“I'm here to tell you none of thIs Is necessary anymore..."
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© Stroud and Clarke Ltd 2021. All rights reserved. Whilst every effort is made to ensure that information is correct upon publishing, Stroud and Clarke Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions, or for the results obtained from the use of this information. All information in this magazine is provided “as is”, with no guarantee of completeness, accuracy, timeliness or of the results obtained from the use of this information. This magazine may
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But whether it’s at home or at work –in this case, one of the world’s largest architecture and engineering firms in SOM – DeMillo’s success is driven by true, heart on sleeve passion. Talk to him and you realise he loves technology and, more importantly, how we can all use that technology to work and play smarter, more collaboratively and successfully. It’s inspiring.
ob DeMillo is a true technologist at heart. And you don’t have to look at his impressive CV to know that – when someone takes time out during the course of an interview on digital change in their day job to discuss how they’ve spent time rigging their house with IoT sensors, setting up tech that ensures their plants water themselves, or their extensive home music setup, you know they’re the real deal.But that’s true of all those innovators and pioneers we speak with. So much of being effective in the digital age is about mindset, understanding what technology means to us as people and how we can live and work with it in harmony – just ask Rob Thurner, who excels in digital leadership training, or Amelia’s AI-human hybrid workforce vision. In a similar vein, Ternova Group’s Rodrigo Tona can well demonstrate how technology can go beyond the workplace and make a better future for us all.
As always, enjoy, be inspired and let us know your thoughts on the issue.
Content Director Matt High Creative Directors Daniel Crawford Steve Shipley Marketing Director Jack Pascall Project Director Manuel Navarro Managing
James Pepper
03 TECH-EXEC MAGAZINE ISSUE THREE
50 | INNOVATOR VIRITECH
Hydrogen-powered hypercars
52 | INTERVIEW TERNOVA GROUP
Championing a sustainable future
64 | INNOVATION FLIGHT DATA
How AI and data are disrupting aviation
72 | ENTREPRENEUR DR JUN PEI
Lights, lasers and a life of innovation
74 | CITY GUIDE
48 HRS: BERLIN
Business and pleasure in the German capital
82 | CALENDAR EVENTS
The best virtual events for 2021
Superyachts are, suddenly, all the rage – thanks Jeff Bezos. But even the Amazon founder’s $500mn+ project Y721 couldn’t muster jet engines. Enter Uros Pavasovic’s Cobra, which is inspired by the mass grounding and retirement of Boeing’s 747 last year and what to do with their redundant engines. Aircraft engines aside, Cobra will also include below-water electric propulsion for silent cruising, perfect for its SR71 Blackbird inspired looks. When a superyacht designer describes their latest idea as “a work of creative indulgence”, would you expect anything less?
www.urospavasovic.com
Edge computing is a critical factor that businesses and leaders must harness if they are to navigate and understand the potential of current and future data, says a report from Intel. With technology and data use growing exponentially, edge computing will be crucial in driving efficiency and growth. According to Intel, to capitalise on this, businesses should embrace collaboration and leverage the power of ecosystems.
www.intel.com
21-80%
The majority of 100 executives surveyed expect that employees will be on site between 21% and 80% of their time as the COVID pandemic eases.
www.mckinsey.com
— Jeff Bezos on new Amazon CEO Andy Jassy during his final annual meeting as CEO of the business“Andy will never let the universe make us typical.”
Forget ‘getting an Uber’, the future will be all about ‘getting an Arrival Car’. The perfectly named ridehailing innovation is a proposed purpose-built, affordable electric vehicle for ride-hailing in cities. The car, which is a collaboration between automotive innovator Arrival and Uber, will enter production in Q3 2023 and will have design input from Uber drivers.
www.arrival.com
When Microsoft encoded 1978s Superman movie onto a glass sheet in 2019, it did so to demonstrate the material’s potential as a viable storage option compared to hard drives and magnetic tape, which have relatively short lifespans. As great as that movie is, the tech giant, in partnership with CMR Surgical, has now progressed to encoding vast amounts of clinical health data – taken from surgical robot procedures – onto a single glass slide roughly the size of a drinks coaster. The innovation will help standardise complicated surgical procedures and drive wider healthcare digitisation.
www.cmrsurgical.com
Accenture research has identified a new group in business, the ‘Leapfroggers’, who are compressing digital transformation. They are closing the gap on leaders with three strategic steps:
1. Replatforming by moving to and innovating in the cloud.
2. Reframing by prioritising collaboration and adopting an innovation-led mindset
3. Extending their reach by expanding across technology functions more broadly.
www.accenture.com
Designing a state-of-the-art modern supercar? No game, you say?
Wrong. Porsche Engineering has been using game engines from the gaming industry – including the Unreal software that generates images in Fortnite – to develop the intelligent vehicles of the future. Specifically, says Porsche, game engines are currently being used for virtual development and testing of automated driving functions, to design new cars in conjunction with VR technology, and to allow customers to virtually view their new Porsche. Says CTO Dirk Lappe: “We’re car geeks who love to programme at the same time.”
www.newsroom.porsche.com
Google Cloud has reached an agreement with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to provide satellite internet services through the latter’s Starlink. Google Cloud will provide cloud infrastructure to Starlink, with the latter installing ground terminals in Google’s cloud data centres. Google said that the service will be available to business customers from the second half of this year – key benefits to those customers being faster and more secure connection in rural or non-urban environments.
www.starlink.com
A European commission led by Airbus and including organisations like Orange, PwC and others will study the design of the future European quantum communication network, EuroQCI. The consortium, selected by the European Commission, will help enable ultra-secure comms between critical infrastructure and governments in the EU.
www.airbus.com
Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian tells Forbes’ virtual Under 30 Summit that the COVID pandemic has forced a transition to online tools like Zoom.
Four female former employees of Google win class-action status to pursue a gender pay disparity lawsuit against the tech firm on behalf of 11,000 other women.
New Russian cyberattacks have targeted government agencies and human rights groups in 24 countries, says Microsoft.
Reports suggest Fitbit will soon add ‘Snore & Noise Detect’ to its wearable devices, which will monitor snores from you and anyone else with you.
A Columbia University lab creates Eva, a robotic face with visual perception and a learning framework who can react to and copy facial expressions, says Forbes .
