying to figure out what to do with it. So yes, in ideation, it's interesting. Maybe there is a limit to that. Maybe not. We don't know. But yeah, as you say there's gonna be a scientific paper. We had a corporate challenge with a large enterprise against, competing against an ai without. The experts that actually rated and voted the ideas, knowing if the idea came from an AI, yes or no. And we solved for, writing style and put a lot of randomness in the ideas and even typos, right? So that they can't really distinguish it is from an AI, is it from humans? So there was a little bit of prep work for sure. But it turned out that two of the three winning ideas where, the seasoned experts actually put money on the table for a POC did, haven't been developed by a human. We just uncovered that after they placed their bets, like real money, real US dollars on those projects. And again, that's 2024. So no matter the technology and if it's LLMs, if it's Gen AI, whatever, but something is changing and it's changing at a super fast rate. As you say,
Steve:it's a interesting perspective. I've, I will offer that when it comes to the gen AI space, I think I look at the landscape of the personal computing industry, the changes over 30, 40 years, going from floppy drives to hard drives to solid state, like just storage, or look at the progressions or the combinations of applications we use now versus the singular apps, I think it's the same kind of thing. Is that It's going to be about the interface, like the transformers or the generative part will be in the background. Generative LLMs are great, but I can't do current weak signals research with that because it's from 2023. It doesn't help me at all. I won't mention names of tools cause I'll probably be dated or by the time it gets out already, but there are ones that are connected and I think there are others that are starting to connect and eventually more tools will come together and then the solution provider will, whatever you're trying to do, it will switch that in the background. You just have to know how to ask the right, it's all about asking the right questions. Do you, where do you think it's been, the ideation part, where do you think the biggest shift has been in the innovation process? Where is it becoming very powerful right now? And we can talk about where you think it's going to go, but where do you think it's having the most impact right now? One innovation.
Christian:Great question. Yeah, because we just discussed this with a few of our clients. We, with a few of our trusted clients, we have a, I counsel big corporates around the globe from various industries including banking, finance. Professional services automotive OEM suppliers, tier one, tier two, and just just understand that to have a group of like minded people trying to understand, okay, what's the potential here. And, the interesting perspective that I learned during that workshop. It wasn't on my perspective, but I came up during the workshop is actually you can use it in many different ways. So you could, for example, use it, of course, as we mentioned to uncover weak signals, trends, technologies, for sure. What you're doing is you're addressing a a very a small target group. If you compare this to empowering everybody with innovation with AI tools for innovation, for example. So everybody would mean maybe it's the 15 to 20, 000 people in the large bank that actually try. that has some sort of ambition to try to make things better and provide them with the tool have much more leverage on 10, 15, 20, 000 people than, for example, on the strategy people, just as an example, which is maybe a team of 30, 40, sometimes even smaller, sometimes bigger, depending on the organization. So I thought that's interesting. Right now we're, for example, heavily researching into any sorts of data analytics, machine learning, and then also AI, including a generative aspect like writing text or whatever for innovation work for ideation for even, coming up with project proposals in any sort of ambition. So that's one thing, but I think it's really the connection of, having, As you said before, actually having a, an assistant. That is, that helps you, I don't know, come up with a technology radar in five minutes. emerging technologies in my space. It's super, it can do it because it has access to a vast data lake that needs to be curated. Of course, you can't do this with current LLMs. You need to give it, access to a lot of data, scientific publications, patents, newest press releases, product pages and the likes to understand, okay and then it needs to go through actually a structured process. Of understanding what is the emerging technology, how do I cluster the data? And then how do I write about it with Jenny? I, for sure, that's part of it, but it's an entire processing pipeline, an entire chain of different data analytics, even just plain statistics sometimes, but then also machine learning and Jenny, I actually say okay, now we have a capability to build a technology radar in a couple of minutes. And then, from that technology radar say okay. And how do we address some of the emerging technologies that seem to be interesting in our portfolio today. So match it with information. You also have it in the innovation operating system. Say that's interesting. And from that uncover some opportunities say, Oh, there is nothing in the horizon to pipeline that we have that addresses this kind of technology. Which should be. Maybe core to our business. So let's start ideating. So it's all connected with each other and you can, that's what we do. At least we try to build, the system, the entire system where all the data is connected. So that it's much more than just, tapping into conversational interface and say, Oh, give me five ideas for improving something, whatever. But it actually can tap into this intelligence. And perform a task. It's not autonomously, but perform a task with much more intelligence and, data and information and knowledge in memory than a single human or maybe even a group of humans could do in a workshop, for example, so that gives you much more precise and much more evidence backed. Suggestions on how to fill a gap in your innovation portfolio, or, try to come up with a very ambitious potentially disrupting product against your competitor. So it's the connection of the things where things get interesting over the years, and that's going to probably going to be different. Then, Hey, let's get into a workshop room and ideate what we could do to, I don't know win 5 percent more market share in India, whatever.
