Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How can reflection foster creativity and innovative power? Recorded from a park bench in Serbia during her road trip home, Dr. Yasemin Yazan explores this question with Marc and Jürgen — from a bookshop in The Hague that combines coffee and books, to fear as a training ground for creative problem-solving, to what really separates creativity from innovation…
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 very good morning to you. I hope it isn’t too loud in the background. Warm greetings from Serbia this morning, from a park bench in front of the hotel. A few cars are still rushing by in the background. So I hope it works out, wind noise included. But at least it’s a relatively quiet corner compared to other spots. So, let’s just see how it goes. It just means you all get to talk a bit more this morning and I’ll talk a bit less. I think we’ll manage. So, once again, a very good morning to you. Reflection and innovation is our topic today, the question being how reflection can foster creativity and innovative power. And I’m curious what first impulses and thoughts you have on that, which examples you might bring in, so we can use the room for reflection today to look together at what insights we can draw from it. And with that, you’re all very warmly invited to join us this morning and share your thoughts. And for those joining for the first time today, or who aren’t here regularly, just a quick reminder — the room is recorded the entire time. Anyone who joins automatically agrees to that, and anyone who doesn’t want that for whatever reason can of course use the chat, so we can pick up on one thing or another. And we have three small room rules: a profile picture you can be recognized by, a first and last name, and at least one sentence in your bio explaining who you are. With that, I’d like to warmly welcome Marc this morning. A very good morning, dear Marc.
Merhaba and hello and hello to the group. I’m glad we’ve come together again. I’d like to start off, because yesterday I was on the road by car and I reflected on the fact that it actually took a whole process for me to even get to reflection at all, and I want to tell you that I noticed something again — whenever you meet people, someone will say, oh Marc, I’m paying attention now to working less. Oh, I think that’s good. Why? Or, I’m paying attention now to spending more time with my family. Yes, that’s a point too, I can understand that. Or what’s really important, we’re already rushing toward Christmas again, summer is almost sadly over, and then, at the latest in January, lots of people come along and say, you know, I’ve thought about it, I’m just going to pay attention now to eating healthier. So I pay attention to what I put in my body. But very, very rarely do we meet people — actually, I’ve never met anyone — who consciously said, Marc, really interesting, something genuinely changed for me. What happened? I’m paying attention now to what I think. How? I just want to think something different now. And that’s why I’m starting with that and then moving to your topic, because that was the point for me — thinking about how I think, and arriving at the insight, which also connects to today’s topic, that reflection and changed thinking, new thinking, can also change our lives. That took a really, really long time for me, even though it’s actually really, really simple once you first stumble onto it.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And indeed, I too — I don’t know if I’d never heard it, but certainly rarely, that I can say for sure — have heard someone say, I’m paying attention now to what I think. So I find that honest and exciting, opening up these different examples here too. Wonderful, thank you, dear Marc. And the question we’ve reserved for today is really just to look at how far reflection can actually foster something like creativity, or foster innovative power — that we take a closer look at that today. And does it even have an influence at all? That’s a question we can certainly ask too. Maybe it has no influence at all. What are your experiences with that, dear Marc?
Yes, I brought two examples. And I’m coming back to emotions again, I always try to find what connects all of us in the room. And we’re emotions. And the emotions that trigger me most strongly are fears, really fear. And I thought about what my fear hit-parade looks like. Top of my fear hit-parade is that something happens to someone in my family circle. Someone dying, or… yes, dying is the worst. Something happening in my family circle. Followed by my partner leaving me. And then followed — though this shifts — by no longer being self-determined. Situations where you’re so severely ill that you really can’t act autonomously anymore. And why I bring up these examples is, that’s where creativity, reflection, begins for me, and also connects to your topic, finding new ideas by engaging with my fear, so reflecting, perceiving, being mindful. Mindful is the key word for me there, by imagining scenarios, what happens — because whether I want it or not, it can happen — and then mentally engaging with it, well, what do I do then? Of course those aren’t pleasant thoughts. What’s pleasant is only that it’s just a scenario for now. The state hasn’t actually occurred yet. And my brain — I don’t know if this works the same for every brain, but I suspect that through these thinking processes I’ve learned to arrive at creative and new solutions too, because I’m constantly engaging with things: what happens, how do you behave then? I don’t wish for it, but just this assumption that something can happen, and then the mental engagement with it, that fosters, I find, the speed with which you arrive at a solution again, and it also fosters reflective thinking per se, regardless of what we’re thinking about. That could be an invention now, or our life, but training reflection itself would be the first thing for me, and not even with the goal of whether some great invention comes out of it, but simply reflecting to reflect, and to practice it.
