Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: A brand new overarching theme begins — Pioneering Spirit with Brain. What actually makes someone a pioneer, and is pioneering spirit even possible without brain? In Room #854 of the Deep Talk Club, the group takes its first approach to the new theme, from Elon Musk to Konrad Zuse to Amundsen and Scott’s race to the South Pole. Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A wonderful good morning to you. On this wonderful day we continue with the next overarching theme. I’m already really looking forward to it. And it’s about Pioneering Spirit with Brain, our new overarching theme. And as usual, whenever we tackle a new overarching theme, it’s about first making an initial approach. On one hand afterward to check that against the room planning that’s already been prepared, and on the other hand simply to ease into the topic a bit, and first look relatively generally at what your first impulses are with this overarching theme. What are the first thoughts that come to you? And yes, we now also have a special situation, because this isn’t a term set in itself, in quotes. Of course we can talk about pioneering spirit, we can talk about brain. Ultimately it’s a combination here too, a slogan I picked up, which also represents my company slogan. But it’s now less about looking at what that means, so to speak, under the guise of Yasemin Yazan, but rather looking at what’s hidden behind these individual term components for you, especially pioneer and pioneering spirit and then in combination with brain, what could fall under that, and what are the first associations and thoughts you have with it. And with that you’re very, very warmly invited on this wonderful morning to join and get into the exchange with the first thought impulses you have on the topic. As usual, another quick reminder that the room is being recorded again today too and accordingly will be published afterward too. That means anyone who joins automatically agrees to that. And we have three small room rules. One is a profile photo where you’re clearly recognizable, first and last name, and a sentence in the bio. Anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason is warmly invited to simply use the chat. Yes, a wonderful good morning, dear Marc. What do you say about the new topic?
Good morning, dear Yasemin. Yes, this will be exciting, and I also saw that you’ve already been engaging with the topic for a really, really long time. Among other things I found that there was already, I think in 2020, a gathering with people from the business world, including Porsche, where you all engaged intensively with the topic of pioneering spirit too, if I researched that correctly. And I find it totally exciting that we just finished with the topic of self-efficacy, because pioneering spirit also has to do with founding, with movement and so on. And from that, during my research, it also occurred to me that new business founding in Germany declined extremely in 2022, because many also lost courage, and in that context it’ll certainly be interesting to add aspects here too, because pioneers now maybe aren’t just the really, really big names that come to mind quickly for us, but also the small and medium-sized businesses, and ourselves, and also ourselves for our own company, and what pioneering spirit could also achieve on a small scale there too.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Yes, indeed there were various aspects there, and one thing or another can already be found with me on the company pages for a long time now, among other things also with Porsche, VW. In that combination there was also a panel about it once too. So anyone interested, gladly go to the website yaseminyazan.com and take a look at this or that video there too. There’s also this video included there. And yes, and this term pioneering spirit, there’s relatively a lot hidden behind it, I personally think. And pioneer or pioneering spirit, and you just put it so nicely, we often think of pioneers as maybe the really big names who mastered a huge achievement or changed something big societally. But basically we often forget that pioneers are found in many places. You just brought in the aspect of founding, in connection with self-efficacy, so to speak, that the numbers declined there. Especially small and medium-sized businesses too, which play a really big role here too. That means, every idea, for example, that gets brought to market in connection with founding a company, that can be a new idea. And we can look more closely now at what that actually is. Is every founding we’re talking about here one that has something to do with being a pioneer or with pioneering spirit, or are those exclusively new ideas that in that context lead to a new company founding taking place, for example. Does there even need to be a company founding at all, to drive certain things forward with pioneering spirit? That would maybe also be an interesting question. So does it always have to be connected with a business, or are there also other means and ways to drive pioneering spirit forward, to bring things into a certain flow or into a change, and what does that ultimately entail, and I’m really curious about that, and accordingly the others are of course also warmly invited to join too and open up further perspectives, and yes Marc, what further aspects, thoughts do you have to add?
I’d like to start actually the way Jürgen helps me a lot, because Jürgen is a great role model for me when it comes to structure, and I’d then first answer for myself, or also for everyone, maybe you can agree with this too, what pioneers even are. And pioneers are, to my knowledge or by my feeling or by my assessment, first of all people who go new ways that haven’t been gone before. And then there are pioneers who discover the world, so go new ways. In the past that was discovering new worlds. Today a new way can also be that I realign my company, and people with a mindset that fundamentally have the desire to discover something new and also try something new.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much, and the first thoughts on the term, now Jürgen also joins directly. A wonderful good morning. What do you say to that, dear Jürgen?