Steve:So now where we are with gen AI is a lot of LLMs. Some people there's rags. And for those that don't know the term rag, it's basically think of it as a public LLM data with your own private stuff, like a hybrid, if you will, but inside the system, I do think. 2025 2026. I think we're going to see the dawn of the agents as well. I think that's the key is your point is Pulling the right pieces if it's live internet if and you have to tell it what to do and it's going to decide for you to find things and you know create these Connections that you wouldn't think of and bring this to the surface. I think that's building those innovation agents in your system. You know that I'm sure you're already probably on that already. But I think that's a big shift. And those kinds of technologies excite me. Is there anything else that excites you? That's potentially going to be out there to revolutionize things further? Is there anything that's exciting you out there?
Christian:I think at least for me, that's already enough. Yeah, just the mere thought of, and even with the existing for example, provided by open AI, which I think are, beyond brilliant already they would probably say different, but I think it's a great leap already today. These models can provide, better and sometimes even more creative ideas, but I think, we took an interesting turn in all this gen AI thing because everybody said oh, it's so great. Let's build robots and AI to do the chores to operate the washing machine and help me free time for creative tasks. And fast forward, it's 2024 and this thing is doing our creative work and we're left to do the chores at home. That's interesting. So yeah I think that's already enough to, take it in for many at least for me.
Steve:So what I've, let's talk about ethics before we jump into the, kinda the next bigger area. The ethics of using this. Like what role does ethics play in this? And how like companies like yourself how should they address it? How should the company doing the innovation, it's do they reveal that, a gen AI told them to? It's the I took orders. I was only following orders. Yeah. Could you talk about like ethics in this, 'cause it's. It's not like we're cheating on a final but with with Claude or open, or opening out a chat GPT.
Christian:Yeah, that,
Steve:yes, that's very interesting.
Christian:So important for sure. For example, ensure that The new developments that might come out of this have a positive impact, avoid unintended harm, for sure. That's one thing. But there's also really practical and tangible stuff like, okay, if you as a solution provider, whoever, you are get to know a lot of the very confidential and sometimes even secret data of corporations. How do you. ensure that your customers, your clients can actually trust you. Because there is companies out there. I don't say names, but that, of course use the data to train their own models and maybe do stuff with that. Sometimes you can turn it off. Sometimes you can't. But even in these, corporate ethics and how do you Work and keep up the trust with your customers or with your peers is already a big area in itself because you shouldn't do that. And once you lose trust in any of these endeavors is super, super hard to get it back. So that's on the one side. And yeah, as I say, it's like cheating on a test. That's really interesting. I think, it's happening in universities for sure in business I don't know if it's if this is an ethics question, but we've seen, of course, effect and psychology for sure, like the not invented here. syndrome, for example people starting to feel, as you say, they just, follow some orders by this overlord machine. Of course we're not there yet, it can be terrifying to some, if you sit in front of the screen, you think you have a good idea and basically you say, okay, give me five others. And they say, oh, this is actually better. Oh, this is oh, that's even better than mine. So you're like, okay, you're realizing maybe, I don't know maybe I should I should, Deal with it. And then of course, yeah, for example we had an we have a customer in the foods and drinks industry. And again, there's practical considerations for now, their corporate policy is there are not allowed to use basically any of them out there because all these other than providers can't. Ensure that there is no training data in it that was created by humans younger than 18 years. So the problem specifically in the alcohol business. Yeah. So they're not allowed right now to use these models because yeah, maybe that might be an interesting targeting strategy somewhere for underage people which is clearly forbidden, for example, in the alcohol and beverages industry. So even those practical things, so they're building their own LLM right now and try to ensure there is only specific data in there, even that to ensure no harm by possibly, marketing alcohol to, teenage people, which they shouldn't do that effectively, at least So it's a very big thing. And I guess we learn as we go on ethics and innovation and in AI.
