How Might We Empower Society To Move Rapidly Towards A Cleaner Future?

Constantin Schwaab: We all have to try and optimize our personal behavior. It starts with little things like separating trash, like not using your car, and all these things. There's also an overarching concept, we have to reduce consumption. Reducing consumption, only then will we get to a circular economy.

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Detria Williamson: We live and work in a world of interlocking systems where many of the problems we face are dynamic, multifaceted, and inherently human. We believe that design thinking can help solve these problems to provide answers, but big answers can only be found by asking big questions. Welcome to The Big Question, an IDEO Podcast. I'm your host, Detria Williamson.

Hi, I'm Detria Williamson, your host of IDEO's The Big Question. In this episode of The Big Question, I'm super excited, filled with joy that we are joined by Franz Blach, IDEO Partner, and Constantin Schwaab who's Wirelane's CEO. Today we're going to talk a bit about, how might we empower society to move rapidly towards a cleaner future? I'm super excited to be here with you both. If I had clapping sounds, I would be having them in the background. Please introduce yourself and tell me more about how you two met.

Constantin: Detria, thank you so much for having me, and it's my greatest pleasure to be part of this [unintelligible 00:01:38]. My name is Constantin Schwaab, as you said, I'm the founder CEO of Wirelane, an infrastructure company in the field of eMobility. I'm a father of three. I'm based in Munich. I'm a serial entrepreneur, and I've started a number of businesses before in my life.

I first had a touchpoint with renewable energy about 13 years ago and I couldn't let go. I was so excited about the topic that I developed it further to a point where we're now trying to make the energy revolution happen with Wirelane in Germany and everywhere else abroad.

Detria: Yes, I'm really looking forward to going deeper just into your entrepreneurial route. It's super fascinating, I can't wait for our listeners to hear more about that. Tell me about you, Franz, a pioneer in design.

Franz Blach: I'm Franz Blach, as you said, partner at IDEO. I mainly work at the intersection of building breakthrough brands and products and create the conditions for transformative teams to ship them and scale them. As a trained digital designer, I mainly grew up working internet-era ways of working styles, and I'm really passionate about climate-era ways of working. Wirelane is such a great example of working with entrepreneurs and visionaries and pioneers in this field. That was how we met for the first time, but I think we have a lot of things in common, Constantin, we explored them. Do you want to talk more about that?

Constantin: Absolutely. I hope we'll get there in a moment.

Detria: Constantin, you really are a trailblazer in leading the way when it comes to energy change. We're going to go a little bit deeper later into what drove you and led you to that. First, tell me this interesting story about how you two met. I know you all have known each other for a long time, even outside of just IDEO. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Constantin: Sure. I've been very close friends with one of the partners at IDEO, and it's also been very inspiring for me to learn more about the idea of design thinking, which to me was new. I don't have a background in economics, I'm a political scientist by training, so there are many, many things that I had to learn the hard way. When I met one of the partners at IDEO, Charles Hayes, who's now heading IDEO in Asia, it was very eye-opening for me.

I always hoped for an opportunity to work with a firm like IDEO, but it took many, many years until that opportunity actually popped up, and that was Wirelane. When we started Wirelane, I instantly approached my friend, Charles, and I said, "Can we work together? What can we do for each other?" He said I should talk to the people at the Munich office. That's basically how I met Franz.

As you said before, I think something clicked, we share a past without knowing each other, but we discovered that when we started working together. We definitely approached the project with high spirits, and it turned out to be a very successful project.

Detria: Franz, any builds there? Talk to us a little bit about the past. What's in the past?

Franz: The main thing that I still vividly remember is just when Constantin entered the studio. If you see people, I always feel like it's almost you have the same energy, and you feel like-- I could feel his curiosity, his eyes are like, "Okay, I want to do this." Everything he talked about was this idea of like, "I want to do this revolution." It's like, "This is the thing I want to do. I'm a serial entrepreneur, I know how to do this. This is potentially the most purposeful endeavour I'm on."

I was like, "Okay, I'm sold."

Then, what Constantin talked about is, we both share a background in skateboarding. I think that's the thing, looking at the city as a playground, looking at infrastructure, it's something that basically just creates more livable cities until today. I think we talked about, you looking at benches as like, "Oh, this is a potential to do something." We even look at curbs and the flow of the city, and I think I see those things as a common thread and this idea of wanting to make a city better and wanting to make the city more accessible. This whole idea that the city belongs to the people, I think it's a spirit that I think was very important also to this project.

Detria: Okay. I have a pop-up question here. When is the last time you both got on your boards?