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt warns that the EU’s AI transparency requirements, which requires algorithms to be transparent, could be “very harmful to Europe”
TECHNOLOGY DOESN’T HAVE TO CHAIN YOU TO A DESK, LIMIT YOUR SCOPE FOR COLLABORATION OR CREATIVITY. IN FACT, FOR ROB DEMILLO, IT’S QUITE THE OPPOSITE
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Do you remember the PalmPilot?” During an interview with someone who has been at the forefront of leading edge technology their whole career and is currently CTO at one of the world’s most innovative architecture and design firms, it’s a question that throws you. But Rob DeMillo does have a point. And, after moments of this writer frantically trying to recall the various archaic personal devices of the 90s, he continues.
“It had a handwriting recognition algorithm which required you to learn a new way to write in order for it to understand what you were trying to say. That’s always struck me as a really bad solution. The machine should always adapt to us, not us to it. The second you’ve adapted to the way a machine forces you to work, you’ve lost the game.”
Even for the sake of an analogy, we’re loath to compare the typical modern, digitally-driven enterprise to a device with 1024kb of internal storage that’s disappeared into the annals of time. But that analogy is a neat summation of the transformative technology strategy DeMillo has been driving at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM) since joining in April 2019: shifting to a cloud-based approach that
allows architects, engineers and designers the freedom to advance, create and collaborate on projects wherever they are in the world and however they want to work. In short, making the machines adapt to us.
“You look at many design, animation or architecture firms and how they’re equipped,” he says, “study the workflows and they’ve adapted to what the machine makes them do. To have your people in the mindset of ‘I have to physically be at my desk, I’ve got this much hard drive, I can’t run the software because of hardware limitations’, is never a good approach for the future. Really, we should know the task, the data analysis, the design or the animation work we need to do and be able to say ‘this is where I’m doing it’. It’s the machine’s job to adapt.”
It’s a position that DeMillo has honed over a vast and hugely successful career in technology in all its forms, from early work at Brown University’s Planetary Science Group, a working group in conjunction with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory [his code can be found on the Galileo spacecraft and the Mars Observer], through work on doppler radar innovation at the FAA, experience in the entrepreneurial space, technology thought leadership and work with startups, and digital media, including video, creative content and animation.
“I wanted to be a scientist,” he recalls. “From very early on I’ve always been fascinated by how you can translate the physical into the digital. This was back in the late 70s or early 80s, when the latest computer innovations were out; I just got hooked. I’ve always had a real passion for data and understanding how that data can either help people, or help us understand something about the world around us. After my
work with the FAA I had, I experienced my first ‘peanut’ in the entrepreneurial space – you have one and you can’t stop – and all of my subsequent entrepreneurial work has been focused on digital data representing for real, eventually ending up in digital video and digital media.”
Such is the breadth of DeMillo’s career that he has experience across a range of
“THE SECOND YOU’VE ADAPTED TO THE WAY A MACHINE FORCES YOU TO WORK, YOU’VE LOST THE GAME”
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organisations, from startups to full corporations – hugely valuable both in terms of expert-level technology understanding at both the engineering and architectural levels, and the business and operational knowledge needed to drive strategic change. Prior to joining SOM, he was CTO and Head of Engineering for Nimble Collective, a pioneering cloud-based collaborative animation platform designed to empower a new generation of animators to work, much in the same vein as the transition he is overseeing at SOM.
That was, until Amazon acquired Nimble, which coincided rather fortuitously with SOM seeking a CTO. He expands: “Nimble was founded by people very well established in the animation industry, these were people who made Shrek and
Madagascar among other movies. In that industry, when you go from movie to movie you essentially have to set up a new studio for each film; the character models don’t transfer because there’s been new innovation over the duration of that movie and your technology is basically out of date. Part of the impetus for doing Nimble in the first place was to not only lessen the burden on a movie studio for every film they create, but to also allow a democratisation of where animators could live and work. It was about saying ‘listen, if you want to live in Des Moines and work on the latest Avengers movie in LA, you can’. Everything is there in the cloud to let you do that.
“That’s where I’ve found that industry similar to architecture, engineering and
“YOU DON’T NEED THE EXPENSIVE WORKSTATIONS. YOU CAN MOVE MORE QUICKLY AND COLLABORATE MORE EFFECTIVELY BY INTERACTING IN THE CLOUD ENVIRONMENT”
construction (AEC),” he adds. “In animation, you’re probably looking at about $20k of hardware per seat, per animator. And that quickly adds up if you’re making a Shrek or a Madagascar. Then there is all the support and networking equipment and the fact that everyone has to be in the same building in very expensive real estate in LA, Vancouver or wherever. These animators basically have to migrate with their family for each new project. In AEC, the number of people working on a building design may be smaller, say 20 or so, but they like to work together closely in shared workspaces and offices dotted around the world. The same logic applies, though. You don’t need the expensive workstations. You can move more quickly
and collaborate more effectively by interacting in the cloud environment. Without adopting that mindset, you’re perpetuating a legacy industry and the technology world will quickly pass you by.”
This was the thrust of DeMillo’s approach to the CTO position at SOM. “They’d never had one before,” he says of the role, “and it’s kind of interesting from my perspective. I’d really describe it as a CTO/CIO in that I’m doing both. Traditionally, the CTO is a research technologist that provides a strategic direction for a company or entity, particularly around how to leverage technologies, do research into new innovations and adopt them in order to progress. The CIO keeps the lights on. It’s fair to say
“YOU USE YOUR EXPERIENCE, YOU HAVE THE CONVERSATION AND YOU RAPIDLY SHOW PEOPLE THAT IT’S EXTREMELY POSSIBLE”
that prior to my starting, SOM had several people I would consider to be closer to the CIO role; we never had a CTO that was really trying to unite the firm from a technology perspective.”
SOM is one of the world’s largest and most respected architectural, interior design, engineering and urban planning firms, responsible for working on famous buildings including the Burj Al Khalifa, 7 World Trade Center, London’s Canary Wharf and many more. As with many international firms – in this case, 11 offices in key locations worldwide – a lack of a central technology presence meant DeMillo found an environment in which each location was to some extent operating independently of its sister offices. “The company was a technology leader in AEC in the 80s and 90s,” says DeMillo. “It had carved out its own very successful niche and built software to operate very successfully in that sphere. But in my early discussion with partners about the needs of the firm it was clear that we needed a more unified technology presence. My career has been all about scalability – how you use technology to scale a business rapidly without a lot of repetition or overspin, which of course comes back to the cloud environment that was so successful at Nimble.