Yes, thank you so much. And from that we can derive, so to speak, whether that in some way also has an influence on creativity or on innovation. And with that I’d like to warmly welcome Jürgen into our round this morning too. Jürgen, what do you say to that?
Good morning, dear Yasemin. Thumbs up, once again, for making this room possible at all — I always find that absolutely wonderful, the sheer willpower you put into it every single day. That commands my utmost respect, and I like to say that again and again. And also, good morning, dear Marc, thank you very much for your remarks. Well, the subtitle for today really cries out for my terminology mania, going into the definitions. And I’m asking myself, again with a view to the specific connection between reflection, our overarching topic today, and innovative power and creativity — what influence can that possibly have on these two positions, and I think it’s once again very productive for us to agree on what innovative power actually means — not innovation, but innovative power — and what we agree creativity means. To bring that into connection, and perhaps already bring it into connection with this personal inward view already at the level of the definition. So with this conscious going-within, and what of course immediately jumps out with innovation, hello dear Marc, is doing a strengths-weaknesses analysis, formulating goals, and ultimately positioning yourself. And I’ll gladly go into the template here and say, if I reflect myself with a view to — and I gave my reflection the title, remember yesterday, the title Creativity, Strengthening Creativity. I want to reflect now on how I can strengthen my creativity. Then I think, first and foremost, imagination is called for. And alongside this imagination, including a certain openness to this play of imagination, allowing scenarios, or as Marc said yesterday, being open perspective-wise. A certain openness, an imagination. I open the door, but I’m also unbiased. I find that really important. Unbiased, open to new things. And the third point — here comes another one of my sayings, which Mr. Wascher might know by now — quite essentially, this reflection, especially with a view to creativity, also requires a very specific kind of intelligence. Because, as we’ve discussed, there’s no all-encompassing definition of intelligence. There are very specific ones, and in this case it’s really the requirements placed on our creative intelligence. I’ll repeat my statement on creativity once more — three positions: openness, imagination, and intelligence. Thank you for listening.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Marc, what do you say to that?
I’ll repeat my own slightly bent quote, “assumption is the enemy of truth.” I forgot to say yesterday who that’s from — Friedrich Nietzsche, the quote actually correctly reads “convictions are the enemy of truth,” and convictions in this case are opinions and beliefs we hold. And now I get to something that was also a really important point that completely changed my life — this conviction, or rather being open, meaning being mindful and at the same time being open, and not immediately doing what our brain does with every thinking process when talking to someone. I’d like to open a car repair shop. Oh God, there are so many of those. I could imagine opening a café professionally. Oh man, there are so many of those. And I observe this, this mindfulness and this creativity, again and again on my travels, where I always have to say — and this is provocative of course — we Germans, well, some businesses and some industries have only themselves to blame for doing badly. They have to close down because people aren’t willing to think out of the box. One example, so you know what I mean — I’m totally thrilled, there’s a shop in The Hague, a bookshop, a completely normal bookshop. If I told you now, I have a huge idea, I’m opening a bookshop tomorrow in Hürth or in Cologne, you’d say, well, good luck Marc, do you know how many bookshops there are. And this bookshop I’m telling you about in The Hague probably had the same considerations, and it runs barista courses, there’s coffee and cake, it has a corner where students sit and meet up there to study. So it combined hospitality with books. And I’m always so thrilled when I see something like that. I say, wow, that’s brilliant. He took an old industry, noticed it’s struggling, that there are difficulties there, and then thought, I don’t want to completely switch industries now, go into hospitality, but I’ll simply combine two existing things that each already exist on their own. And I keep noticing this on my travels, that there really are people who keep their eyes open, who are mindful, who think out of the box — and thinking “to the box,” in this case, would be, I have a bookshop or a business and I notice no customers are coming in. What options do I have, thinking-wise? Either I switch industries, or I close the shop, or I think about what I can do with the building in the meantime — and that’s where this being open begins for me, that’s where creativity begins, in finding solutions. But that only works with people, when you throw the ball back and forth, not with a group that, at the very first approach, says, oh come on Jürgen, hospitality is bullshit and restaurants are bullshit and car repair shops are bullshit too. And in Hürth I also came across someone who has a car repair shop and specialized in a particular target group. There are these crazy people who drive around with off-road vehicles and are only out in the terrain. Whether I think that’s good or not isn’t really the point. But I observe, he picked out a target group. Apparently there are people who enjoy that, and he opened a specialty workshop just for these people — I’d never have thought of that. And so you can see, I was never particularly creative myself. This creativity really can be trained by being mindful. And mindful really means being open in every industry, not just the one we operate in. Simply by walking through the city or through nature. Even animals and plants, where you ask, how did they solve things? And then being curious again. A word just occurs to me as I’m talking — being curious, like children, who say, that’s exciting. Oh wow, that’s brilliant. And not immediately stopping this creative process in the brain through negative thinking. And you experience that very, very often around people. Just one sentence comes out: I thought about that once, maybe you could do something creative in that direction. These thinking processes usually get shot down immediately with bad experiences or with the experiences of other people who didn’t pursue it further.