Constantin: I can tell you precisely because last summer, I started to teach my five-year-old daughter how to skateboard, then I took a couple of pretty hard crashes, and I had to stop for a number of months because I figured that at age 43 it's not the same as at age 14 anymore.

Detria: [laughs]

Constantin: That was last summer. That was pretty intense.

Franz: For me, it was four weeks ago, because we moved house, and I had to clean out the garage, and I found my old skateboard again. Again, my son was like, "Hey, can we do something." Then, I tried to show him some tricks. I think at this stage, it's still okay, you can impress little kids with very little. If I would have seen myself as an 18-year-old doing that, I'd be like, "I think you should step down on this board. Now, I think you're slightly too old," but it was enough for a five-year-old boy, and it was nice to see.

Detria: Well, I tried to get on a skateboard, but I had someone holding me on my right someone holding me on my left, I had pads from my ankles all the way up and I just thought, "This isn't a good look," but super excited. I want to dive deeper into energy change. Constantin, you've worked in the solar industry and have successfully exited several digital startups. You mentioned yourself that you're a serial entrepreneur, and then you moved into energy infrastructure. Talk to us a little bit about that switch, that path, what drives your passion?

Constantin: First of all, it wasn't that obvious when I started. Franz just mentioned the exciting thing for an entrepreneur in the '90s and 2000s, it was the internet era, so it was to start something digital and internet-based business. However, that turned into some precondition for any business. I remember very well speaking to the Chief Innovation Officer at Huawei, the Chinese electronics company and high-tech company. He said, "We don't understand how people still speak about internet businesses, because without the internet, there is no business." It was quite obvious for them, leapfrogging into an economy where the internet was just there, and you would just take it for granted, which wasn't the case when I started.

However, after selling my first company, for the first time, I basically had the luxury to think about what I wanted to do with my life. The first company is often something that is based on a not so deliberate decision, it's just more opportunistic.

After having exited the company, I was thinking, "Okay, first of all, how can I invest money?" Then, also, "What can I do? How can I actually create impact with that investment?" Then the perspective completely changes. That was back in 2007. In Europe, we had this thing called feed-in tariffs for the first time, because of a highly regulated market environment, you'd be able to make money with the installation of solar power plants, which before wasn't possible.

Still, back then, I remember very well, people laughing about the idea of installing solar power plants. They said, "Look, we are a highly industrialized nation, and the amount of power, the sheer size of the problem, you won't get anywhere with this."

I thought, "Okay, let's see."

For me, after all, it was an investment, and I knew it was going to be profitable. I started to get into that market. Today, we have more than 50% of the energy consumption which stems from renewable energies, which is fascinating, only a bit more than a decade later.

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Constantin: That trajectory clearly showed me that things are probably moving into a new direction much faster than we had experienced throughout our lifetime. I think this is a very important aspect of our doings, just for you as much as for me, Franz, that this law of accelerating returns, how new technologies merge, and how we create ever and ever new opportunities at much faster speeds than in the past, and that's super exciting about the entire industry we're in, what you called the climate era.

Detria: Constantin, I'm curious. You mentioned people laughed initially. What is it about Constantin that said, "I'm going to keep going"?

Constantin: Well, it's not that people would applaud when you first step on a skateboard, right? It has a lot to do with that extra ingredients and just getting used to people questioning your deeds, basically. I think this is why it's important to trace it a bit further back. I think we both had this rebellious thing inside of us that made us do things differently, change the perspective, and then eventually also accept that people would look upon us or even criticize us harshly for what we were doing.

In the case of solar power, in an early phase of your entrepreneurial development, you're much more distracted by this kind of criticism. The more you move into new markets, the more you understand that you're getting better at something, that you developed the skill of pattern recognition, the more self-conscious you are about these things.

When I start a business now, obviously, I have my toolkit. I approach things in a very different manner. Many of the tools I've developed together with IDEO, but then there are also other influences. Back then, when people laughed, I felt insecure about the viability of solar power contributing to the energy system as a whole. To be honest, I was insecure about that, but I knew that based on the unit economics that me as an entrepreneur, I could make money off this.

I thought, "Okay, let's give it a shot anyway, no matter if this is going to be a large contributor to the way the world will work in a decade from now, I will still give it a shot and just try to make the best out of it."

Detria: Constantin, ultimately, I think it sounds like bravery. Your bravery came through against all odds. You mentioned tools. Franz, what were some of those tools that IDEO leaned into in the very initial phases of working with Constantin and Wirelane?