“When I first started talking to SOM, it was along the lines of ‘listen, I’ve just come from an environment very much like yours with $20k workstations per animator, big server farms and drives. I’m here to tell you
that none of that is necessary anymore’. Naturally, the first thing you encounter when you say something like that to an entire business vertical that’s been built of large-scale work is ‘you’re full of c**p, that’s not possible’,” he jokes. “But you use your experience, you have the conversation and you rapidly show people that it’s extremely possible.”
As for translating that vision into strategy, DeMillo recalls acknowledging the dissociation of the various offices’ technology spends. “It was ‘first thing’s first, let’s unify the offices’,” he says. “Initially it was about keeping people comfortable on their existing technology platforms, bringing them together and slowly, one by one, bringing those services over to cloud-based services that interact in the backend. That includes
things like abandoning corporate email servers for Gmail, adopting one piece of software that could serve all 11 offices and conducting spot tests with some of the design architects and structural engineers to see if we could support them with cloud-based services. It became apparent very quickly that we could.”
To drive this initiative DeMillo formed a dedicated software engineering group consisting of engineers he’d previously
worked with. “It was basically, I’ve got one shot at this, I need to have people that I know can pull it off,” he concedes. To date, they have, working on the development of a firm-wide cloud-based solution to everything from data and file storage through to streaming solutions for architectural applications, computational engines, and communication tools.
As with any such project, change management was as essential a skill as tech
“I’VE ALWAYS BEEN FASCINATED BY HOW YOU CAN TRANSLATE THE PHYSICAL INTO THE DIGITAL”
experience. Unlike animation, where the end of a movie gives a clear break to regroup, rethink and introduce the new, AEC is an ever-moving beast, with different studios working on projects consistently. “It’s a hackneyed phrase,” DeMillo concedes, “but it’s like changing the wheels on the car when it’s still moving. Here, there’s really no convenient time where you can tell everyone to put down the tools you have been using for decades and shift to something new. COVID made that easier in some respects, as it drove the need for change, but we’ve been making those changes in small steps. You get some done and it becomes easier to introduce new technologies – the cadence of change
has shifted from every several years to every several months. We want to shorten that even more going forward.”
On that progression, DeMillo signposts several next steps: “Once everyone is comfortably in the cloud – and that’s a transition that will take about a year – we can begin work on worldwide or firmwide applications, software, databases and so on. It’s all about giving everyone the same access, letting everyone see the interactions and enabling the imagination of the architects and designers.”
The long-term vision, he adds, is the merging of the digital and real worlds further, with the cloud acting as a leveller, a common platform for everyone. It is a consistent theme that underpins DeMillo’s approach to, and ongoing passion for technology. To the extent, he reveals towards the end of the interview that he lives it at home.
“You should see my house,” he laughs, “it’s a little unnerving. My home is very selfaware. I’ve an IoT system with 220 sensors and activatable objects. Without getting too philosophical, it has an understanding of what I want from the environment based on the data of how I live – it’s a fun hobby.”
And not as challenging as you’d imagine. DeMillo explains how I could do similar:
“It’s cool to play with the data and try things out. There’s ways you can do it with minimal headache and inexpensively. We can talk.” We’ll save that for the follow up...
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND TRAVELLING IN STYLE
Remember the Walkman? Don’t. Really, trust us. While the need to block out the world, or take a moment for introspection still exists, you should do it with high-end engineering and style. The A&ultima SP2000 delivers both. Beyond its lavish sandblasted aluminum chassis, the innovative personal audio player packs a punch. Specifically, MQA file support, 512GB of internal storage – or around 2,000 albums for the layman – dual-band wifi and bluetooth, and built-in access to Spotify, Tidal, Qobuz, Amazon and Apple Music and Deezer. The perfect travel companion.
www.astellnkern.com
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND TRAVELLING IN STYLE
A robot suitcase that follows you is, in reality, all we need to say here. But we’ll indulge you.
COWAROBOT R1 is the world’s first full autonomous smart suitcase, meaning it’s packed with innovations that allow it to follow you while also avoiding obstacles in its path. It does that through clever AI that recognises you, meaning it stays faithful however busy the airport. Other features include a ‘find me’ function, a smartphone app that sets an alarm if the case moves more than three metres away and a battery that can charge other electronic devices.
www.myrobotcentre.co.uk
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND TRAVELLING IN STYLE
Ah, travelling in summer. The relaxing, the sun, the pool, the unrelenting quest to beat your own PB... The latter comes courtesy of Finis’ Smart Goggle, an innovative and modern take on the classic swimming goggles that, thanks to a real-time display screen that sits in the corner of the lens, shows you laps, splits, set times, rest times and more. Smart Goggle also tracks your swims and connects to an app that gives a breakdown of your day’s work and lets you share it with friends.
www.finisswim.com
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND TRAVELLING IN STYLE
Everyone shares holiday snaps. But share immersive experiences? For that you need Insta360 Nano, a high-quality 360 degree camera that turns your iPhone into a VR camera. Insta360 Nano takes great photos. It also allows you to share real-time 4K video with anyone in the world, has high-tech gyroscope technology for real-time stabilisation, and can be used in VR mode with the accompanying VR headset (part of the camera’s packaging and similar to Google Cardboard).
www.insta360.com
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND TRAVELLING IN STYLE
Nebula promises to ‘make the world your movie theatre’, regardless of where you go and, presumably, however good or bad the TV is in your hotel room. Solar portable is a 1080p projector that connects to your smartphone or other devices, allowing you to watch cinematic quality visuals on a projected screen of up to 120 inches. High-tech audio is delivered by dual 3W speakers and the system can also be used as a portable bluetooth speaker. It’s almost enough to make you hope for rain...
www.ukseenebula.com
Fusion powers the sun and the stars. It is the energy source of the universe, without which, there would be no life on Earth. It is also a clean and abundant source of power that’s imperative for global sustainable development. If you’re as innovative and smart as Tokamak Energy, that is.
The UK-based group of world-leading scientists and engineers is working towards a world-first: the delivery of a compact spherical tokamak [a device for producing controlled fusion reactions in hot plasma] capable of enabling commercial fusion power. The company’s ST40 tokamak is a fully commissioned device that, during 2018 testing, achieved a plasma temperature of 15 million degrees Celsius – hotter than the core of the sun.