Good morning, dear Yasemin. Good morning, dear Marc and everyone else in the room. Dear Marc, you triggered me, as so often. I actually wanted to first listen to some inputs. But let me now build on the beginning of your analysis regarding pioneer, but I’d like to briefly go into something else that spontaneously occurred to me when looking at the title. Let me say, Pioneering Spirit with Brain resulted in and evoked a contradiction in itself for me, because spirit without brain, big question mark for me. That was the first thing. And I think, for myself, I’d rather use pioneering enthusiasm as a working title than this object of spirit, because it, as I said, stands in a certain contradiction on one hand, how does spirit work without brain, or rather, what’s the alternative? Dear Yasemin, let me address you directly as the title’s creator. There must then also be a pioneering spirit or a pioneering enthusiasm without brain. And that would be the counter-position for me, of the emotionality of the area that’s not purely driven by reason. And that’s actually, for me, what essentially carried a pioneer looking back into our past, the great pioneers who distinguished themselves, whenever there was resistance, failures. Namely not so much the reason to stay with this goal, this pioneer goal, but this inner enthusiasm, so also a form of spirit, but emotionally carried. In that sense the title of this room, or the overarching structure for it for the next weeks, I think is very content-rich regarding possible facets. That would be my first input.
Yes, great. Thank you so, so much. Yes, and I don’t want to answer that question right now yet, of course. You can imagine that if that’s the slogan, of course a lot of brainpower went into it, and that there’s a reason why exactly this combination was chosen. But I find it exciting that you address exactly this aspect of the contradiction, or first of all a contradiction that seems to lie in here, and I find that totally exciting, and we can gladly open that up too, to look. You’ve formulated questions like, is there a spirit without brain? That’s a nice question. I don’t know, Marc, maybe you’d like to relate to that. Is there also a spirit without brain for you, for example? Or what do you connect with that?
I’d find that really, really exciting, dear Jürgen. I’d say, to bring in a bit of momentum. There’s pioneering spirit without brain too. Or we assume pioneering spirit always has something to do with improving the world. That’s not the case at all. As an entrepreneur, I don’t want to improve the world. As an entrepreneur, I want to bring in profits and the maximum. And in preparing for today’s show I found a really exciting article, which was also about pioneers having changed entire eras. Not because the ventures, not because the motivation was to do something meaningful, to do something with brain. And among others, a certain Mr. Drake was mentioned there. Mr. Drake carried out the first oil drilling in 1859. And as we know today, that led to us having extreme environmental problems with the burning of it. But through this first oil drilling everything then further developed, so that petroleum led to the fuel of industrialization, which was good at first, which led to an improvement, because it created jobs, and we’re currently on the way, I didn’t get this from the press either, because it’s not reported on either, there are quite a lot of pioneers standing ready, waiting for the ice in Antarctica to melt. Why? Because there are mineral resources there, and with these mineral resources I can make money. Is that sensible now? Wouldn’t it be more sensible to engage with climate protection, so the ice doesn’t melt. But with that I just want to draw attention to the fact that pioneering spirit doesn’t necessarily always have the goal of doing something meaningful for humanity, but that it can also be profit- and greed-driven.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Jürgen, you can gladly relate to that again right away too, if you like. And I’d also like to look again maybe at this distinction, or look at this distinction again. It’s also not being a pioneer, for example, but pioneering spirit. So maybe let’s look again here too at what could make a difference there. Is there a difference between a pioneering spirit and being a pioneer? A differentiation could be made here again too. Jürgen, would you like to follow up on that again?
Well, I’d like to quite deliberately provoke a bit now regarding Marc’s remarks, dear Marc, and say, generating a personal benefit in the economic sense, a personal benefit as an entrepreneur, always requires in some form also selling a benefit in the environment, and also making that obvious to the respective people. Otherwise I have no chance entrepreneurially.