Franz: What is almost stereotypical is that Constantin literally showed up with the famous napkin sketch. I think it was an A5 paper with a sketch of, "Hey, we need this kind of infrastructure." We discussed that but what we really did is we built this first modular portfolio of products. An iconic product that at least, I felt allowed Wirelane to go into the market, a brand connected to that, and also starting to design the digital touchpoints.

The whole holistic experience, I think that's just how Constantin also thinks. He's like, "What's the experience with this brand?" We always say, "It needs to shield people from complexity. It needs to be simple and delightful." That's what we want it to do. I think one thing that I felt, in retrospect, that I think we almost did on the go and never talked about, is that I think when Constantin is like, "Hey, this is the company I'm founding, and we might merge companies."

As we said, we need to really thoughtfully look at what's the organization, the company culture you want to see. Remember, Constantin, when we did the little book. I think you call it the Wirelane Manifest, this book of culture, where we talked about values, we talked about the purpose, we talked about rituals. I was just fascinated because you took this and you ran with it.

I think it's one of those things where potentially the proudest stuff is that this element and almost the conditions for Wirelane to become what it wants to be, I think, was potentially at least seated in this project. I don't know what anything else you want to add, Constantin.

Constantin: It's a very thoughtful and deliberate process. That for me as an entrepreneur was new. I told you that my first venture, I started in a very opportunistic fashion. You basically fix things on the fly, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The experience with IDEO was that it creates so much more value if you approach things, a certain class of problems, in a much more deliberate way.

Also, what I wanted to add is this idea about customer-centricity and how you look at every single person, every stakeholder, which for me was also a new expression. Stakeholders, you think about clients, but what about employees, what about the people at the manufacturing side? If you think about all those stakeholders, and you think about how you can make their lives easier because in the end, that chain always breaks where it's weakest, right?

If, for example, a product is designed in a way, and now we're talking hardware, we could apply this to software, any product. If you produce a product and the person assembling the product doesn't enjoy what she's doing, and I'm really talking about enjoying, I'm not only talking about getting the job done, I'm really talking about enjoying selling the product. If the person doesn't have that feeling, then he or she is going to make mistakes, and those mistakes are going to be painful for the entire organization, for society as a whole.

I think this very deliberate process, these thinking things through to the end, it was, I have to admit, a luxury for me as an entrepreneur. I wasn't used to that. It took us months. We really set it up as a pretty sizable project. In the end, it totally paid off because it solved so many problems for us that we still had ahead of us and we obviously didn't know about it.

This deliberate kind of thinking, that's part of my everyday toolkit now. It's super important learning.

Detria: Constantin, I love just the discussion that you and Franz are having about the intention around keeping colleagues and really just keeping humans at the center of everything that you're doing. You mentioned before, just talking so much about the future and how the work that Wirelane is doing is really future built. How do you see new decentralized energy and the move to E everything, how is that playing out in the future? Where's your leadership? Where does Wirelane sit in that?

Constantin: First of all, you already mentioned decentralized energy and that is something we take for granted in the climate era but let's not forget, 20 years ago, we were not talking about decentralized energy so we had massive infrastructure that was built around centralized production capacities and then we will basically evacuate the energy and bring it to people's homes using massive landlines. This is changing and it's changing quickly. That's a very good thing because decentralized energy allows for a whole different design of the entire energy system.

Now, what brought me to Wirelane and where we think we can make a significant contribution to this shift is that it's not only the production assets, also the consuming assets. We speak about assets in the world of energy. The car, for example, is an energy asset or a solar power plant is an energy asset.

This is where digitization kicks in and is also super important, this convergence of technologies, because, on the one side, you have fluctuating energy assets, like PV power plants. The sun either shines or it doesn't so you cannot really control it. On the other side, you have a pretty seemingly chaotic system of consumption patterns, yes, you can see those, but individual assets can't be controlled, because in a liberal society, you just use your car whenever you want to use it. You want it to be fully charged because we're used to this high level of comfort.

To bring those two things together, it's almost a bit of a paradox, we need a digital layer. This is where it gets really, really interesting because combining all those energy assets and actually intertwining and merging it with a digital layer, means that you can run this system in a much more efficient manner than we used to be able to run a system in the past.

This is why I'm eventually convinced that decentralized and digitized energy assets will beat the centralized world of the past because it's so much more efficient. This is something we must face, we need an economic argument, or else it's just going to be toys, we will just be playing. We need to convince people also with money and economic arguments, and this efficiency leverage. This is what I'm after and what this is all about.

Detria: Constantin, you're essentially on the brink of something that's very new. What are some of the barriers, and how has design really leaned into driving greater adoption and acceleration?