Tokamak Energy aims to demonstrate the full feasibility of fusion, which it modestly deems a ‘considerable scientific and engineering challenge’ by 2030.
www.tokamakenergy.co.uk
Let’s get it out of the way now: the machines are not coming for yours or your employees’ jobs. And if my meeting with Amelia – dubbed the ‘most human AI’ by her creators –is anything to go by, their sole aim isn’t our destruction. On the contrary, Amelia represents the future of human-machine collaboration, a ‘hybrid workforce’ that sits within your organisation like any other employee and adds significant value for businesses, employees and customers alike.
Today’s leaders should be well aware of the opportunities that come from AI adoption: streamlined IT operations, automated end-to-end processes and the digitising of routine tasks so as to bring greater organisational efficiency, to name a few. But how do you successfully integrate an intelligent conversational AI that can think for, and train itself into your culture and processes? The answer is remarkably simple: treat her as another employee.
THE WORKPLACE OF THE FUTURE IS ONE OF HUMAN-MACHINE COLLABORATION AND INTELLIGENT AI COLLEAGUES, SAYS AMELIA
“It’s about acceptance,” says Henrik Erikson, Senior Sales Engineer at Amelia (formerly IPsoft).
“Organisations need to stop looking at technology like AI as a threat and understand the potential. Amelia is a digital employee that fully integrates into the processes, the culture and behaviour of an organisation – she’s a colleague that’s been created to help you and your business. It’s way more than a chatbot, it’s conversational and self-learning AI that is a significant differentiator for any business.”
Successful integration of AI into any organisation forms part of a wider technology transformation process. But with an intelligent, cognitive AI such as Amelia, leaders must first understand their organisation and existing operations, and how to obtain the maximum from human-machine collaboration, says Faisal Abbasi, managing director Western Europe and MEMA at Amelia. “If you’re a COO, CTO or any other executive, as soon as you start to think about having an AI, an Amelia, join your organisation then you have to review your existing processes.
logic or data that’s needed to really understand how your customers interact with your business. That’s the beauty of an AI like Amelia, it learns about your organisation and provides the ammunition and understanding to know where to change and to better support your clients than you’d ever have with a pure human organisation.”
The hybrid workforce sees digital employees like Amelia eliminating the unnecessary complexity that exists between humans and enterprise systems. The AI is built to deliver the best elements of human interaction, such as conversation, expression, emotion and understanding, to everyday user experiences. In Amelia’s world, says the company, AI isn’t considered a substitute for human ingenuity.
“Consider an organisation with only humans,” he continues. “There’s no way that they alone can capture and recall the volume of business
“Technology – and this is as true for Amelia as it is for anything else – is about ensuring that us humans can go beyond the current confines,” says Abbasi. “When it comes to the hybrid workforce, the larger the organisation the greater the value. Amelia interacts with an organisation’s data, its back-end systems, its CRM and its customers. At the same time, she communicates with her human colleagues, helps them with tasks and learns from their interactions.”
If the thought of leaving your customers in the hands of a machine – even one as smart as Amelia –leaves you nervous you’ll be pleased to know you’re not alone. The issues of ethics and bias continue to dominate discussions around AI implementation, and for good reason. “Removing any bias is crucial,” says Abbasi, “but it all comes down to the data that
Amelia is fed. If you enlarge that data pool to millions of interactions and records then the AI will behave very differently.
Organisations can eliminate many of these issues by having a human supervisor so that, should Amelia learn something new, she can ask him or her if it is appropriate behaviour to replicate again.”
“TECHNOLOGY IS ABOUT ENSURING THAT US HUMANS CAN GO BEYOND THE CURRENT CONFINES”
— Faisal Abbasi
For Erikson, control is crucial. But so too is not expecting the same standards from your machines as you do your humans. “Amelia is part of your organisation, so you have to manage her as you do human employees – teach her how to interact with clients, how the organisation should be perceived and so forth. Of course, the beauty of an intelligent AI is that if she doesn’t understand any of those points, she will ask.”
Free of any control, Amelia is more than capable of not asking and of finding the answer to those points herself but she doesn’t. The successful adoption of any AI relies on setting clear and consistent control over the information that the technology receives, but to trust its ability to manage that information. “The limitations are only set by our limits and the other technologies we have; we’re always surprised at the capabilities,” says Erikson.
The secret, it seems, to the hybrid workforce is to successfully coexist.
www.amelia.com
“AMELIA IS PART OF YOUR ORGANISATION, SO YOU HAVE TO MANAGE HER AS YOU DO HUMAN EMPLOYEES”
— Henrik Erikson
PLATFORM
The Purchaser examines the trends and technologies impacting procurement and supply chain executives across all major industry sectors. It provides insight and analysis on those technologies driving change and explores how and why the role of procurement and supply chain leaders is evolving.
www.ThePurchaserMagazine.com
Purpose, culture and collaboration: digital leadership according to Rob Thurner
PURPOSE, CULTURE AND COLLABORATION: DIGITAL LEADERSHIP ACCORDING TO ROB THURNER
I’ll ask you a question,” says Rob Thurner, halfway through an in-depth discussion on digital leadership, “if you get 10 senior execs from a company in a room and tell them to distill the essence of their business and why they exist, would you get one answer or 10?” Your thoughts on responding to that particular conundrum could well say a lot about the effectiveness – or not – of your leadership, how your brand is viewed by those outside the organisation, and your team’s ability to thrive in the digital age.
That’s because, as Thurner goes on to explain, a lack of clarity and understanding on digital purpose, on technology, and
and watches, and we have a TV channel’ is just a result of that strong conviction. But it makes everyone buy into it and emotionally connect with the brand.
“For businesses and leaders, it’s essential to start with a single purpose that aligns with internal and external stakeholders,” he continues. “Then you layer on, which is where it gets difficult. You need speed, because technology is evolving so rapidly that you have to stay ahead of the curve; you build in decision making that’s based on data not your instinct; you create an entrepreneurial culture – what Jeff Bezos famously said was his ‘day one mentality’
on how that translates into successful leadership is one of the biggest challenges facing organisations if they really wish to embrace transformation. “Look at a business like Google,” he enthuses. “It’s mission is simple: to organise the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.That’s it. It underlines everything the company does. Apple is the same: it had a very clear and powerful purpose around tackling technology problems in a different, creative and user-friendly way. The fact that purpose translates to ‘oh, we now make phones
and which has been there every day since at Amazon; finally, you need a relentless focus on the customer. Get those four priorities understood across the organisation and you galvanise your team and set everyone in the right direction.”
