A pattern, not a chronology.

01

Curiosity & setting out

It started earlier than you might think. As a teenager I designed and sewed my own clothes — wide, unusual cuts you couldn’t buy anywhere. I taught myself to sew because I had the picture in my head and nobody else was making it. A pattern that would stay: when what I wanted didn’t exist, I learned to make it myself.

Then came military service. I started as a medic in Kempten and moved to an engineers’ barracks in Munich. After a month I realised the system bothered me more than I was willing to bear — so I became a conscientious objector and did civilian service instead. It turned into one of the most formative times of my life: at the Pfennigparade in Munich I accompanied young people with severe disabilities through their school days and their exams. Some of them knew they would not grow old, and they met life with a joy and determination I have never forgotten. That is where I learned what dignity means — and that a person’s worth has nothing to do with what they can achieve.

Then I had to get out. With a backpack I travelled once around the world, always heading west: New York, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Tahiti, the Cook Islands and Fiji, where I took the time to learn to dive and explore more islands. Hitchhiking the length of New Zealand, including one of the very first bungee jumps there; Australia up to Port Douglas, then Bali, Singapore, by train through Malaysia to Bangkok. In northern Thailand to the hill tribes, with elephants and on rafts, up to the border of Myanmar; in the south to Koh Samui — back then still without an airport — and Koh Phangan. Then via the Maldives to India, Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the wildest part of all. Before smartphones there were aerogrammes: thin blue paper that took weeks to reach home.

Later, during my studies, I worked nights at the Lissabon Bar in Munich’s Haidhausen — and paid for the next journeys in the semester breaks. On one of them, travelling via Hong Kong to Asia, I saw someone talking on a mobile phone for the first time, a device the size of a brick. I had no idea networks would one day be my work.

What stayed: You can set out without knowing the way — and teach yourself what is still missing. It was already on my first business card: The Journey Is Destination.

02

How systems develop

I left the lab of a Nobel laureate to sell videos. But let me start at the beginning.

I became a biologist because one question wouldn’t let go of me: how do individual cells come together without anyone directing them? After my intermediate diploma at TU Munich and my diploma in Freiburg, I did research at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology in Freiburg under Georges Köhler — Nobel laureate for monoclonal antibodies, the tool that later allowed immunology to map how the body tells self from non-self. Whom does a system trust, whom does it reject? That question never went away. A doctorate in Bern was planned — I walked away from it. Building something myself was stronger.

What stayed: You don’t understand a living system by its parts, but by their relationships.

03

Companies & information systems

I started out in business with my own video stores — Videothek & Telespiele GmbH “Manhattan No. 1”, several shops in southern Germany. Later Movie Plus Medien GmbH became the parent company: a wholesaler whose office still ordered largely by fax. So I wrote the first purchasing software myself, in Microsoft Access. Again something that didn’t exist — so I built it. Soon we were using historical data to buy smarter; today it would be called predictive purchasing, back then it was simply an edge. Movie Plus later held half of E-group GmbH, where we brought €55 million in purchasing volume and €150 million in external revenue into one system — delivery time went from two weeks to four days.

What stayed: Better information and integrated systems lead to better decisions — the thread that runs all the way to my work with AI today.

04

Seeing the world

Between two chapters I lived for a while like a nomad — Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Panama, Argentina, Brazil. The internet was in its infancy, and I was already working remotely: advising media and mid-sized companies between two flights. Really I was a traveller who took on a job now and then. For more than twelve years I flew paragliders and dived — the same landscape from above and from below. At Consult Cube in Zurich, the view of the whole became a profession: evaluating international projects and investments across several continents.

What stayed: Whoever knows something from several perspectives judges differently — more cautiously and more boldly at the same time.

05

Latin America

Colombia was never a market for me, but a home. In Bogotá I built up wireless IoT technology for buildings and cities with KiotSCO, bringing European technology together with Latin American opportunities. With KreARCE it became more personal: Casa KreARCE, the projects More Food and Peace & Love — hospitality, community, people around a table. This is where I lived Parchar — a way of living together we have forgotten.

What stayed: Business happens between people, not between metrics — and a bridge between Europe and Latin America carries weight in both directions.

06

Networks & infrastructure

Sometimes an evaluation turns into a building job. A start-up I assessed at Consult Cube became my work with IP500 — a standard for secure wireless building networks. Suddenly it was about ecosystems rather than single products: standards, interoperability, many manufacturers working together. In the world of software-defined buildings and fibre-to-the-office I learned how decentralised systems organise themselves. On a large educational campus in Villavicencio the task was retrofitting, lighting and energy control, sensors.

What stayed: No manufacturer solves this alone; the question is always how the parts talk to each other.

07

Connecting technologies

At BIT Consulting I reversed the usual order. Most start with a product and look for a problem. We started with the challenge, then looked for the right technologies and partners and built the solution around the problem — as advisor, co-founder and CTO in the sense of technology strategy and architecture of the partner ecosystem, responsible for business in Spain and Latin America. For Ecopetrol I designed an official appearance — an executive session on industrial IoT, data analytics, digital twins and AI.

What stayed: The strongest solution is rarely a product, but the right ecosystem around a clearly understood question.

08

Evaluating what comes next

With ISORYX, an ultra-thin coating, I noticed something: it fails the standard insulation tests — because material thickness is one of the test factors. For a thin film, that is the wrong yardstick. It isn’t the product that fails, it’s the test that doesn’t fit; more than ten years of field projects show the effect. That is exactly how I assess technology: first understand the physical core, then ask which test is the right one in the first place. I do the same with AI — first understand the process, then decide whether it needs redesign, classic automation, AI or an agentic workflow.

What stayed: Before you judge an answer, check whether the question is right.

09

The open frontier

And that brings me back to the question from the very beginning — only bigger. Cells decide through a subtle mechanism whom to trust and whom to reject. We humans have become worse at it. Our digital networks are built on attention and control, not on trust — and for years I have wondered whether we need a different foundation. I have written manifestos about it, but honestly I have more questions than answers. It is the same reflex as back then with needle and thread — only this time for something nobody has built yet.

What remains — and remains open: The journey was always the destination. On to Exploring