Constantin: Design is needed on all levels of what we do at Wirelane. You could start with the customer journey; the process of how we approach a customer and how we shield the customer from the aforementioned complexity. You could apply it to the product because let's face it, we're dealing with novel technologies. All of a sudden, people are speaking about edge computing or cloud computing, I don't even know what does that mean. Where do we get the chips from? How do we program those chips? Which software layer do we need? And it goes on and on and on.

At any given point, you could just let go and say, "Okay, I will just accept that this is a very complex matter and I don't care about the outcome of my decisions," or, as we said before, you try to anticipate what's going to happen to your product, to your customers, to your market in three or five years and you make this a very deliberate process. When you start doing that, it's partly very painful, it's exhausting. It's also very, very exciting. It's all together. It's a big, big process but in the end, it's inevitable because, else, in this world of tremendous complexity, with all these new technologies, without design, we will fail.

Detria: Franz, any builds on that?

Franz: I couldn't agree more. Making the complex simple is one of the key tasks that design has, but also, anticipating human behaviors. Like you talked about convenience. One of the things were some of the bad behavior also comes from, but I think it's like let's design solutions that create a certain level of comfort that are simple because you can't burden the people with something they will want to do here. Let's face it, for example, charging my phone does take longer than fueling my car. I'm just saying fueling my car with classic gas.

The future will be that it's the same level of comfort. We can't burden people for like, oh, whatever, I need to spend three hours next to my car. It won't. Technology will have to help us to do this. Exactly what Constantin says, its decentralized data-driven digital layer will help us to make the connection, but it can't be driven by technology. Technology will be the enabler. We need to understand the human behaviors that all of that works, and that's what design can add. We're better than, I think, anybody else as designers to understand people and then design a delightful solution that answers that real problem.

Constantin: If I may add one thing to that, Franz, and I think this is just as important, now we're talking organizational design. In the end, if you stop with the product design, and I think this is something you guys at IDEO discovered at some point, that it also needs a certain organizational design to actually implement this design process, which was prior only applied to the product but then you really need the buy-in from all stakeholders.

Now we could go on forever like how objectives and key results impact an organization and how you design your organization around certain values so that you get alignment and buy-in from all stakeholders. I just want to make sure that we have the same understanding because the design is often mixed up with product design and that's one part of the design.

Looking at design in a much more holistic manner is extremely helpful to understand how far it goes and how deeply rooted it is. In an ideal organization. This is what we tried to implement every single day, we tried to implement this, I wouldn't call it ideology, but I would definitely call it a mindset in the organization, so it doesn't stop on the product side.

Detria: That's a really important point because, Constantin, at the moment, design has really been a trailblazer in terms of building these super dynamic products. To your point, design, really, when you use design as the way through, when you talk about customer service, when you talk about customer experience, when you talk about organizational change, even government change, design is a tool all the way through.

Let's talk a little bit more about organizational change. You built an organization from scratch that essentially enables a more circular and planet-positive way forward, but you also want your organization to live up to working in this climate-era way. How can design help organizations work in a climate-era way? How do we embrace things like a circular inclusive economy? I mean, those are huge tasks. What are you finding?

Constantin: I still like this image of the objective and key results OPR pyramid a lot, which starts typically at the tip of values, and it goes down with the vision, the mission, and I'm sure that you and most of our listeners they've seen it. Let's talk about values. I think it all starts with the values. This is, as Franz said, something we take very seriously at Wirelane. We have a set of core values that are not negotiable and those core values are basically our North Star, what is guiding us, and we make sure that everyone, every new member of the organization is fully aligned with those core values, which then allow us to, which is the other interesting aspect, for the maximum of personal freedom when it comes to the execution of tasks, for example.

Once again, let's not mix up the two things, that there are things that need to be rigid in a way, the values. They're a bit abstract but also, we try to fill those values with content every single day. I'll give you a very specific example, it's probably the easiest one. One of the values is circularity, right? We're a company that works towards the circular economy. Why do we do this? Well, because we think that people can expect a certain level of comfort, and we want our children to have the same opportunities as we had, but we cannot keep going the way we used to in the past, this is quite obvious.

A circular economy means, not only that all the energy we will consume in the future needs to come from renewable sources, but it also means that we cannot consume raw materials anymore. Point. A circular economy means that we will leave the soil untouched. This is, I mean, [unintelligible 00:24:01]. This is a very complex matter, right? In order to reach that circular economy, what can we as a company do, how can we contribute to the circular economy?