Granted, Thurner makes it sound deceptively simple. But then, when it comes to the executive education and transformation consulting services he and his company, Burn the Sky, provide to clients like American Express, HSBC, Heineken,
“If you get 1 0 senior execs from a company in a room and tell them to distill the essence of their business and why they exist, would you get one answer or 1 0 ?”
John Lewis, Google and others, that’s always been the idea.
There is no one route to successful leadership, or to journeying the myriad complexities of a modern transformation, but building in simplicity – cutting through the noise – is crucial. And it all goes back some years: “My father was a technologist,” he says. “He was a big aero guy, worked on the Concorde simulator and was a fighter pilot and it just fascinated me. I always admired his ability to take what seemed like incredibly complex systems and solutions and show that they were based on some really simple principles. For so many examples, including digital technology, the real
technology can really do. When Apple came along and Steve Jobs turned an MP3
player into a game changer mobile phone it was a great moment – it showed the extent to which the technology is almost invisible; it just makes things happen beautifully and simply, it’s intuitive to use and enables a whole load of very complex processes behind the scenes.
“I remember thinking that if we could simplify, in educational terms, what ‘digital’ is and how to explain it clearly to stakeholders we could go a long way towards helping companies catch up with what customers are already doing and have basically been spoiled with thanks
answer lies in taking core technology and applying it to solve a specific problem, but in a way that everyone gets – and feels connected to.”
It’s an approach that Thurner and company have honed over the 10 years they’ve operated and, he explains, has reflected the growing appetite for both digital adoption and transformation that shapes the modern enterprise. “A lot of this process has really been held back by a lack of understanding about what
to the brilliance of Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Google,” he adds. “For me, that’s always the starting point as we begin to examine the skills of a leader and what they must bring to a digital organisation.”
Skip forward 10 years. Those same leadership skills are more important than ever in a landscape populated by greater complexity, the exponential growth and adoption of enterprise technologies and disruption caused by a global pandemic.
“The real answer lies in taking core technology and applying it to solve a specific problem, but in a way that everyone gets”
To refer back to our starting point, setting a clear vision and set of goals is crucial in such an environment, but Thurner points to a new type of leader and a new mindset towards the art of leading as essential skills. Today’s leader, he says, is one who is as much a people-driven individual as a technologist, a leader with a small ‘l’ who understands the subtleties of being a good change agent and driving a team of individuals.
“There are fundamental building blocks,” he explains, “all of which have to be aligned. You’ve got a customer-centric focus and, of course, technology, automation and data. But there’s as much a focus on innovation culture, leadership and mindset as there
is anything else. If any of those is broken, it won’t work — you have to nail all four pillars to be successful, and it’s the businesses that don’t realise that, don’t break down silos and build collaboration that will have the biggest problem.”
Much of that culture revolves around a change in the way that leadership should be viewed, according to Thurner. The days of traditional, top-down command and control are gone, he says, replaced by a leader who, rather than believing people should follow him or her, works to cocreate the future with their team rather than for them. “The most effective leaders aren’t out there banging the drum,” he affirms. “They’re supporting others, giving people in their teams the empowerment to make decisions – and to make those decisions without fear of failure.
“There are so many ways to use technology to your advantage and it evolves so rapidly that a good leader has to be more collaborative and encourage the experimental, the trying out of new concepts and ideas without fear of reprimand or failure,” Thurner adds. “It’s an experimental mindset and I think that can be a problem for some; many at the top feel they’ve got to be reporting on quarterly earnings and performance. A really important point to remember is that your ROI on innovation won’t come as shortterm cash. It’s about learning and how to apply that understanding to future products and development.”
In every walk of life, we learn by example. Thurner cites Google’s policies on innovation and leadership as an influence. Throughout our conversation, examples given range from a strict policy that dictates no leader can hire people into his or her team [an important rule that eliminates bias and places a premium on skills and behaviour] to fostering a workplace that encourages risk-taking and ideas to flourish.
“Where do you think Gmail came from, or Google Maps?,” he asks. “Google has a concept of 10% projects, whereby Googlers are encouraged to have side projects to work on when they’re playing their table tennis or taking time out. In
the case of Gmail, it came from an employee in Australia who wanted 1GB on his email account. He took the idea to his bosses, told them what he wanted to achieve so they gave him a bit of money and time to work on it. Before you know it you have one of the company’s core eight products that have around one billion active users worldwide. And why that worked is because the company
places the onus on the manager or leader to prove why they shouldn’t invest in an idea, rather than on the Googler having to prove why they should. All ideas are seen as strong ideas and it’s the behaviour that’s praised through the company’s ‘Brave Penguin’ award — the idea being that all of Google’s penguins are standing on an ice shelf and it takes one of them to be brave enough to dive in first, take the
“If someone at the top feels like this is an emotional thing where his or her ideas have to be respected, I’m afraid it’s a recipe for disaster”
plunge and encourage others. There’s a lot we can learn from that.”
Building a team of brave penguins doesn’t happen overnight. Establishing and driving such a mindset starts with leaders. Some, he concedes, are already very effective at driving good digital culture, supporting staff and leading with a small ‘l’. For those that aren’t, the advice is stark: “This isn’t about hierarchy,” warns Thurner. “If there’s a sense of ‘it’s my way or the highway’ then I’m afraid that leader has to be almost clairvoyant-esque and very charismatic in their approach in order to galvanise the team. Encourage people lower down the organisation to identify jobs or projects and spin them up quickly.
And be happy to accept the results: if the feedback is bad, kill it and move on. If someone at the top feels like this is an emotional thing where his or her ideas have to be respected, I’m afraid it’s a recipe for disaster.”
The pace of change with technology is exponential. That both needs to be understood across an organisation, and be reflected in a flexible and proactive leadership mindset. “It’s impossible to know everything,” Thurner states. “Instead, you have to introduce a mindset and a culture where we’re always learning; the answers don’t start and end within the organisation. I always advise people to build networks of learners and informants both internally and externally, the latter being a great way to bring fresh perspectives and challenge established organisational ideas.