Steve:Yeah. There's also in the legal industry using certain to do summarization or other types of aspects of the legal field you need for discovery work. You have to, there's a miss ability. It might be great to summarize it, but can you actually use that in a court of, accepted by the court, right? There are certain ones. So it's, you're right. There are a lot of Let's say there's a lot of regulatory issues that need, will need to be addressed if it is to move to, I think, a comfortable level for people that are not in the early adopter type of risk, acceptable risk, there's going to be the risk averse is not there yet. Let's change gears and let's talk about leadership. Let's talk about entrepreneurship and, just being, being a leader in a place, in a space like this. So how do you balance the visionary thinking? I think of you as very visionary in the way things coming here, you put your futurist hat on for your product, but also for the space, but also being practical. In the application in, so it's how do you balance those two aspects of your work?
Christian:It's a good question. Having a vision is great. Yeah. But if you don't do anything you'll never make it work. And I think there is many visionaries out there. I don't think if sure. You read from all the business books. Oh, this guy has been a great, visionary. This girl has been fantastic in this one. Yeah. I think people have lots of visions. No matter if they're big or small, if they're in private or professional life, that's fine. So having a vision is great. Being able to communicate it is even better. But if don't do. anything you'll actually never make it work. For us, for me, a vision is clear. It's set. Turning it into action is crucial and sure. It helps to, from time to time, if you talk about it and, try to get people of all sorts, just, tune in, but ultimately what you need is a strong bias for action. So it goes hand in hand. It's the same with because you asked for balancing for example, between visionary thinking and practical application. I also think there is no, no such thing as work life balance. For example I don't think it exists. I don't know. It's the concept of work life balance is I guess misleading. It's because it suggests similar to balancing visionary thinking with practical application, it suggests that you need to find a perfect balance between two things like an equilibrium. But I think you need more, some sort of integration not balance. Yeah. Because for example, for work life balance, I don't care where I work and I don't look forward to the weekends. I also don't get the happy Friday thing because. Why is Friday happy in the first place? Why not Monday? Why not Wednesday? Why not Sunday? Because you leave early and can't wait for the weekend? Then you're probably on the wrong job. Then you probably just should think about, I don't know, investing your time into something that doesn't make you think about work life balance all the time. So that's a balancing thing. I know where this comes from, but I think it's really just integration. Same for strategic thinking and putting things into action. You need both, but you need to integrate it seamlessly and have a clear bias for action.
Steve:Okay. There's a, yeah, it's a good perspective. Everyone's got very different, Feelings on those things, and, you talk to a lot of leaders in the innovation space that I think bridging that, but it's really about the culture of innovation, right? When you've seen so many different companies that, use your platform, you've talked, just even conversations with them as they might be exploring using your platform. And there's. There's got to be some qualities, leadership qualities that are consistent, like in terms of, so what do you think is essential for creating that culture? Is coming from the leader, coming from the company what do you find is a good, like good ass, like the healthy aspects, what do you find is a consistent thing of successful innovation cultures?
Christian:Yeah, so we, we've seen so many amazing people specifically in the innovation space. And I'll include everything into that. Innovation is a big word for, stuff that you can break down that includes, of course, researchers, development people, engineers, corporate innovation, people for sure. Great marketing people, great product people. We've seen, amazing people really driving things forward. And I can offer some observations on, what we've seen what makes them amazing. Most of them had a very big capacity that they're very able to adapt fast. Both personally and professionally does really matter. They're very resilient. And they're basically anytime they're on the offensive, right? So they, they have this capacity to say okay, change is inevitable. And uncertainty is actually their friend. And it's an ally because they say, okay, cool. Things are changing. Jobs are changing, whatever. So there is opportunity in that. So they're fast and they're able to adapt. They're, aggressive in that sense, but not in a bad way, not in a, I'll beat you up. aggressive way, but really just in, they are pushing all the time. They focus so much on results not on the process. And they have a good sense of when things are irrelevant to what they want to achieve. So they skip it. So this is, describing all that, but at the same time, And maybe that's the second part of it. They're also the very honest people. They have a high sense of integrity and they live a some sort of candid feedback culture, but with positive intent. They're they're into the game. They're not on the sidelines or not coaching all they're really in the game. And you can rely. There was some sort of camaraderie. They keep their word. They're clear, straightforward. They simplify. And that's a great combination and a great match between. They know things are changing. They're able to adapt faster on the offensive. And at the same time, they're super reliable. They're hungry and They try to simplify things also for others and for themselves to, to get to the core of what really needs to be done.