We've implemented certain rules, and the good thing about being an entrepreneur is I can decide. It's limited to my scope, but I can decide. What I decided is that we do not take domestic flights anymore. Full stop. We don't. If somebody wants to travel, which is hardly ever necessary in pandemic times. I mean, we've seen a digital means work, and that is a very good thing for the environment, despite all the other aspects of it that come along with it, but it means that our employees, for example, if they want to travel and want to see customers, they take the train.

That is a very important aspect of the organization and it shows people that this abstract value circularity is linked to their everyday experience. I could go on and on and on with many, many examples of how we try to live up to those values, but to answer your question, I think this is where it all starts. Organizational design starts with values and then it trickles down through all the other layers, the vision, the mission, and eventually all the way down to the task.

Detria: Constantin, have you experienced any hurdles with this, because this really is a new way because you are a purpose-led driven company by default. This is where you all started. So what have been some of those main hurdles that maybe you've experienced?

Constantin: There's obviously hurdles when you speak to people that are just used to certain perks, like, for example, state car, that they can fly business class. There is a certain class of people that are just experiencing these things in other organizations. They might feel a bit disturbed by the radical approach we take here at Wirelane, but then again, the question really is, are we the right organization?

I'm not saying that we're everybody's darling. The way we do things, it's quite radical. However, I think that the sheer magnitude of the problem we're dealing with, the climate crisis, is for us, only solvable, the problem, if we approach things in a very radical manner.

I'm not saying that we're an organization for everyone, we can't be an organization for everyone. We want to make sure that we find the right people that want to contribute to what we think is the right way how to tackle these problems.

To answer your question, absolutely. We've experienced many, many hurdles. Also, we had to let people go because in the end, they couldn't function under this set of core values. It is not easy, it is something that requires our entire attention, and it's everyday work. It's hard work to implement values in an organization.

Detria: That's really fascinating and interesting for listeners to hear just even the tough decisions that it sounds like you've had to make in being really values-led. Franz, do you have any builds there when it comes to the role of design in organizational change?

Franz: No, I think we touched on the beginning, it needs a radical pivot. It's not just like, "Oh, let's adopt a little bit of something." It is good that Wirelane is not an organization for everyone because I think that shows that it pioneers something. Also, design can help to design these new paradigms. It's like, we need to understand that if values are at the core, value-driven culture, a purpose [inaudible 00:27:33] that we design also strategies that are long-term and that are really rigorous about the long-term and sometimes potentially more adaptive around the short-term.

I think a lot of old-school businesses do the exact opposite. As they base more on the shareholder value, not shared value. They think in three months chunks and they optimize for that. They're rigorous with the short-term, three months, and they're very fuzzy with the long-term.

I think like what Constantin talks about, and that is a design principle, almost is to flip that around. Values is something that people hold. Once you get, again, to human-centered or on employee-centered organization, that's exactly the design. That is the design and then you start to OPR, to incentivize the behaviors that you want to see.

That's a very simple way of building such a modern organization that, again, can thrive in the climate era. I think that's the most important thing. The future of the business will and has to thrive in this context.

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It's not an optional thing, as, "Let's continue linearly," or, "Let's be still extracting stuff." That's not the future. Honestly, to everybody that listens to that, the earlier you start, the further you will be ahead. The longer you wait, the harder it will get. It's just like, it is not easy but it's doable, and it's a choice and you can design those choices, strategic choices, human choices, organizational choices, and that's where design comes in.

Detria: I'm learning there's a theme here in terms of Constantin really just being a brave leader. I do think to get to where the world needs to be, we have to have radically inclusive and brave leaders. Thank you for sharing that, Constantin. Something that you both talked about, I want to go back to, which was just around the tie with mobility.

Essentially, Wirelane is a service and maintenance provider in some ways for future mobility solutions, and how to help them drive change in the industry. What are some of the biggest challenges for mobility providers, car manufacturers, to actually overcome in the near future, and how does design lean into that? Constantin, maybe we'll start with you from a Wirelane perspective.

Constantin: Sure. This program is called Big Questions Podcast, so it is a very big question, and it does affect the by far biggest industry, at least in Germany, which is the car industry. I couldn't say that I want the industry to undergo this dramatic change. It is currently undergoing for several reasons because it so deeply impacts also on the employment situation in Germany. I wish I had anticipated all of this much earlier.

Yes, it would have been possible to foresee some of the changes, but I'm a bit worried that it could be too late for some of the players in the industry because of what Franz just said, and there's so much focus on short-term goals where they're really rigid in terms of their shareholder value, but they are super fuzzy with regards to their long-term goals, which should have been at a much earlier point of time to adapt to a world that's changing much faster than they were experienced too.