Yes, thank you so much. And if we now also think back to the other rooms where we’ve already picked up various topics, we established, for example, that a connection to nature is something quite special for us too. That means, for example, being in certain environments alone can already change your thoughts, let ideas into the room, and so on. So the question also arises for me, how is it actually in relation to creativity and innovative power, and in connection with reflection? Does it perhaps sometimes also need one environment or another, that I set quite deliberately in order to reflect in a particular way here? Or how does the whole thing actually come about? Do you have ideas about that, Marc, Jürgen?
Yes, dear Yasemin, that’s a very interesting point, I didn’t expect that switch, but it’s really a very interesting point that I’d actually like to reflect on first. But if I take my sessions here, which I’ve made into something of a routine — you might remember, I use very long training phases to reflect. Then I can say something in favor of the idea that it might be something different under certain circumstances, when I’m out in the open, and this is exactly your point, Yasemin, when I’m out in nature versus when I’m in a gym where I put the blinders on — I’d say, as a first response, that for me personally, nature requires me to concentrate much more clearly on the topic. I keep coming back to my favorite thing — give your reflection a topic, and if that topic connects and can be brought into connection with nature, is that an optimal place? Yes, that’s occurring to me now. But if I have a very logically structured and already predefined topic and want as few distractions as possible with regard to the place I’m in, then the gym or the swimming pool is of course something different. But it’s a great point, I think, and I don’t want to say anything conclusive about it yet. Let me reflect. Thank you.
Fits the topic well, too. Marc, what do you say? What’s your first impulse?
My first impulse, I can only say that Clubhouse led to it. And that’s also a topic you engage with, dear Yasemin. My first impulse, which really changed my life colossally, changed my whole path, is the topic of neuroscience, engaging with neuroscience. And you don’t have to become an expert. And these sentences I’m saying now don’t come from me, they’re from Clubhouse, but they helped me enormously. With this neuroscience and the topic where Yasemin is a much better expert — I’m not an expert at all, and don’t want to become one either — what helps me is knowing that with every topic now I always ask myself, who says that? So, who’s saying something? Then, how did I come to think what I think? And then checking, through reflection, is what I think correct? And then I can also think something different. It’s not wild at all, but is it even possible that I think something different? And then, solution-oriented, how could it work? And through these approaches — that was for me a moment where I thought, oh man, wow, just five simple sentences, and this awareness, and what Jürgen always says, this awareness, like unconscious bias and conscious bias — there are technical terms again, you don’t have to make it that complicated, but I can only recommend to everyone, if you don’t have a coach, find a neuroscientist, talk to them. And I have to say, I also have a coach who’s brought me really far. Without my coach I wouldn’t be where I am. But then, after years, I found that this knowledge of neuroscience took me even further. The coach helped me a great deal. But this understanding of neuroscience — I’m not dealing with abstract things there, but with directing the gaze back inward again. And then, I hope this still comes up in the rooms, that we’ll also discuss why I think what I think. And I don’t want to say now there’s a right way of thinking and a wrong way of thinking, but simply to check what I think and what what I think does to me. That’s one of the key things for me. And the good thing is, we’re the ones doing the thinking. Every one of us can think. Every one of us has the possibility, because we’re emotionally oriented, to change our thinking. And that’s such an incredible power that has nothing to do with magic or ghosts or hocus-pocus, but I discovered all of that for myself. You can tell this topic grips me emotionally, just like Jürgen, because this topic of neuroscience, or rather the knowledge and the understanding of it, has really, really moved me forward.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much, and in that context we can gladly also pick up the Clubhouse example and take a closer look. Exactly the aspects you’ve now also named among others — that’s something that also happens here on Clubhouse. If we spin that further and ask ourselves again whether, after this or that room, we had the feeling that this way of proceeding fostered creativity and innovative power, do examples come to mind for you? How is the connection here, if you pick up on this example quite specifically at this point? Marc, Jürgen.