I think, no, forget it. I wanted to say, I think you agree with me. So that’s a position for me that’s actually also, even if a pioneer, even if he doesn’t appear in the quality of a pioneer for an entrepreneur, an economic basic rule. Always the antagonist and the protagonist, the yin and the yang. Where I generate a benefit, I have to have the certainty in another form that I also make some form of benefit transparent to the environment I want to sell the benefit to. And yes, regarding the pioneer himself, I’ll also ask another question, or let me claim, to make it a bit more provocative, that I say, looking back, most of those we identify as pioneers today, I think, weren’t aware of this role from the beginning. But maybe you see that differently. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so, so much. And that’s an interesting aspect you just opened up last. Because I actually also wanted to bring in the aspect, or the question, provided we’re even talking about businesses at all. So we’ve now somehow made a connection and are now first talking about pioneers and seeing that in a business context. The question is, does a pioneer always have to be in a business context? And then we’re moving in this economic perspective too. And so, especially when we also look at this maybe not being aware from the beginning, if we look back or think back on that, in which areas were there already all sorts of pioneers, and so on, and was that always economically linked. And if I now move away from the term of business, we could maybe also look in the direction of science or something. Aren’t there pioneers here too, or is pioneering spirit a question. And yes, I’d like to bring in Rafael here now first, and then we can gladly make cross-connections again. Rafael, what are your thoughts on the topic?
Good morning. Yes, good morning, good morning. Exciting, I was triggered by Marc. Namely with his capitalist statements, profit-driven companies that, pioneering-spirit-wise, exploit others and the environment. Exaggeratedly put, Marc, good morning, hello. And there are simply, meanwhile, pioneers who also go the other way. That means, you don’t always have to just upscale, you can also downscale. That means, somehow dealing sensibly with environment, with resources, with your own resources and so on. Meanwhile there are company founders who really abolish hierarchies, who really free up working hours, freeing up time doesn’t work in all areas, but there are really exciting projects there. The other pioneer that came to mind for me, or what I read, is Elon Musk, who went to Russia with his guys and said, give me a rocket, I want to go into the world, I want to send someone to Mars. And they treated him very rudely, because they thought he was some kind of crackpot somehow, and then Elon Musk, likewise intrinsically oriented, says, you can kiss my feet, I’ll build my own rocket myself. That’s of course pioneering spirit of the finest kind. Whether that’s good or not is another matter, but that’s somehow pioneering spirit. The last pioneering spirit with or without brain or something I’d have to mention, there was Mr. Scott and Mr. Amundsen, who both headed toward the South Pole. One arrived six weeks earlier, one tried it with machines, the other with dogs. The one with dogs came back, and the other froze to death bitterly 38 kilometers before the end. Also quite exciting topics. What was wrong in the planning there? Those are of course also pioneers who wanted to discover things. There’s still enough to discover. And science is of course also mega exciting. Yes, that was it from my side. As a start first. So I find it mega exciting. And this downscaling somehow, I did that for example with my company. That means, I had pioneering spirit, I became self-employed, and I said, I’m not doing this to get rich, but I came out of a burnout job, and ran the whole thing so that I could live my life happily and content, and paced it accordingly. But more about that maybe later.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. And this emotional aspect is also included here again too. And the question arises here too, since it was said earlier, whether emotion isn’t always something that plays a role here too, especially with pioneers. And here especially with the example you picked up, which might also be nice to dock onto regarding, on one hand this emotional component might be needed regarding the motive, regarding this drive, so to speak, which is also necessary here to keep going, to not immediately give up or similar. And at the same time I find it exciting, especially with the example with the machines and the dogs and the result, that maybe it’s not just the emotional alone at that point either. That means, a certain planning, maybe strategic alignment or otherwise is also needed here, for example, to also reach a certain goal. That means, exclusively with emotionality alone doesn’t seem to work at that point either. So the motive alone maybe isn’t enough either. Jürgen, you wanted to follow up on that earlier, so I’ll gladly give you the opportunity first, and then Marc can gladly follow up too.