Steve:Are they evangelizing this in the organization? Are they evangelizing this?
Christian:In a different way than the innovation community sometimes thinks they're evangelizing by taking action and providing results there. They're not. They're not even, sometimes they're not even saying we're innovating. That's the thing. Like they they do the job. They're very clear on what they have to they come up with these, fantastic things and then they deliver. And if it's a for profit, for example, then they make a big business out of it. Or if it's a nonprofit, which we've seen as well, then they really do good. And bring. more health or food, water, whatever it is to different regions of the world. But they don't go up on stage and say, I am an innovation person. That's so interesting that they do it. And by that others follow, because they say, Oh she is doing such a great job. She is leading the way she's bringing something new to the world. And that is bringing people behind an innovation culture, but they don't call it innovation culture. They don't call it sometimes even innovation per se. They just do the stuff. And if you need a word to describe it then you can use innovation, but that's how they evangelize in the organizations many times by leading the way, leading from the front and showing the results actually.
Steve:So it will, so I'll switch it to you then. How do you create the culture and keep everyone motivated to innovate? Yeah.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We try to follow the exact same thing. We literally just try to do great stuff ship as fast as we can basically ship all the time. Getting great feedback from that, from, from the customers, from partners from others. And I think if you work on. Cool stuff with the most successful and admired brands around the world with being able to have great conversations as we do Steve today. That's great. And then if, if you don't like that, we're just probably not the right group of people for, someone. So of course, it's an ongoing task to keep up a culture of getting things done, really finished things from start to end for sure. But that already defines the culture, shipping, great stuff, getting great feedback. And that is part of the reinforcement of a culture, which is basically nothing more than just a group of people agreeing on how do we do things here.
Steve:So I'd love for you to share the vision for the future of itonics. Like what's the mix? Where do you see the company three to five years from now? What are some exciting things you're working on that you could share? Because it gets people into your head, like where you're, you being that, putting the futures hat on the visionary hat on, where do you want to go with this?
Christian:So if we flip this around maybe start by that, I'd say the, probably the nightmare is becoming a culprit. Yeah, I think becoming a corporate with Okay, we're going to go dystopian. That's fine. We can go dystopian. That's fine.
Steve:That's a possible future. Let's be futurists. It's a possible future. Okay.
Christian:Yeah. Yeah. Share what we don't want and then what we want. So that's probably be a nightmare becoming corporate with lots of bureaucracy. We want the opposite of that. What's the opposite of that? Of course, being a global company we're working on that actively with the offices we have. And of course continue to serve the most of my brands worldwide and everywhere, really where this is going to land ultimately is that we are the, the go to platform for everything innovation. And with everything, everything and to get there, we really putting every dollar that we earn into R and D, into product development into expansion. Because that's the game. If you stop staying hungry, if you say I'm good then that's fine. But then the game is over. And I see it from from the kids, for example what they do is right. They built something, they take Lego bricks or whatever, they build it. They have so much fun building it and doing all this stuff. And the moment they're done, they're going to destroy it because, for them, there is literally no, it doesn't make any sense for them to, what should they do with it, maintain it, clean it, no, it, the fun was in building that stuff in, in, in making this up and then, Break after break and building up a great. Castle or whatever this is, or even on the beach in the set. The moment you basically stop there and say, okay, it's built, it's done. You're like, so what's next? So it's the, the continuing aspiration of building stuff and really becoming the go to platform for everything innovation. And then of course, do this in a completely different way, which means again the way, how we do it is mediocre. It's basically. 1830 ish. Yeah. And going that way and showing, showing, people in the companies that there is a better way to innovate and which basically means those great stuff, those great products. Solve problems, help people, whatever it is. That's what we continue to do with the company.
Steve:That's great. Yeah. So as we do start to wrap the podcast up, I'd like to do these like rapid fire things. And so could you talk about a bold prediction for the future that you think people should prepare for?
Christian:Okay, so not saying this is a 100 percent probability for sure.
Steve:No instead of prediction, let's say a possible future.