“This digital stuff isn’t easy. It requires risk. It requires energy, and someone who has the personality and character to bring people back from inevitable failure,” he continues. “There will be things that don’t work, people will be frustrated, bloodied and bruised, and will work long hours, and no leader should fall into the trap of thinking they have the Midas touch. If you’re not making mistakes then you’re not trying hard enough in my opinion, and if you can’t find a way of improving you’re either incredibly lucky or even worse, you’ve become predictable.”
How better to demonstrate your world changing, climate saving technology than building your own hypercar? The very train of thought – we assume – that led UK-based cleantech innovators, Viritech, to the Apricale.
The clue to the genius behind the stunning machine, if you know your Latin, is in the name: Apricus meaning ‘touched by the sun’ or consisting of hydrogen. Viritech consists of a group of passionate cleantech engineers with the shared goal of becoming the world’s leading developer of hydrogen powertrain
solutions, for aerospace, marine, distributed power and automotive. The company fervently believes that if we are to reverse climate change, we must embrace hydrogen alongside battery power.
Apricale will prove this. The car, which will enter limited production in 2023, is the starting point for a development programme for hydrogen powertrain solutions and proprietary technologies such as innovative vehicle control systems and structural pressure vessels.
www.viritech.co.uk
“BATTERIES VS HYDROGEN IS NOT VHS/BETAMAX II [...] WE MUST EMBRACE
HYDROGEN IF WE ARE TO SAVE OUR PLANET”
Ternova Group CEO Rodrigo Tona discusses sustainability and assisting some of the world’s biggest companies drive harmony between people and planet
WORDS JONATHAN DYBLE
Alot happened in the 2010s. Be it terror attacks and natural disasters that shook the world, or seismic events like Brexit and the 2016 US Presidential Election, historians will have a lot to analyse when reflecting upon this century’s second decade. And that’s before we even reach the 2020s, which will undoubtedly be defined by the global COVID-19 pandemic.
Such an unprecedented period has drastically changed the way in which many of us live our lives. But so too have key global trends, many of which are too pressing to ignore. In the context of today’s world, arguably no single word has become more important for our future than sustainability. Indeed, sustainable goals, practices and objectives are shaping the strategies of organisations, global corporations and entire countries.
“This really is a time in history where every business is going to be shaken,” affirms Rodrigo Tona. “Companies will have to find harmony between their financial goals, social development and the environment. That, to me, is what sustainability means.”
Tona is better placed to comment on the matter than most. As CEO of Ternova Group, he’s helped oversee the transformation of what was once a small El Salvadorian company manufacturing plastic products to become a global leader in cutting-edge sustainability solutions.
As to how and why that has happened, “Ternova Group is first and foremost a family business,” Tona explains. “The company has always had a long-term vision of creating and sustaining a business that would be there for future generations. We therefore wanted to expand and grow quickly. To achieve that, we needed to reconsider our entire strategy and anticipate major trends, propelled by growing consumer consciousness and regulatory requirements, as they began to emerge.”
Ternova began to develop a comprehensive sustainability strategy 15 years ago, focusing on three core areas. First, it wanted to be recognised as a sound corporate citizen; second, it sought to have a positive impact on climate change; and third, it aimed to adhere to circular economy-centric principles throughout its entire value chain.
Substantial commitments were made. The company became the first organisation in the region to sign the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s New Plastics Economy initiative; the firm also signed the UN Global Compact. Likewise, it outlined a number of aggressive goals, aiming to become the first organisation in the region to achieve carbon neutral status, and establish itself as one of the top 10 best places to work in Central America.
In order to achieve these ambitions, however, drastic changes had to come from within.“Realising that you need to continuously change, adapt and adjust is really the first step in a sustainability journey, but it’s not easy,” Tona reveals. “We were a company focused on operational excellence for years, and our
innovation would be geared towards products. When you want to incorporate innovation in terms of sustainability, it’s a different type of innovation. Now we’re innovating the business model, which requires the organisation to reconfigure how top management thinks, acts and measures itself.”
“WE NEEDED TO RECONSIDER OUR ENTIRE STRATEGY AND ANTICIPATE MAJOR TRENDS”
This overhaul has manifested in a threepronged continual review of internal operations, product portfolio and external alliances, designed to ensure all parts of Ternova’s value chain act as effective cogs in a wider sustainability-fuelled machine. In doing so, the company is able to accurately measure its impact, and in turn prioritise sustainable initiatives based on these measurements.
Ternova has made a series of incremental and meaningful sustainable changes,
particularly relating to its use of energy, raw materials and technology to bolster production efficiency. This includes the establishment of a reverse supply chain, the company sorting and recycling the waste of its customers efficiently, then providing them with sustainable, recycled products.
Two such partnerships were formed with Unilever and Nestlé, with Tona highlighting both enterprises as pioneers, owing to their declarations of intent to sustainably transform their product portfolios.
“We’ve been working with both Nestlé and Unilever to create sustainable solutions that go way beyond the norm,” he affirms. “Yes, we’ve been incorporating recycled content into their products, but we’ve also ensured their packaging is recyclable, and for those sources of waste that can’t be recycled, we’ve been creating bricks, stools for schools and other alternate products.”
Ternova has also been collaborating with Dow Chemical, co-creating pellets that use postconsumer recycled content, while garment brands Fruit of the Loom and Haynes have also consulted the company for support regarding their sustainability goals related to sustainable packaging and the circular economy.
Underpinning many of these ventures is an unrelenting focus on innovation. In order to remain at the leading edge, Ternova introduced an entrepreneurship model, encouraging its employees to focus on developing business enhancements. Here, an incubator, accelerator and funding strategy was launched, providing the time and resources that its staff needed to thrive.
But when COVID-19 hit, it seemed that such innovation efforts would need to be put on hold. “The first four months of the pandemic were really hard,” Tona explains. “I unfortunately became stuck in the US for 120 days when we were hit by COVID. It was immensely challenging – not only was I not there, but the whole team had to sustain the business remotely during a period of extreme uncertainty.
“WE HAVE BEEN SWIMMING AGAINST THE CURRENT TO CREATE SUSTAINABLE MODELS FOR SOME TIME”
“At the same time, owing to travel restrictions, we had to increase capacity in specific regions to continue to serve our customers under very complex conditions. Even now, the availability of materials and movement of goods has really been an issue, adding a new layer of complexity to our supply chain.”
Here, however, the company’s team rose to the challenge. In the first three months of the pandemic, through proactive, collective and innovative thinking, Ternova was able to shift its entire manufacturing operation from the production of sustainable packaging to the creation of medical gowns, producing over one million units that were distributed to healthcare facilities in the Central American region.