Thank you, dear Yasemin. Yes, I wanted to spontaneously briefly go into the term entrepreneur again, and in my understanding that’s actually everyone of us, that’s how I see it. An entrepreneur of oneself. So I don’t automatically connect entrepreneur with the typical classic entrepreneur bound to some legal form, with a purely or externally directed economic goal, but I also see myself as an entrepreneur, because we also say, let’s undertake something, or I have to undertake something. So it’s, for me, the expression of an initial, to do something, to keep it as general as possible. And regarding pioneer, thank you, dear Rafael, for your contribution, in which I found myself partly, also with my own life story. I believe that a pioneer, in distinction to a “normal” entrepreneur, in the sense I just defined it, whether economically or as a private person, is characterized by two essential components. Namely, that’s already been touched on by you, Yasemin, on one hand, it’s a sustained curiosity that drives pioneers, a curiosity to open up new things, to question themselves, or, and that’s the second point, to question what we currently consider normal. Amundsen and Scott, dear Rafael, typical examples of that, back then, at the time considered impossible, to reach the North or South Pole with the means available at the time. So curiosity, an unbridled motivation, a feeling or in the sense of being driven, I have to undertake this now. And the second essential point—
—maybe is that you can only classify that retrospectively, that it’s a matter and a matter connected to a person who goes against resistance. That doesn’t mean the resistance is obvious from the societal context or especially—I see this resistance from the current situation of scientific knowledge, where you say, that’s absolutely impossible. That’s devoid of any imagination that something like that could be realized. And that’s exactly, for me, a hallmark of a pioneer, who becomes aware of this resistance, but wants to overcome it with their unbridled motivation. And for the two positions I’d give that the ribbon, the distinction, that’s a pioneer for me. And that, by the way, Rafael, you mentioned it, also applies for me to an Elon Musk. Thank you.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Mark, you also wanted to follow up.
Exactly that, dear Jürgen, that’s what I underline, as so often, and I’ll go back to my opening statement, that pioneers are people with a mindset to discover something new, and I’d also detach that from entrepreneurship. Those are two completely different things that can happen, and among others I remember Ray Tomlinson, the inventor of email, who sent himself an email, who revolutionized our whole life, and who certainly didn’t say, I want to become an entrepreneur, I’ll invent something now that I can generate money and revenue with, but he just said, well, let me try that out. He had the drive to try something new, without, as I said, having the entrepreneurial thought in the foreground, but of course there are also, and that was our entry with the topic of pioneering spirit with animals, opportunities to search for new ways where the, let me say, entrepreneurial aspect is in the foreground. What will I earn money with in the future? How is my company positioned? But basically both types of people have in common what connects them, the mindset to discover something new. Some do it out of profit greed, through a realignment of their company or to secure themselves for the future, and the others have something childlike, something playful, where they say, actually it’s not about the money for me at all, I simply feel like discovering something. And from science, if you engage with the inventors, you also know that there are really, really many inventions that were coincidentally a byproduct of other research, which wasn’t specifically searched for, but was simply the result of curiosity and trying things out and, let me say, going new ways.
Yes, thank you so, so much. And yes, in this context I’d like to add a few more impulses too, to see what you say about it. So I already opened up the term science earlier too, and I think that’s a really nice area, if we look here again at what actually happens in science. There it’s really always about this aspect of questioning, again and again of new discovery, of further research, and on one hand we have the aspect that it’s not about, in quotes, always bringing groundbreaking innovations or something. We’ve also once done a room where we talked about the difference, so to speak, between innovation and progress, so maybe bringing in the terms innovation and progress here again in this context too, to see how that connects with this pioneer or pioneering spirit. On the other hand it was also about this aspect of curiosity again now too. And this aspect of curiosity also plays a role in the context of science. That means, basically it’s about checking certain statements you have again and again, theses so to speak, and finding answers to that here too, based on research findings that already existed before too, and that you then pick up accordingly too, not necessarily with the goal of developing something groundbreaking in the sense of an innovation, but basically getting a step, a small step further again in the context of a question you have here, that you treat and work on. And all these small steps that get taken here then at some point lead to, viewed in sum, also often leading to, yes, possibly groundbreaking renewals too in the result. That can take varying amounts of time. And the interesting thing is that here too again these aspects of curiosity, of the drive to research, so researchers research, of discovering, so to speak, that these are really the components that play a role here too. Of course we could now also look at and discuss science as it’s practiced today and so on, also on this political dimension, because of research funding and who actually pays for that or who commissions it. But per se, research in itself first in its origin, so to speak, so without opening up this dimension of financing now, has a lot to do with curiosity and research and the drive to discover. And now let me add another impulse. Aren’t we humans, when we come into the world, per se first of all researchers? So if we think of children now, what do they do? They’re constantly busy exploring, discovering, with a certain curiosity behind it and so on and so forth. So in that sense, isn’t the human being per se, from their nature, in their origin, how they come into the world, always also a pioneer, or comes into the world with pioneering spirit? And I’m curious what you say to these impulses, or what cross-connections you make to that too. Gladly first Rafael, and afterward I think Marc spoke up too. Rafael.