Now, getting back to your question, which are the biggest challenges? The biggest challenges on the side of the automotive industry, the OEMs, there is the equipment manufacturers, is definitely to negotiate with all their stakeholders how fast they can adapt to the change because the change is always driven by the customer.

In that case, the change comes from various sides. First of all, electromobility, which is a huge change. It means that you have to phase out the combustion engine vehicle. What that means is that you have to shut down manufacturing plants, you have to shut down huge departments with hundred of thousands of employees when we are talking about numbers here. That is one thing.

The other thing is autonomy. Autonomous driving. I think we all agree that an autonomous vehicle is probably the most complex machine mankind will ever have built if it ever exists. We don't know that, but I keep telling my 11-year-old son, "You won't need a driver's license," which you typically get at the age of 18 in Germany. Being a tech and a utopian again, I think it's possible. However, if that effect kicks in, then the entire industry undergoes a dramatic change. Personally, I don't even own a car because I think [unintelligible 00:32:10] own a car in any major city because of all micro-mobility that we see popping up.

In the end, I think this is a very big question that common effectors haven't fully answered yet because the moment mobility turns to what it actually should be, a modality to get from A to B and not a fetish anymore, an object, a desirable object, then everything changes, and then the number of cars, hopefully, will decrease to a 10th of what we see today. This is the car manufacturing industry.

Now, on our side, on the infrastructure side, that all plays into the same thing, to this transformative process. When we started with Wirelane, you can imagine people would just look at us the same way they looked at me when I started to build my first power plant. They were like, "What are you guys trying to do here? You're trying to build entirely new infrastructure."

Then I'm thinking if you think about the history of the oil industry and the car industry, what if I pitched you the following idea? I'd say, I pitch you my business plan, it looks as follows. "I will drill a chemical and highly toxic substance in a region of the world that is highly conflicted, basically a war region. I will then ship the substance. I will refine the substance and ship the substance to the other end of the world to burn it in a machine that has an efficiency degree of less than 10%." What would you think? You would think it's insane. It's an insane plan. This is exactly what the world has looked like over the last 100 years.

Now we're basically just turning this whole thing upside down and we're saying, "Okay, listen, what we're actually building is just a minor layer, mostly digital layer, on an existing infrastructure, which is the electricity grid, to make it accessible to a new class of energy assets, which is the electric vehicle." However, even to get there, this minor step takes a lot and a lot of effort from many, many stakeholders, decision-makers in the political sphere, regulatory bodies, obviously, the electrical component manufacturing industry, you can imagine how many layers of complexity there are in order to set up such an infrastructure.

I still think out of all the options we have, it's by far the best. Again, I'm super optimistic that we're going to be able to solve this problem, but yes, you're raising a very big question here.

Speaker 1: Constantin, doesn't the new way forward present new jobs, present new opportunities? To your point, it's new infrastructure. Do you find that there's a lot of convincing needed around this new way forward?

Constantin: When it comes to the jobs, speaking about the car industry is very different than speaking about the charging infrastructure industry because the car industry is job heavy, which is a good thing, so there's a lot of labor involved. That industry is changing because the complexity of the vehicles is changing.

However, let's not forget, we've already had more than 100 years of constant improvement of manufacturing processes, which led to a situation where the amount of physical labor is dramatically reduced already in existing [unintelligible 00:35:15] Yes, but this industry, there is a certain risk of at least short or midterm risks that the number of people needed to manufacture the goods and will decrease.

In the infrastructure business, it's quite the opposite because the oil industry is extremely cash-heavy, it's cash-rich, but it pollutes the planet and that cost is obviously socialized so they don't pay for the pollution. Not yet. We've seen court rules over the last couple of months that seem promising in the sense that those companies will actually have to pay for what they do to the planet and the future generations. This industry hardly employs people compared to the amount of money they make and compared to the problems they cause. If you compare the oil industry to what we do, yes, I think it's a huge opportunity also for the labor market.

With regards to the car industry, I see that a bit more-- I'm a bit worried that in the short to midterm will actually lose jobs.

Detria: You've briefly touched on government. I want to talk a little bit more about government change because I can only imagine that they are a key stakeholder in this huge pivot and impact that you're driving. You're surrounded by standards and legal constraints that you need to work within or around all the time. I remember our conversations about, here we go, let's see how good my German is. [German language] Is that right? [laughs]

Constantin: That's fantastic.

Franz: Fantastic.

Constantin: It's a beautiful, very classic German word.