“I’m extremely proud of my team, of how they led by example,” Tona states. “By the end of 2020 we were ranked among the top five places to work in Central America and the Caribbean – a true reflection of how we managed the toughest possible challenge together.”
“THIS REALLY IS A TIME IN HISTORY WHERE EVERY BUSINESS IS GOING TO BE SHAKEN”
As we move through 2021, it seems that there may be a glimmer of hope that the end of the pandemic is in sight. For Ternova, the future looks increasingly bright. In the eyes of Tona, the coming months can be summarised by two simple words: optimism and opportunity.
“Things are going to change incredibly fast, and we want to be a part of that change to capture as many new opportunities as possible,” he says. “Our vision is to be a player in the transformation of industries, and part of the legacy of COVID-19 is the acceleration of those transformations. People have come to understand that the responsibility in terms of sustainability lies with us humans. Remember how Venice became clean at the beginning of the pandemic? It was incredible.
“This realisation has been music to our ears. We have been swimming against the current to create sustainable models for some time, without always having the support of others. Yet now, everything is becoming more aligned with sustainability, making it easier for us to create, or co-create solutions. We’re moving out of the pandemic with a stronger, more sustainable customer base, and that is tremendously positive.”
www.ternova.group
THE SMART
AND ARTIFICIAL ARE TRANSFORMING COMMERCIAL TRAINING, BHANU CHOUDHRIE
INTELLIGENCE
TRANSFORMING COMMERCIAL AVIATION
TRAINING, SAYS CHOUDHRIE
Forget COVID for a moment. Life is well, you’re cruising at 38,000ft with a drink in hand and a bite to eat.
You’re watching your favourite movie, perhaps. Your captain makes a familiar announcement, updating you on your flight and what you can expect on arrival [yes, it’s warm]. All is normal. Except, that pleasant and reassuring voice isn’t coming from the flight deck. Rather, it’s coming from behind a computer screen, many hundreds of miles away by a pilot monitoring your journey in much the same way that you or I play a flight simulator.
Granted, we are guilty of a little sensationalising and – for now – this is an extreme example, but it’s one that Bhanu Choudhrie believes isn’t entirely implausible. “If you fast forward 30 years or so into the future, I fully expect to see more autonomous flying. And remember that currently, close to 90/95% is already being done by computers, a typical pilot will fly an aircraft for no more than 15-20 minutes. You may have a pilot on board, or you may not.
“Look at an equivalent example,” he continues. “Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have flown for the last 15 or 20 years without a pilot on board. Such is the pace of innovation that the lag time, which used to be a couple of seconds for this kind of remote control, is down to a couple of milliseconds. In many ways it would be no different to the simulators we operate on the ground. Your pilot would be in the simulator while your plane is in the air, monitoring and maintaining the systems,
and they could intervene should they need to at any point. Other than that, your aircraft will do everything for you: taxi, takeoff, land and even disembark – it all happens seamlessly and digitally. If Amazon can deliver you parcels like that, or Tesla can drive you anywhere you want to go, why should commercial aviation be any different?”
Why indeed. After all, in recent years – as with every other industry sector – AI, machine learning and automation have seen increasing adoption across a host of aviation tasks from reducing operating
“IF AMAZON CAN DELIVER YOU PARCELS LIKE THAT, OR TESLA CAN DRIVE YOU ANYWHERE YOU WANT TO GO, WHY SHOULD COMMERCIAL AVIATION BE ANY DIFFERENT?”
costs for airlines, improving ticketing and customer service and ground handling, through to traffic management, delivering increased fuel savings and improved maintenance, and supporting pilots in their strategic decision making and mission management.
And, as Choudhrie goes on to explain, the same technologies are having a marked effect on the training and onboarding of new pilots, particularly in light of an evolving industry facing the reality of travel post COVID. Specifically, the AIdriven data that Choudhrie’s company, Alpha Aviation Group, provides to prospective airlines on its cadets’ training programmes can help analyse the routes they fly and specific information on flying skills, such as angle of descent, acceleration and fuel burn. For an aviation industry tentatively getting back on its feet, such information is invaluable in demonstrating which pilots are best suited for specific routes and for reducing costs.
“When it comes to simulator training, the basics are the basics,” he says, modestly. “Beyond that, technology evolution means that you can add significant value by implementing things like AI into that spectrum of training. It can take up to two years to train a student pilot, and that’s a mix of classroom training, simulator work and flying; the data that comes out of that journey is vast. Analysing that data using artificial intelligence rather than a training captain sitting next to the student just lets you be so much more accurate and get the information quicker.”
Pilot training is one of the most significant costs to airlines, for good reason. But such is the granular detail of the data derived from training work that Choudhrie believes it will be a crucial factor in airline decision making in the future. “The beauty is that there’s so much data. It’s all there, and has been for some time, but nobody knew how to
dissect and examine it, or to gain insight from it. That’s where AI has proved so beneficial. And, because it’s intelligent, it can pull out certain elements that even the most experienced training captains may not actually see.
“I’ll give you an example,” he continues. “Such is the focus on cost now that airlines want to know every detail of a flight. Say they’re flying seven or eight times a day between Manila and Hong Kong, the data from the simulator will show which pilot or crew consumes the most and least fuel on that journey.
It will show the inputs they’re making during takeoff and landing and how they treat the aircraft when in charge of it, which is essential to forecast potential maintenance costs.”
You’d be forgiven for thinking this a little big brother-esque, but the work carried out by the likes of Alpha is anything but. Not only, for example, is such a high level of data providing insight to guide the aviation industry in one of its most perilous periods, it is improving airmanship and standards of safety across the board.
“WE’RE MOVING AWAY FROM PEOPLE TOWARDS TECHNOLOGY”
“AI CAN PULL OUT CERTAIN ELEMENTS THAT EVEN THE MOST EXPERIENCED TRAINING CAPTAINS MAY NOT ACTUALLY SEE”
“We work really closely with the airlines,” says Choudhrie, “particularly when it comes to building a long-term view of what they need and how to achieve it. In the case of the data, it allows us to have a dialogue with an airline about a cadet pilot. We can demonstrate they are excellent on certain routes, and where and when they should be best utilised to optimise every aspect of their flying service.