Yes, super exciting points. So as a child you’re of course first in the new world and are dependent and come into it and are somehow happy. The greatest dependency that happens to you there, and that impresses or promotes your researcher, is of course the primary contact, where you then afterward really become and stay the great researcher, or something, what you learn in your childhood, in your learning curve up to the sixth, eighth year of life, or up to the tenth, I don’t remember exactly anymore, until the disk is reasonably full. Or whether you’re just not intellectually promoted so much, that you no longer have that range of researching for the future and for adulthood. That’s the point. Science is of course also a really exciting point. There are always two sides to it too. That means, science never abolishes itself. It always creates new work for itself. It then suddenly invents some things, like the egg not sticking to the pan, that’s a nice coating or something, that’s totally genius, which then gets worn on jackets or something, and suddenly you notice, oh now a whole district can no longer donate blood because of the coating industry, because they’ve been coated, and now science has to think about it afterward, I don’t know, 30, 40 years after Teflon coating, how do we get this stuff back out? We have to look at what’s possible there and what we can do there. So it stays exciting.
Yes, thank you so, so much. Marc?
Thank you so much, dear Yasemin, for your contribution before Rafael, because I know where that leads, and you’re quite right, and I’ll bring in the term “feed forward” again, and not “feedback,” because children in school, where the new scientists are, this research drive to discover, if we live in a culture where we’re actually always just shown how stupid we are and everything we can’t do, instead of saying, when children say, someday we’ll fly, and no idea, how did you come up with that? Well, why shouldn’t that be possible? And taking each other seriously, through this taking seriously and promoting and demanding, new ideas emerge there too, ideas that didn’t exist before. And I just read a really interesting article this week, it’s about mobility in the future in the city, and there’s a young startup in Munich, I forgot the name, but they’re currently thinking about making capsules. So today you can no longer go underground, that’s much too expensive. But you also don’t want the suspension railway like in Wuppertal, because that takes away too much light. And they’ve developed a system, these are small capsules, much, much narrower than the suspension railway in Wuppertal. You could install that above the sidewalk, and these capsules would then pick up people and would—the great and new thing is, they don’t have what a tram has, that you drive from A to B in a predetermined way, but rather these capsules would move everywhere along the sidewalk, and if I then get into this capsule, I can individually enter my front door, where I want to go, and then have individual transport again, and that would really make the car in the city completely unnecessary. And there are certainly really, really many exciting approaches for the future, where we’re heading, but that only works if we don’t take being a child away from adults, and if we all stay a bit childlike and feel like discovering something new.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. And of course you can also spin the term of being an entrepreneur in various directions too. And here too I’d like to add an impulse from my own experience, which I had myself once, which was also at the same time an insight or an aha moment for me, which I found very, very exciting. Also in the context, because we just said pioneers especially in the economic context or similar. Here too it’s very, very interesting, because if we talk to someone who’s through and through an “entrepreneur,” and that’s also an observation I’ve made in various places, who’s through and through an entrepreneur, who looks at numbers, data, facts, so to speak, in quotes, or potentials, they actually look less regarding being a pioneer at that, so along the lines of “is it something new?” or something, but a really, really classic entrepreneur, who really acts according to numbers, data, facts, tends to—this is even my thesis—stay away from aspects like “we want to be a pioneer” or “discover something new,” but basically looks at what’s running pretty well on the market, where can I dock in, what can I duplicate, so to speak, with small deviations or otherwise, in order to not discover or develop something new, groundbreaking or something, but rather, in the sense of the business, simply to make profit here, in quotes. And I had a very, very interesting experience myself years ago with one of my coaches, and it was about, that was one of the first encounters we had with each other. And with me this aspect of being a pioneer, or of pioneering spirit, has always been included in everything too. And it was also always about these technological aspects that play a role in the background, that have effects in the context of digitalization etc., on human behavior, on accompanying learning and so on and so forth. And I can still remember very, very well that one of his first statements to me was, well okay, great, the robots are coming, that doesn’t interest the people out there, because they can’t see that at all yet and can’t grasp it at all yet. That means, with this focus at the current point in time, even if you should be right, so to speak, along the lines of, you won’t first be able to earn money on the market with this focus, because the sensitization isn’t there at all, that there’s a need here, that I have a benefit from really engaging with this topic. So you can let that run in the background, but you need a different entry point to get into companies, for example, because if you go in with the topic, people will first, they might say, yes, highly exciting, but that won’t generate any orders. So I found that very, very exciting in this context, and I wanted to share that with you too, and maybe one person or another would also like to follow up on that too. Yes, Jürgen, gladly.