Franz: It was one of the words of our project [German language] It's just like, it represents a lot of German government rules. [laughs]

Detria: Thank you, Franz, for the support, because I said it was such a terrible international, American accent there. Talk about this change, I want to hear, Franz, you talk about how the design comes into government as part of this list of key stakeholders. Constantin, maybe talk about the challenges that you have there or maybe where you've established a way forward, which has been healthy or productive.

Constantin: First of all, norms have a rather bad reputation because they seem to be limiting your freedom, your actions but let's not forget norms are super important. One of the best examples is my beloved iPhone and Mac brand Apple is causing a lot of problems because they constantly refuse to accept certain standards. They might be forced, at least in the European Union, to adhere to those standards very soon in order to reduce the number of landfills produced because of electronics that only work with a certain category of products.

What I'm trying to say is that in our case, had it not been a norm that forced the carmakers to adhere to certain standards, at least with regards to the plugs, we would never have stepped into this business. This for us was a very important precondition. Without those very basic norms, we wouldn't have made it as Wirelane, as a small company, as a startup.

I think it's a good thing, however, the complexity only starts when you look at it as a layer cake with norms from very different industries. For example, in the banking industry why do we have to deal with norms in the banking world? Because we process payment transactions. Then you have the electronics world and their safety regulation, then you have the political sphere, which regulates the public space, the public domain goes all the way down to the municipality.

The complexity really starts when you add all those layers and when you try to find an intersection on which you can actually operate. This is inherent. This is something you have in all societies and as we are a highly industrialized and highly regulated society that tries to really fix the world of tremendous complexity the best it can, it's a fact we have to deal with.

It's our job as a company to shield our stakeholders, I'm referring to the stakeholders, not only the customers, from that complexity. This is really an effort we have to make as a company.

Detria: Franz, how has design played a role just generally when there are so many different pieces and the complexities that Constantin is referring.

Franz: I think, again, design by definition it's human or stakeholder centric. It is strategic and systemic in its thinking, but it tries to make those things be simple and work out and be delightful for everybody involved. Honestly, I think designing solutions is one thing, we talk about designing systems.

I also think that design is at the point where it starts to design entire societies. I mentioned that I'm calling in from Dubai where we currently work also with the UAE government. It's so interesting that the process is the same, they're all humans. It's just like, you apply the same rigor of creating simple, delightful, creative, human solutions. Suddenly, people might be like, "Yes, let's create a policy together."

And you're like, "Oh, this is interesting. Yes, let's design a policy."

The UAE also, they want to create a more sustainable economy. They want to make doing good the best way to do business in the UAE. They want to become the host, or they are now host for COP28. You mentioned them as a region, are they the poster child of sustainability? For sure not. The thing is, they want to go there. If you make it a priority and if design goes there and brings people and the planet to the table as a non-negotiable part of that, I think we will succeed.

To Constantin's point, standards are also design, norms are design. Again, bridging the interest of different stakeholders, is something that design is really, really good at. I think it's just something we need to optimize for.

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The beauty I see in Europe is, we have things like the new Bauhaus. We have people fighting for the right to repair. There all of those things where I really feel Europe might play a role in really spearheading that, also from a governmental standpoint. Again, it needs to be simple. The norms, and governments, and rules, often don't tend to do this, but that's bad design. Good design is still simple, delightful solutions for your citizens, customers, whatever you call them.

Detria: I want to take advantage of having both of you as experts in such important work. This is probably the most important question, I think, on this episode. What can each and every one of us do to actually drive the acceleration, Constantin, that you're referencing, in terms of how do we actually move towards this impact that you've said? It's a huge hurdle, what can each and every one of us do, besides all go and work for IDEO or Wirelane?

Constatin: Individual responsibility, I think it's very important. There's a long-standing tradition, especially in Europe, to try and shift that responsibility to governments, to policymakers. While I think that it is very important to set the frame and to incentivize people and to incentivize the right behavior, it is still very much deeply a personal and human responsibility we all have.

Going back to this example, I mentioned before that we got rid of our car, you can imagine that we had quite some debate in the family about the question of whether we should get rid of the vehicle because being a father of three, owning a vehicle is quite comfortable in certain situations. Are there enough situations in which that comfort actually justifies owning a product that is as harmful to the environment as a vehicle? Even an electric vehicle is extremely harmful to the environment. Let's not forget about this.

What I keep saying is that we all have to try and optimize our personal behavior, and it starts with little things like separating trash, not using your car and all these things.

There's also an overarching concept, we have to reduce consumption. Reducing consumption, only then will we get to a circular economy. How can we try and rid ourselves of this constant desire which is created by an industry that is advised by professional marketers, and that is trying to sell tangible goods as many as they can.