I’d like to, may I, dear Yasemin. It’s always awkward when you advertise for yourself, and this isn’t advertising, because I read it. Could you tell me again the title of the book you once wrote about crises? I’ve read it twice, but I still don’t remember the title. “Entrepreneur Adventure — Crisis Is What You Make of It,” which we co-wrote with Mona Tenjo, Jennifer, and Jan-Marc Pickern. Exactly, this book fostered my creativity, it was an impulse for creativity, because it made clear to me, in the form of stories, what happens with this neuroscience. And I deliberately started today by asking what fears occupy me, because we’re all here in this group, and everyone is afraid of something. It’s individual, one person is afraid of this, another of that, but I assume that losing a partner, fear of illness and no longer having an income, these are fears that occupy all of us. And then playing this scenario through in your head. What’s it like if I don’t have a job anymore? What’s it like if I have to move out of my apartment? What’s it like if I’m sick from one day to the next? And what’s it like if something happens in my family? Even if it hasn’t happened yet, engaging with these scenarios is training for the brain. And I also think, thinking is like sport, you have to practice it. We all think, you cannot not communicate, and you probably also cannot not think, but you can learn thinking processes, and that only happens through practice and training. And yes, that’s what I wanted to tell you again, dear Yasemin, that your book also helped find new approaches and solutions for my company, because I thought, oh look, you’re afraid too. Of course I was afraid too. I was very afraid during the Corona crisis that my business would collapse. I was afraid of energy costs. I was afraid in winter, and for the first time since I’ve been self-employed, I turned off the computer I work with in the evenings, because I once read that a Mac always stays on, and I’m also, in the evening — that’s what it’s like when you work from home, you go to your desk in the evening too — so my computer always used to keep running, but this energy crisis also led me to actually switch off all the devices, switch them off when they’re not being used, because we only heard horror scenarios, electricity prices are no longer affordable, and engaging with the crisis — and a book forced me to do that. What could happen? What’s the worst that could happen? And if I even just suspect it’s coming, what can I do today to soften these crises, whatever I call a crisis, or to confront them, so I don’t end up standing there as a victim. And I noticed, and you also learn this when you engage with you, dear Yasemin, thank you for all your impulses about neuroscience — if I know in advance what certain emotions trigger in me and then reflect on that, then I’m no longer a victim, then I act. Then my actions don’t always have the effect I wish for. But just the fact that I act, that I get out of helplessness, always gives me a good feeling personally. Acting, even if the results aren’t immediately what we wish for, always feels better for a person than watching idly while others decide about you.
Yes, thank you so much, dear Marc. And in that context it occurs to me — I mean, you’re here regularly in our rooms, and there are quite often situations where you tell us that something kept working afterward, that you tried something out, that you took something with you, and so on. And then you also pick that up again as an example in the results, so to speak, and implement it in the next room topics. And I find it becomes clear there too that with reflection, in this connection, it doesn’t necessarily have to be that you reflect on a specific topic, which leads to you becoming creative on that topic or developing innovative power around it. It could also be adjacent topic areas or fields you’re working on anyway, and then you suddenly notice, oh, maybe I could pick that up here too, or something like that, and I’m going to try that out now, and something new can emerge from that too. Maybe you’d like to say something more about that, Marc. Does anything concrete come to mind spontaneously, perhaps?
Yes, you called on us at the start to network on Clubhouse and talk to each other, because that’s exactly it for me — social networks currently make no sense if you don’t use them that way. So I decided this year, for example, that I’m not accepting new contacts on LinkedIn anymore. What’s the point, whether I have 1,000 followers or 2,000? To make a living from influencing you need over 100,000 or a million followers. I’m not going to reach that, and I don’t want to reach it either. But the few contacts I have, I cultivate them. I’ve talked with Jürgen, I’ve already called Stefan. I’ve already had contact with a lot, a lot of people here in this room. And it’s not even about having a specific concern, a problem I need to solve, but simply, as Jürgen said at the start, this openness. Then you get to know people, like Jürgen from the banking industry, how he developed strategies, how he solved problems, or Sabine, who’s always here too, who comes from the real estate industry and says, oh, we’re currently having problems, people aren’t getting money for their houses anymore, and Sabine recently said something really, really great, which I absolutely had to tell my friend at school. Sabine once said, just to pick up the example, there are all these — when we buy something online there’s Klarna and whatever they’re all called. What I also didn’t know is that every time you use Klarna to pay for something, a credit line is created. And Sabine gave an example here in the room once that made my jaw drop — she couldn’t get a mortgage for a client because the banker said, listen, Mark isn’t getting a loan, he doesn’t get a mortgage for his property. He’s already got 15 loans running. Those 15 loans might have totaled over 100 or 200 or 300 euros combined, that wasn’t even checked anymore, because the banker only saw, oh, Mark already has 15 loans, he’s not getting one from us. And you have to tell young people that too, if they buy everything on credit — meaning, when they actually want to make a real purchase and don’t get the money for their car or their property because they have 15 or 20 loans of 40 euros each, that’s enough to make you grab your head. But if that’s how it works, that bankers pay attention to that, then this knowledge is extremely valuable, because at some point we’ll need it. And there are so, so many examples like that. I could probably fill two rooms alone with things I’ve learned that aren’t directly related to my working life, but where I’m glad I can pass information on in my circle, where I really say, not just interesting and exciting, but this information could have potentially catastrophic effects on the other person if they don’t know it, so it’s fun for me to share information in my circle even after and following up on these rooms.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Jürgen, would you like to follow up here too?
