Let’s leave the likely to the machines. Let’s fall in love with the possible.

Software that writes software and agentic systems are the new reality, racing past. The answers no longer keep up with the questions.

Still: creativity is not a solved problem. It remains the courage to do the unlikely, taste, empathy, love of detail, curiosity, conviction.

The pattern

Web. 1995. Co-founded peppermind at Kochan & Partner, one of Germany’s first digital agencies. In 1997 founded the German arm of Spray in Hamburg, which through a merger became Razorfish – from 1999 as CEO.

Mobile. 2001. Built and led a think tank for Telefónica and Sonera (Quam) on the future of mobile communication. Six years before the iPhone.

Design Thinking. 2008. Four years as Managing Director of IDEO Germany and Associate Partner. Learning from the best.

Design Doing. 2012. Co-founded and led the Munich office of SinnerSchrader (now Accenture Song) – from zero to fifty people in three years. In 2015: name, brand and first product design for waipu.tv.

Machine Learning. 2016. Director of Design & UX at ExB: user experience for a trainable machine-learning platform that processes text at industrial scale.

Agentic systems. 2026. Independent since 2022 – and just built my first own product: Vinylist.

Photo: Phil Dera

ZEIT KONFERENZ „Künstliche Intelligenz“, Berlin 2017 – a talk on machine learning, five years before the topic became unavoidable.

My work is about humanising technology – and telling stories that matter.

As a leader and entrepreneur I built and led multidisciplinary teams. I have always seen my job as creating the space, culture, methods and processes in which teams can do their best work.

Nothing disappears, everything keeps shifting.

Machines can do the copy of the copy. The first dream is still ours.

Time to get going.