Yes, thank you, dear Yasemin. You’re taking the words out of my mouth, because I wanted to go into the distinction between researcher and pioneer again. And for me one facet, and you addressed it, is the “what for” reference. What for do I do this, and am I even clear about what for I’m doing that and where that ultimately leads me? For a child, and I fully agree with you there, that’s the primordial form of the researcher, but not the primordial form of the pioneer, because, my personal opinion, they lack the “what for” reference. Open parenthesis, with the exception of satisfying the primary motivation, close parenthesis. That’s one thing I wanted to throw in, which is, for me, I’ll repeat myself, a classification criterion, to be able to determine only in hindsight, maybe, that this wasn’t an entrepreneur now, Elon Musk, but a pioneer. And then I come to the second point. At the moment the time isn’t yet ripe for the environment to even recognize that this isn’t just an entrepreneur, but a pioneer, who with his mental anticipation is under certain circumstances years ahead of us. A really classic example of that is this duo of Copernicus and Kepler. Copernicus, who basically actually founded the heliocentric worldview, but shied away from publishing, because he’d absolutely act against the zeitgeist and the church. He basically found his pioneering complement through Kepler, who was forced, on one hand from economic viewpoints, to do something for his income, and who came later timing-wise, and the time had come to publish this idea. So again, time and what for, really essential points for me. Thank you.
Yes, thank you so, so much. Let me briefly probe again there, because especially if we, in quotes, looked at people we might perceive or define as pioneers today, that can of course also differ, but I believe there’s also definitely overlap in some places. I’d claim that they often, at their starting point, where they started with certain things, that it isn’t necessarily always with a goal, that for example I want to make a groundbreaking discovery in this context or I want to achieve the breakthrough with this or similar, but rather being a pioneer also means, in many places, frustration tolerance, so fighting against windmills. So this inner engine really has to be very, very strong, so as not to eventually completely desperately, so to speak, give up the idea, in quotes. And many pioneers don’t start with, or didn’t start with, wanting to be a pioneer or because they saw themselves as pioneers, but that’s also again a kind of evaluation or attribution from outside, in retrospect, for example. Jürgen, yes gladly.
Absolutely, Yasemin. Absolutely. That was actually also my desire from the start, that the primacy, basically, for what distinguishes a pioneer and an entrepreneur, is curiosity, is, for me, the primal drive, basically, curiosity, because without this curiosity I never have this motivational state, and there the normal entrepreneur, for me, is left out compared to the pioneer, to assert myself against considerable resistance. And you say it, or put it precisely, I’m completely with you. I can’t sit here in the armchair now and say, right, now I’ll become a pioneer. That doesn’t work. That’s my opinion. And this status, this quality, of being marked as a pioneer, also requires a certain duration in time, and an echo, a feedback. And there we’re back at Mark’s original topic, I think, that a broad mass, let me put it a bit bluntly now, also gets a certain benefit made transparent from this pioneering achievement. And that in turn is connected with the factor of time. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so, so much. Yes, then I’d first like to welcome Ria to the round and bring her in too. And then you can gladly, Rafael, also follow up again too. A wonderful good morning, Ria.