Yes, if I stay with this question of yours, an example, I’d stay right here with this room, and with myself and with what I said at the beginning about this topic. The three positions again — intelligence, imagination, and openness. And this room is, for me personally, exactly such an example of this immense benefit, one I get for myself, and also through the way I reflect, that is, through the method — I know, not a topic today, how I reflect has an influence. And this communication, this daily exchange, is for me — I’ll go into these three terms briefly again — regarding my intelligence, regarding different kinds of intelligences, an example of building connections between these intelligences, so a purely logical intelligence, a formally logical intelligence which I attribute to myself, and this listening into Marc, who presents things with tremendous depth, and imagining the emotion, empathic intelligence, how he’s feeling right now. And that stimulates my imagination, the second term, imagination, that I say, can you imagine being exactly like Marc on this topic, or on another topic — being able to go more into the emotional realm, which I attribute to myself, rather than into the formally logical realm. And the third is openness. This openness, dear Marc, we’ve already talked about this before — openness also means for me, if I want to reach this outcome, listening and, under certain circumstances, also tolerating other opinions. That’s also a form of openness for me. And in that sense, today this room, and actually every room — that’s why I try to come into this room every day — is a lever of personal creativity for me. I hope I managed to convey somewhat how important that is to me. Thank you.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much, thank you, dear Jürgen. Marc, would you like to follow up here too?
Yes, we’ll get to that in the last minute. But I’d like to thank you, Jürgen, for the lovely compliment. And you’ve changed my weekends significantly, dear Jürgen. Not a weekend goes by, I repeat, not a weekend goes by where I don’t say to my partner while out on a walk, let’s look at the terminology. And this terminology is a tool for me, dear Jürgen, that helps me practice with my partner too, how the two of us look at terminology in a professional context, in order to place our discussions and arguments better. Because when you look at this terminology and then notice, in conversation, what people say, I’ve noticed it’s exactly what lawyers do too. Lawyers always check, is this scientifically correct, can it be proven? And I already said this yesterday — when my partner tells me situations from her everyday work life, where things are simply claimed just because they sound good in speech and in argumentation, then I always say, oh man, you can be glad you weren’t in court. If I’d been the opposing lawyer, I’d have taken you apart in half a minute. Because everything with “all” — I already said this yesterday — is 100 percent, if you say all people in Cologne, or all hospitality businesses are like that, are all like that. You get bad coffee. If I just find one where that’s not the case, I say, that’s an assumption, that’s not true. I found one where it’s not true. And that’s incredibly fun, paying attention to language. Really paying attention to language, to the words. And then reflecting on that in a discussion, to also make people aware, you’re not wrong, but it’s enough to say, purely scientifically, you have a different perception. But from a scientific context, and also from a legal context, I unfortunately have to reflect back to you, that’s not entirely correct. There’s another perspective too.
Yes, thank you so much. And I find this aspect of openness and listening particularly interesting here too. Maybe you remember the author breakfast with the second book by Heike Wolfangel. We talked about that too. Part of it was also about this aspect. She gave an example about, say, not wanting to do certain things yourself, but perhaps letting others do it too, particularly with delegating, and simply waiting and watching, and also tolerating that, because maybe the other person has a completely different approach, a completely different way to reach the goal, and I would have done it completely differently. But we often tend to assume we know which way to go. And the moment we go into this openness and into this tolerance, and simply wait and observe what the other person does, or how they proceed in this specific context, we sometimes find that these are really great paths we wouldn’t have explored at all if we hadn’t had the patience to say, I’ll tolerate this now and just reflect and see what happens. And then I can use that for myself later in an evaluation, so to speak, as the outcome. But this creating of the space itself, and bringing the patience for it — patience, I think, is also really important in this context, simply waiting and watching and not going straight into a pre-evaluation, which is emotionally built into us, that as soon as we’re given stimuli we immediately go into evaluation, based on prior experiences. Marc, go ahead.