This is a fact we just have to be facing that, while I do not reject the idea of living a comfortable life, and I want our children to have the same opportunities, and all of that, but I do not think that it ought to be necessary for our children to own as many physical and tangible things as we did. I think we have to reduce consumption. I think it is very important.

Detria: Constantin, that really resonates with me. I'm sure many of us have been an Apple lovers, for many years. It's interesting to see this shift and how it's passing down to generations because my daughter who's 14, I'm usually waiting to buy the new iPhone, buy the new iPad and she said, "I don't need a new one." She said, "I don't need a new one mama," and I thought that's great.

It just goes to what you're saying about really shifting our ideals when it comes to consumption.

Constantin: There's a very personal story I would like to share. My son, the oldest one, he's 11 now. We make bets. We say silly things like, "How you dare to jump from this deadlock over there." Or, "How about you take a cold shower for one minute." You're dared to do that. So, we make these bets.

Then the other day we made a bet. I said, "You stand in a cold shower for one minute and you can wish for whatever you want without limits. You just go there and stand there for one minute."

He goes in the shower, ice-cold shower, takes a shower for one minute comes out of the shower and then I go, "So, great job, you made it. What do you want?"

He said, "I don't need anything."

I think the kids understand, they're sick of it. There's just too much. There's the abundance of things. They're really sick of it. We have to use that as an opportunity.

Franz: 100%. Can't agree more. I think that especially this thing of that I think there's a whole generation on the rise where consumption is not connected to status anymore. It's not cool only to have the latest and greatest of everything. You mentioned Apple and they also try to go more towards right to repair which was also asked by the consumer. People ask for self-service things, things like that. I think that is what needs to be the norm.

You talk about behaviors, you talk about how do we turn them into habits? How do we turn them into rituals that we celebrate that behavior, because I'm with you. The only thing is the reduction of consumption, and therefore, reduction of carbon emission. I think we are heading into a whole era of much more carbon-conscious people. I think it's not a not an excuse anymore to say, "The problem is so big, the government needs to fix it."

It's, now, every single one of us needs to do better, and it's absolutely doable. You can eat differently, you can move from A to B differently. I think, people understanding that those little, not even sacrifice, I just think it's just a change of what and how we do things, it's amazing. I still believe that as a society we will be happier. The planet and people will be healthier. I think as a species we will be happier. I truly believe that. I don't think that just more consumption and more cheap stuff makes us happy.

We should all be aware that we erode with our wallets. If we buy cheap disposable stuff, there will be more of it and that's the thing that also needs to stop. That's our responsibility for us and future generations

Detria: Constantin, you strike me not only as an incredibly brave leader, but obviously quite intelligent as well, and it seems you have a lot of ideas. There must be a big question that keeps you up at night. What is that?

Constantin: The big question that keeps me up at night is whether we can undergo the changes we've been discussing for an hour now at the speed that is necessary because the problem is so urgent and I'm really worried that it might be too late. That is something that really keeps me up at night. Also, sometimes I feel that our impact, while I'm so passionate about doing what we're doing especially company but also, [unintelligible 00:48:19] as a whole, I think that the impact might just not be big enough.

This is something that really keeps me awake at night, but let's make sure that this doesn't sound negative because, again, I'm an optimist I'm a techno-utopian. I really think we can fix all these problems, but the urgency and the sheer scale of the problem, is something that worries me and that keeps up at night.

Detria: Franz?

Franz: I feel that all of those industries just need more Constantins, more disruptors, more people that move into this space with very different thinking, and that's what I would hope for because it is-- You need us to have a sense of urgency and you need to have an entrepreneurial spirit. Those two things come together, I think that's something I would just hope for.

Detria: Constantin and Franz, thank you so much for just such a beautiful, personal, powerful, discussion which really tells all of us that we each hold a core responsibility for the impact, the shift, and the pivot that we need to make for a better world.

Constantin, I appreciate you going deeper into culture organizational design and how at Wirelane your priority is not only getting the job done, but how to create joy for every single person there and the importance of that. And, Franz, talking about the only way through is to actually ensure that we have a shared purpose amongst many key stakeholders.

Thank you so much to both of you for this very powerful discussion. Thank you, Constantin. Thank you, Franz.

Constantin: Thank you, Detria, it was my pleasure

Franz: Thank you, Detria.

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Detria: The Big Question is brought to you by IDEO. To find out more about us and how we create positive impact through design, head to ideo.com. Then make sure to search for The Big Question on Apple podcast, Spotify, or anywhere else podcasts are found. Make sure to click subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. On behalf of the team here at IDEO, thanks for listening.