Good morning. I once again have the opportunity to be with you, and I’m very happy. Unfortunately I couldn’t listen from the beginning. And at the same time some things have already happened in this context that I wanted to say has already been spoken about beforehand. Still I’d like to look back at an example, where you can maybe see or recognize this quite well, namely Zuse. Zuse was one of the first, after there had already been very, very many centuries of precursors of computers or—
—of calculating machines, who carried out a census or a count with a computer. And Z1, Z2, Z3, those are these three big devices he produced. I think there’s a wonderful museum about that somewhere in the old federal states too. And I’d call him a pioneer. Besides that, I believe there are still very, very many other artists, musicians, also painters who can be called pioneers. And just like Zuse, they all lived, or they all lived at a time when most people, the so-called mainstream, couldn’t relate to it at all. They didn’t know what that could mean. They had no foresight, they didn’t have the horizon to assess what all that could mean and why it’s of great interest to keep pursuing it. And Zuse, toward the end of his life, was so annoyed and, let’s say, impoverished, that he sold this innovation. He sold it and also died very poor, because he himself didn’t have the means and opportunities to develop that economically further in any form, and maybe also to tell other people, folks, there’s so much potential behind this. I know it. I did it, because I notice that this is organizationally, economically, mentally an innovation that could take us so far, but he didn’t have this opportunity. That means, in that time, one might say today, marketing wasn’t possible for him. And I see it the same way during the lifetime of, well, who cut off their ear? Not Goya. Doesn’t matter. Exactly, Van Gogh. He also painted pictures at that time. Everyone said, oh no, that doesn’t work. You can’t do that, that doesn’t look great. And today those are among the most expensive pictures. And that’s exactly it. And I think that’s also what Jürgen already said. Children are researchers. But children don’t have anything economically in any form yet, or, let’s say, mainstream-wise. They simply do it from within and discover the world in the process and get to know the world. And pioneers, in my view, are also discoverers, who’ve kept this childlike thing, this wanting to discover. And that’s exactly what school doesn’t do, or what school caps. Keeping this spirit of discovery and saying, that’s totally cool if I keep working on this myself now, and if I do something here now, that’s such a great thing, that could change so much, and that’s exactly, in my view, the difference. Okay, thank you.
Yes, thank you so, so much, and before I get to Rafael in a moment, especially regarding the remarks you just brought in, the hint with the fence post. I’d already said earlier, is there maybe also a difference between being a pioneer and pioneering spirit. And I think there were really a lot of aspects in there that you might pick up on now, to look at this differentiation again, or look at this differentiation. And I find it nice with this example with the children right at this point too. And maybe this or that will also become clearer through the choice of terms, why not being a pioneer or pioneer with brain, but pioneering spirit as a term was chosen at this point, to maybe make that more transparent and comprehensible too. Rafael, you also wanted to follow up again too.
First now regarding Ria’s remarks, a small excursion tip for the weekend, namely the Heinz Nixdorf Museum in Paderborn, that’s where the Zuse machine stands in the technology museum, excellent, exciting museum, so it’s really worth it. A bit interactive, so it’s brilliant. That’s one thing. The other is, you said earlier, Yasemin, that gives a pioneering spirit. There are the products, there’s the product further development of the entrepreneur, who sometimes only looks at what he can do with products, and there Jürgen mentioned the term curiosity, which is incredibly important, and attention. That means, if you know what’s going on in your environment, in the world or something, then you can also play with products. That happened to me once. I once had a nano lubricant in my hands, which rolled on chain systems at airports. Then I suddenly heard about the problem on the North Sea islands, when it becomes winter, that snow and ice cover the satellite dishes and blow over them, and there’s no reception anymore. Then I thought, okay, nano-coated is cool somehow. I then filled the stuff into bottles, called Berlin, somehow the poison center, about what needs to go on all the bottles, found myself a filler, had the material refilled, sold it thousands of times through an online shop, so people or the installers coated the dishes up there with nano coating. That was elaborate, and that worked until the point when the industry got the idea to just pull in wires and heat the whole thing. And then that topic was through too. But for a while that was a really, really nice side income for me, I have to say. And that’s why, when you’re curious, pay attention to what’s going on, and also have interest in products, what features, let’s say, a toilet brush has, for example, then you’ll be surprised how much brainpower goes into that and what all it has to achieve. And it’s the same with others, with can openers, with all sorts of stories. So exciting, exciting, exciting.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Yes, would anyone like to make cross-connections again to the terms etc. we’ve opened up and the examples that came up? Gladly Marc and then Jürgen.