There’s something else I absolutely have to share with you. He’s not here right now, but I’d like to officially thank Andreas Wollermann, in case someone tells him this. Because Andreas Wollermann contributed a great deal to an even better relationship for me, in my partnership. Why? I have this typical male thing. When my partner told me something, I was impatient, dear Yasemin, impatient. I didn’t let her finish talking, because I already had the solution. Thinking fast, being creative, I could present her with a solution within seconds. The problem I didn’t consider was that my partner often tells me things where she doesn’t want a solution from me, no reflection from me. She just wants to tell me something. Because telling it helps her open up her thoughts. And so I never forget it again, Andreas Wollermann once said in your room, are you listening to understand? Are you listening to understand, to listen, to give the other person the chance to order their thoughts? Or are you listening in order to respond? When I heard that, I had a grin on my face all day. And I met up with my girlfriend for the weekend. And she looked at me. It was really hard, it’s a real exercise, not to jump out of your skin, because you immediately say, that can’t be, how can he do that — instead of offering a solution, just really listening, letting the other person finish. That changes a relationship enormously too.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. And derived from that, now the question again with regard to creativity and innovative power, because we have two terms we’re looking at here in this context — does it need to differentiate creativity and innovative power at all? So is the connection from reflection to creativity different from the connection to innovative power? How do you see that? Go ahead, Jürgen.
Heartfelt thanks for that opening. It was right at the top of my list, at the end of my chain of thought, to point out that we have two terms today, namely creativity and innovation. And with this topic too, if you allow, I’ll go into the template for distinguishing these two terms and say — one, I see creativity as a subfunction of innovation, in order to become innovative at all. And let me define briefly — there are countless attempts at interpreting what innovation is, but I’ll go back to the original meaning and say, creating something new. And if I want to create something new, then I claim it’s an essential prerequisite to have available, in the dimensions I mentioned before, intelligence, and also openness and imagination. It’s a prerequisite for innovation, for innovation to create something new. What makes the essential difference, for me, between these two terms, is a very essential partial aspect, especially in reflecting on economic and entrepreneurial contexts — willingness to take risks. So not just openness to new things, but complementing that openness with the check clause, am I even willing to take this risk, or, as we’ve already discussed, do I have the courage for it? And that’s a classic question of reflection for me, specifically self-reflection. Before I even enter into communication with dear Marc or dear Yasemin and say, listen, I’m planning to launch a new concept — if I lack courage, then both Yasemin and Marc would ask me first, well, how much courage do you actually have? So, long story short, the connection between innovation and creativity in particular is, for me, essentially this willingness to take risks and this openness with regard to my courage to create something new, and then also to stand behind it.
Yes, thank you so much. And in this context I’d also like to remind us that we’d captured intermediate results for ourselves from other rooms too, where it was partly also about aspects or terms like innovation. On one hand, we’d noted that not every innovation has to mean progress, maybe worth mentioning again here on the side. And we’d also noted that innovation means creating something new, though creating something new doesn’t necessarily always mean it has to be something groundbreaking, so a completely new invention or something like that, but we’d also connected this to an example from the sciences, which, for instance, examine very specific areas, and that holds true until another scientist picks up the results again to build on them and continue. And then it can well be that this or that gets disproven again, or specific parts are further developed and something new is discovered again. And so, to a certain extent, looking at the concept of innovation from this angle too, not always just assuming it’s about having mastered some groundbreaking new invention, having created it, but that often it means something new in the sense of, say, a new combination or a new constellation, which is also something new in a sense, so maybe also looking at it from this perspective too. Marc, go ahead again.
Yes, I have to share something else with you. I heard something yesterday in the news — I won’t name the company — where what you said, dear Jürgen, courage and creativity and financial aspects. I heard a piece of news yesterday that will influence our entire life, whether for good or bad I can’t say yet, but it will cost extremely many jobs. There’s a large company — a second large company is exiting LiDAR technology, I’d never even heard of it before. LiDAR technology is a laser technology, and we need it for autonomous driving, which already exists in America. And with that, Germany — I’ll just say Germany — is exiting yet another market, just as it already did with solar energy, where there were so many jobs. That means we’re giving up a key technology, one we might be able to take over, out of our hands. And then I always wonder, I really think further about what that means. I don’t understand the technology. I don’t need to understand it either. I’m no expert, but I know we’re an export nation, and that we export, and that Germans are known for their cars. And then I just imagined, at some point nobody will associate Germany with cars anymore, because we won’t need them anymore, because we’ll just have oldtimers standing in museums that nobody buys. We’ll have driving computers. And then we’re exiting a key technology we need. Mobility is one of the central topics, and then I always think, hey, there has to be an outcry about that. Politics has to intervene. This should be in the news every day. It concerns nothing. You can tell how worked up this gets me. It concerns future generations. Nothing. That’s just not how it is. I heard it by chance on the radio, on WDR 5, and I thought, this can’t be true. And why are we exiting? Not because we lack creativity, not because we lack intelligence, not because we lack imagination and openness. Simply courage and financial aspects. It’s not fast enough. And then I always think, this shouldn’t be allowed to happen. A group of people is deciding, cutting Germany off from certain technologies for the future, through certain decisions an entrepreneur also has to make for themselves. That has nothing to do with today’s topic as such, but I just wanted to say, we sometimes hear things — we’re creative, we’re intelligent, we’re open, we’re imaginative, we have incredibly intelligent minds — and then I’m sometimes speechless that, out of lack of courage and lack of reflection perhaps, entire future technologies get abandoned that we might never catch up on again. Thanks for listening, that was a bit off-topic.