Christian:Yes. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, let's take a possible future. Because I think it's interesting. So we, because we all thought AI and robotics is going to kill the dull jobs, the boring ones. But now we see early use and high utility, for example, in marketing jobs and creative jobs, which I, I do have a musician, musician background, and I'm not sure if I like it or not. I also see the guitar behind you. So I know you're too. So I don't know if it's, good or not. Yeah. But I think there is a, there's a possible future where actually we are, taking away a lot of the creative stuff that we wanted to do. And probably this is going to leave us with the more dull jobs, which, should we really go into that direction? I don't know. Because it's, because it's a different animal if you have a robot in your household doing the chores and doing the dishes, because it's a big machine. It's super invasive to your personal space, to your home, like having a robot running around versus sitting in front of a computer and let Adobe create the next marketing campaign design for you. Completely different thing, but that's creative work and the other stuff is probably the boring work. So I think it's interesting. So there is a probability that we're actually confronted with more of these. And I also think human connection, compassion and specific flavor of creativity is, we'll get much more emphasis in the future than it has right now. Because we've tried and we as a, we want to contract it. So I think these quote unquote old values and habits will become much more important. Family, compassion, community. As we see AI progresses over the.
Steve:So this is a nice way to segue from a loss of everything to the restarting civilization question. So it's the two, two, two, two books, two music, two things you would bring. How would you restart if we lost at all? Ah, it's always a good question.
Christian:That is a banger of a question. Okay, so it's probably from a okay from a music perspective i'll take I don't know if that's crazy. I'll take ludwig's van beethoven symphony number nine yeah And or maybe bach, Along those lines because that, these, if you're, if you really listen to it, if you're a music person or not, it doesn't really matter, but if you really listen to it, this is, there is so much human ingenuity and creativity in that. If you compare this to, I don't know, Spotify's top hundred hot of the week playlist today, you get the difference. Yeah. So yeah that's for music. That's for music. For sure. Books. Two things. Two, yeah, two books. So there, there's one book I recently read. I don't know that. I don't know. I don't remember the title. But it says you never should have lunch alone.
Steve:That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I think is that Keith Ferrazzi? I don't remember.
Christian:could be, I honestly would have to look it up. And then a second book would probably be some sort of encyclopedia, some sort of encyclopedia, where we can easily align on words and definitions, so that we don't so that we talk about the same thing. When we try to rebuild society and revamp it and not get lost in figuring out the meaning of words across people, groups, civilizations, whatever would be there, some sort of that.
Steve:Okay. You can skip the two things if it's not you're not feeling it. Okay. So the, let's talk about the career part of this like what have you what's the thing you've One thing if you learn in your career, you wish you could have told your you know Younger self when you started out like what would you tell? Yeah,
Christian:so I think sometimes I lack a little bit of patience. So I'll default myself Some things
Steve:Yeah. So what continues to inspire you? What, as we, the day in, day out, pushing forward what inspires you to push your boundaries? Like in this. Yeah,
Christian:absolutely. That's the conversations. That's the conversations I have all the time. Conversations as I mentioned before, the conversations we have the conversations with people that's it. 100%.
Steve:That's great. So I think as we close, like it's, I'm very much a big legacy person, I think, as you reflect back on your life. How would you want your work to be remembered? What impact to you and what impact do you hope to have on the world when people look back and You look at, do you look back on your legacy? Yeah.
Christian:And it's actually quite straightforward. The, obviously there was a personal side to this, which I, all keep personal to, family family members. But professionally it is really that simple. If you think back from the goal, which is basically why do you have innovation in the first place which is just to improve. And if take the ethics side from it it's in inspiring others to improve. And the entire innovation thing goes so much deeper than just building great products. Because great products at least until today are built by humans. And in order to get there, oftentimes it requires some change in behavior, some change in learning, some change in mind state, whatever this is. And, the more, I think it can have great impact if it can help people. On that journey, right to, to change how they think get rid of old and maybe, bad habits, bad mindsets, bad, whatever, and try to just become better over time. The more people you can reach with that and the more people that actually get better through working with you. That's great impact. It's as simple as it can get.
Steve:That's great. I just wanted to say thank you for being on think forward and just sharing your journey and what amazing stuff you're doing and just being a leader in this space and showing people that what can be done with tools like this and, what, how they can really transform their businesses. Just thank you. Thanks for being on.
Christian:Thanks, Steve, for your time. I really appreciate it.
Steve:And Oh, before we go, you should tell people where they can find you and where they're yeah. What other information? Yes. Where can they find you on the internet? All the vital information, which we'll also put in the show notes.
Christian:You can use LinkedIn. That's probably the best way to reach me. And from there, everything else is linked on LinkedIn.
Steve:Oh, great. Thanks again for being on the show and we'll talk soon. Thank you.
Christian:Thanks, Steve. Talk soon.