Yes, namely, what I also find very interesting, a new generation is also currently developing that picks up exactly what you just said, dear Yasemin. And what Sabine also mentioned a few days ago, not faster, but further, and namely that’s the generation global, and they see themselves as world citizens, this term has also come up several times already in our room, and this generation is characterized by thinking globally and acting locally, and by believing in the “we,” because they no longer believe so much in politics, but they believe that I, the individual, but with this swarm intelligence, that we all together need to do something, and they also call themselves, among other things, Neotribes, that’s a collective term from Italy, and that’s totally interesting, because some things are coming toward the industry, because these new citizens or this new generation growing up, they don’t want to go along with everything anymore, they don’t necessarily want to just have the newest thing anymore, but they’re already aware of mindfulness and environmental protection and and and, so that you could say this new pioneering spirit is in there too, also not in the sense of entrepreneurship, which we just had too, but pioneering spirit in “how can we also change our society? Every single individual, but every single individual isn’t as strong as all of us together.” I found it quite interesting to read this report, and namely there’s also an institute for, now it doesn’t come to me, so an institute determined that this is a trend that’s currently emerging with many, many young people.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Jürgen.
Yes, I’d like to go all the way back to the first term that appears in your title, dear Yasemin, namely the pioneer. And now quite deliberately the pioneer. I think that hasn’t been addressed yet. The pioneer is a weapons branch in the army. And the pioneer, if you translate that, means path-breaker. And in this designation pioneer actually lies the essential, the essential characteristics for a pioneer, in this translation, in my view, namely to abandon a given or a normally considered path for the first time, open parenthesis, to question it, close parenthesis, and to break it. And the breaking is, for me, a synonym also for proceeding against resistance. And we’d already addressed that too, so these two essential points of the distinguishing criterion for a pioneer. That’s actually already included, for me, in the first term pioneer itself. Thank you.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much, and even if we look at the definition on the net or something, then we have on one hand this military aspect included, and on the other hand also, in educated language, how is that adapted, someone who’s groundbreaking in a certain field, a trailblazer. So here too these terms, if you just look at Wikipedia or something, that recur, and are also picked up from various fields too. So thank you so, so much. I think a whole lot came up today. We can just let it stand this way to some extent, and it’s not fully comprehensive yet, in quotes, but rather here it’s the case, as we said, that this is a first approach we’re making today, to let our first thoughts, impulses etc. flow together here. And I’m really curious about the next weeks, in which we’ll engage with various topics from very different perspectives specifically as room topics too, to see how one thing or another we originally had as impulses about the term might be reinforced, or where maybe shifts, in quotes, take place too, so that toward the end we bring it together again, and then look at what’s come out of that within the framework of these Deep Talks, so to speak, how that might have changed or not, so also reinforced. And so tomorrow we’ll start with the room topic Contrarians and Society. What characterizes contrarians, and what relevance do they have for a communally-thought society, that’s the question we’ll approach tomorrow with this topic as the first room topic, so to speak, in more depth. I’m really curious. In that sense you’re warmly invited to join again tomorrow at 8am. And with that I’d like to move into the closing round for today first, and see what you’d like to highlight from the room again, or what maybe insights, first insights, aha moments or otherwise you’d like to share. Marc, Jürgen, Rafael, gladly in that order.
Dear Yasemin, I’d like to thank you for the word “trailblazer,” because if there are trailblazers, there are also path-blockers. There I think, for example, also of politics, and it’ll be totally exciting when we keep looking, in the rooms going forward, at how we can still do something and change things with pioneering spirit despite that.
Yes, thank you so, so much, Jürgen.
Yes, heartfelt thanks to you for your contributions. As always, let me say it again, an hour stolen from paradise, and I’m looking forward to the following discussions, and wish you a nice holiday still. Ciao, bye.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much. Rafael?
Yes, I can also just briefly say thanks, was a very nice hour, and I’m looking forward to the further mornings at 8am too. So have a nice day, nice holiday.
Yes wonderful, thank you so, so much to all of you. I also saw that there were a few more remarks or also questions in the chat too, or formulated as questions, so to speak, this or that. I definitely took a screenshot, so we can pick up this or that again in the next days too. And yes, and that means it doesn’t get lost, but is simply documented with me on my phone, so to speak. And then I’d say, let’s round off the room for today, and see that we start off together tomorrow. I’m really curious which directions it’ll all go in. I’m looking forward to the discoveries we’ll open up and discover here within the framework of the rooms under the various daily topics, so to speak. And in that sense I also wish you a wonderful holiday, a nice Father’s Day for those celebrating Father’s Day today, and for everyone else, whatever you have planned today. Have fun with it, be successful with it, or whatever, or enjoy nature or otherwise. In that sense, until tomorrow morning. Ciao, ciao.