Thank you so much. I don’t find it off-topic at all, because it really, really strongly underlines and shows that while there are different influencing factors we can name here, for example with regard to the connection between reflection, creativity, and innovation, these aren’t just isolated influencing factors, but, depending on what kind of influencing factor it is, can also have a massive leverage effect at this point. That means, even if I could create innovative solutions through reflection and creativity, if I don’t, because, say, willingness to take risks and courage are lacking at that point, then I might still not achieve a “tangible result,” so to speak, despite it all. And I find that a nice example to underline this once more, that the influencing factors we’ve named here, or the different factors, can also be different levers and can develop different strengths of force in their effect, depending on the constellation we’re looking at, or not develop any force at all if they’re not applied. Would anyone else like to pick that up? Marc, Jürgen.
Yes, if you allow, I’d like to jump back a bit to the outcome, with a view to the results we’d captured on innovation. And if I recall correctly, you said not every innovation has to generate something new. And I’ll accentuate that further and say, not every reflection on innovation has to lead to a changed result, mind you, a changed result, because especially in the economic environment, in the entrepreneurial context, in a sole-proprietorship context, it can also lead to the result that innovation makes no sense for me, isn’t productive, isn’t justifiable. For me, dear Yasemin, this admission coming out of reflection is a typical example of entrepreneurial courage — namely, especially in the times we’ve had in recent years, not to let yourself be swept along by what I’ll call, somewhat incorrectly, a mainstream toward permanent change, but through reflection to arrive at the result, I’m actually already on a good path. And I find that, and this courage too, in an entrepreneur in the Lions Club, when someone’s asked, so what’s your view on that, what are you doing regarding artificial intelligence, for example, and they say, somewhat exaggeratedly, I don’t need artificial intelligence, I have my own and it’s enough for me. So that was another connection I found very apt, and one that I think absolutely should be considered too — when you arrive at the result, well, I’m not arriving at any result at all. That too is a result, namely holding onto something good and having found the confirmation, I’m on the right path, I’m doing the right thing, I don’t have to be innovative. Thank you for listening.
Absolutely, yes, thank you so much, and I find that a really, really important point, that’s also the reason why, in the various Deep Talk Club rooms, we keep saying, just watch, let it keep working on you, and think for yourself whether corrections or adjustments are needed, or whether you perhaps also come to the decision, no, it’s fine as it is. So that’s a really, really important aspect, and I’m glad we’ve addressed and picked that up too. You can see, there are various bridges we can build to other rooms too, whether it’s about creativity, innovation, or innovative power, and also various factors that have and unfold an effect, all the way to this aspect of reflection, because we’re now also looking at this specifically against the backdrop of the connection to reflection, though we’ve certainly already touched on these topics in other rooms too. Important here too, always picking up these bridges again, for remembering, for repeating. And yes, I think really, really important aspects have come together. We’ll of course, as Jürgen mentioned earlier, engage more intensively with the methods too, with the settings and so on, and the types of reflection. So, for now, those are certain aspects we’ve already touched on, mentioned just on the side. We’ll look at that quite explicitly and specifically, and take the time and space to go deeper there. So I’m already looking forward to that, and with a view to the time — we always wrap up fairly punctually, as far as possible — I’d now like to use the opportunity to see, is there anything you’d like to add, something we haven’t addressed at all yet, or otherwise move directly into the closing round for today. Marc, Jürgen, go ahead, Marc.
I’m reflecting now on what you said, Jürgen, and it’s right, of course you can arrive at the decision not to want to be creative and innovative, and then the thought of a perspective shift immediately occurs to me — who says that’s right — and then we’re at key democracies, and now here’s where my brain really has trouble — is a handful of people, as an independent company, allowed to decide about key technologies, meaning the future, because of course I don’t want a dictatorship either, and then you see again how complex every topic is, and how we can immediately, through a perspective shift, arrive at a different view and a different way of looking at things. It’s been a huge pleasure exchanging with you all, even though you’ve certainly noticed that, just like Jürgen, this topic moves me very, very emotionally, because I’ll repeat, the highlight of my room is Yasemin, who brought me into contact with the word neuroscience in the first place. Until I was 50, or even longer, I never engaged with the topic of neuroscience or unconscious bias. And that was a highlight, thinking about how I think, whether I think the right thing, or right or wrong — I don’t like those terms — but whether I can think differently. That was a reflection and a key experience for me that put me into a whole different orbit. I wish you all a really, really wonderful day.