“It’s making the landscape more competitive too,” he adds. “Now, cadets need to go the extra mile. It’s no longer a case of ‘okay, I’ve passed, I’ve graduated and I’ll get hired’. Airlines will be looking at the data in terms of tiers: are you in the top 5%, the top 10%, 15% and so on.
It’s the beauty of AI and data, you can’t fool machines. You’re working within such stringent guidelines that it’s the best way to understand performance and improve safety. The data we collect will allow the regulator to adapt technology and procedures in response to the insight provided, and that will only continue. We’re moving away from people towards technology, and so I think we’ll see more instances of regulators world-over employing people who understand AI and have the ability to analyse data.”
COVID has accelerated technology adoption in every industry. For Choudhrie, the ‘big wake up call’ has been for airlines, the response to which will be rationalisation and consolidation of aircraft and crew - making intelligent and actionable data a crucial tool. “Initially, the pandemic just put a halt on the sector,” he recalls. “We’re going to see airlines take the opportunity to really consider their fleets in a more rational way. You do that and you soon realise you don’t need four different aircraft and that you can do it with two, for example. That immediately impacts your approach to crews and hiring and data lets you do that in the best possible way. There’s no question that technology will drive the industry forward now, it’s going to happen.”
www.aag.com
If life [and film] has taught us one lesson, it’s that you can improve anything with lasers. In the case of Cepton Technologies, of which Dr Jun Pei is founder and CEO, you can add to that list smart city planning, next-generation automated vehicles, retail planning, object tracking security and frictionless road tolling. To name a few.
Dr Pei is a respected entrepreneur and technologist in optics – he is responsible for developing the first optical and acoustical combination technique in semiconductor thin film measurement, holds numerous patents and has developed advanced 3D instruments and pioneered parallel computing in interference microscopy.
He founded Cepton in 2016. The company’s lidar (light detecting and ranging) technology is akin to radar, but with lasers. It can see in the dark, works at extremely high resolution and can identify objects and hazards at a wide field of view, giving it transformational potential, including in autonomous vehicle safety.
www.cepton.com
Berlin is iconic for any number of reasons. It is, of course, famed world-over for its nightlife where you’ll find never-ending nightclubs, energy, music and a carefree but embracing attitude. That’s after 5pm, of course. For the hours prior to that, the city is reputed as one of Europe’s best for startups, boasting an ecosystem of tech-driven innovators like fintech firms N26 and Raisin, social music platform SoundCloud, and many more. Including Uberall, founded by Florian Hübner. Here, Hübner takes the reins on a guided tour of the city, pointing out the best places for business, sustenance and pleasure. Hold on tight...
The most impressive coffee and laptops workspace (because it’s so unusual) is Café St Oberholz. I haven’t worked there too often, as I am a Berliner, but I first saw it in the 90s, when I was visiting my uncle. In those days, it was a coffee shop where people would work with their (then huge) laptops. Later, I remember visiting again in 2003, when I’d started studying computer science, and there were loads of people ‘hacking away’ there.
Now Café Oberholz has expanded to more locations, with co-working spaces on the upper floors. As our first office was 100 metres from the café, I used to conduct
meetings and interview job candidates there for some time. It has great memories and it’s still nice to go there for the occasional meeting or coffee now.
betahaus is a workspace created by six students back in 2009, before coworking was even a thing. It’s still a place for startups, entrepreneurs and freelancers to come together, and if you’re looking for a place to host a hybrid event – yes, even those can be blended virtual and in-person now –betahaus has two locations (Kreuzberg and Neukölln). Its event spaces have been updated with socially-distanced seating, and all the livestream equipment you need.
BETAHAUS
I don’t have much to say firsthand, as I’ve always lived in my own places here in Berlin. But since I can’t offer you the chance of some couch surfing, I can tell you out-of-town visitors like nhow Berlin for its funky design and music-themed vibe – the hotel even offers free guitar and keyboard room service. We had one of our Christmas parties there and loved the killer outdoor terrace on the Spree.
Downtown Apartments is great if you’re looking for more of a ‘home from home’ experience. It’s 24-hour self-check-in, and all its apartments have kitchens and open out onto a balcony or terrace, with views over a nearby park and across the city all the way out to the TV tower at Alexanderplatz.
Airbnbs are also a great way to discover Berlin in a way that’s tailored to you, from city apartments to more quirky options like houseboats and at least one baumhaus (treehouse!).
Florian is CEO and co-founder of Uberall, where he is the main technical and product lead for the company.
Florian started the business with his oldest friend, David Federhen, in 2013 to enable local businesses to build stronger relationships with their customers and communities by becoming more visible and engaging online.
Uberall started with a small team of four people and now has more than 300 employees and is still growing rapidly. Before founding Uberall Florian spent several years as a strategy consultant for McKinsey & Company, where he advised leading companies across a variety of industries. He has also worked at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam.
My heart is with Standard Pizza . Sure, it’s ‘just’ a pizza place, but it’s a great one. For business related dinners, I often get dragged to stuffy, fancy places, but that’s not a great representation of who we are and how we think. So I might bring anyone – my team, our board, clients – to my favourite pizza place, and it creates a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere for real conversation.
For something a bit more gastronomic, Cookies Cream in Mitte is great. It’s probably one of the few Michelin starred restaurants in the world with such a dodgy looking entrance (through a car park and past a dumpster), but the vegetarian menu is inventive and delicious. I’m a veggie but even die-hard carnivores would agree it deserves its Michelin star.
COOKIES CREAM
A bit tricky after a year of lockdown. I’ve lived in Prenzlauer Berg for 12 years and it’s my home. I’d say it’s one of Berlin’s best neighbourhoods for walking around and exploring. Kastanienallee is a chestnut tree-lined street full of cafes and specialist shops – organic ice cream, art, streetwear – and it’s home to Prater, the oldest biergarten in Berlin.
One thing that amazes me again and again is Mauerpark Karaoke , which takes place every Sunday at 3pm in summer. It’s held in an open-air amphitheatre, and anyone can show off their talent (or lack of it!) to hundreds of enthusiastic people. It’s fantastic! Inspiring, different, honest, fun... and to me, very Berlin. It’s a place where you can do and be whatever you want.
NEUES MUSEUM
THE MALL OF BERLIN SHOPPING CENTRE AT LEIPZIGER PLATZ
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2,400 leading companies share the latest topics relevant to the future. A great event for networking with mobile and tech industry influencers.
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