Yes, wonderful, thank you so much. Let me just briefly differentiate one thing, so there are no misunderstandings. That means, when we say, I don’t want to be creative or innovative, then basically we’re talking about still applying the methodology. So, that the methodology of creativity — there are creativity techniques you can use, for example — that the methodology is still applied, but then, in the evaluation, and that’s deliberately left out at first with creativity techniques, in order to get into this flow at all, to generate ideas at all, and so on. And only after that comes the evaluation. And in this evaluation phase it can then turn out that, for these or those reasons, it makes sense to say, we’ve developed great ideas, but certain ideas we don’t want to bring into implementation, against the backdrop that, say, it doesn’t fit our values or whatever — there can be a thousand different possibilities — so that this is then also a very conscious decision, so to speak. And in that context I find it really important too, especially when we talk about innovations or something like that, it often sounds like, or sometimes there’s even the effort, to replace everything old, everything tried and tested, with something new. But that’s not actually what it’s about, but rather a valuable and meaningful combination of the traditional and the new, in such a way that it fits the company, fits the person, and so on, or fits the plans — otherwise it makes no sense. Jürgen, you wanted to follow up here too.
I actually wanted to respond directly to dear Marc, and to the question he asked, is a company allowed to do that, to exit a key technology. On one hand, dear Marc, you’re on a good path, you check everything through doubt, you ask questions. Yes indeed, my answer to that — I’ll go into the template and answer with a clear statement — yes, the company is allowed to do that, because it’s a company, we’re still in a free, democratic liberal order, it’s allowed to do that. So, and if you now go deeper — I didn’t know this particular piece of news, but I do know of another piece of news from a long time ago, that our economics ministry decided to exit nuclear fusion technology, like everything to do with atoms. And if you know that laser technology is a decisive factor for nuclear fusion, in order to generate the heat for the fusion at all, then — this isn’t proof, but this is my imagination now, connecting to this topic — I’d say, well, dear Marc, under certain circumstances this entrepreneur might even be right, and be innovative, by seeking out a different field of operation, because he’s being slowed down in further development by the regulations. So we’re back again, in that sense too, at this topic, the connection between creativity and innovation, creating something new and being creative in doing so. A great room again today. Heartfelt thanks again, dear Marc, to you, for the input, to everyone, for listening. And dear Yasemin, I don’t want to repeat myself now, for your moderation and your willingness to make this room happen at all today. A good journey home and a wonderful day to you all.
Yes, wonderful. Thank you so much, all of you. I think a lot really came together again, really, really much. And what I also find nice is when we keep making this connection to earlier rooms too, topics we’ve already covered, and build these bridges again too. And for those who might not be here regularly, maybe just a quick reminder — someone asked whether we’ve also talked about error culture, for example. Not explicitly today, but we always have different overarching topics under which we open specific rooms and engage with the topics more deeply, so to speak. And we’ve talked about culture before, about errors before, but maybe it’s time to pick that topic up again at some point too. Right now we’re on the overarching topic of reflection, and that’s why we now have various rooms under this overarching topic of reflection, where we look at it specifically from different perspectives. We did that again today, and we’ll continue tomorrow with reflection and ethics. How does reflection influence our moral and ethical convictions is the question we want to engage with. That’ll certainly be exciting too, especially fitting that into 60 minutes, given that we’ve already touched on the term ethics before, because it’s such a broad topic. And I’m really curious how we’ll manage to go deep on that in 60 minutes, and maybe pick up on this or that from earlier rooms again, to take a shortcut here or there, so to speak, and still create the space to build new connections. So you’re all very warmly invited to join again tomorrow, at 8am German time. I’m curious how that’ll go. We’ll still be on our way home, and hopefully we’ll be home at some point today, tonight, or tomorrow morning, I don’t know, we’ll see. In any case, Deep Talk will take place again tomorrow morning too. And maybe just a small note for some of you — a lot of messages have reached me in the meantime, and if there are currently some delays in responding, please bear with me. Right now, because of the trip home, the topics with urgency are simply being answered and handled first. Everything else is being set aside for now. I’ll take care of it gladly as soon as we’re home again. Just so you know, and don’t wonder. With that, I wish you a wonderful day. Thank you so much for joining, and hopefully see you tomorrow at 8am at Deep Talk. Until then. Ciao.
