Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Coming up with something new isn't the hard part. Getting somebody to use it is.
Every second Thursday, Fabian Dudek talks to people inside large companies who find, test and adopt technology they didn't build. What they tried, what it cost, what they'd never repeat, and the system that made it stick.
Plenty of shows tell the founder's story. This one takes the customer's side.
At some point, we ripped out passenger
seats from our passenger airplanes and
converted them basically into cargo planes.
Personally, I did a couple of flights to
Asia. There was just, on the way back, boxes
of protective equipment.
We did repatriation flights for the
German government.
Countries were closing left and right on short
notice, and the government was
scrambling to get German nationals back to Germany,
or at least have an option for
them to come home, because they
were stuck.
Welcome to the GlassDollar podcast. Today
I'm speaking to someone super exciting.
Daniel has been a pilot within the Lufthansa Group
for the last couple of decades,
and next to that is building up
venture client.
You can really feel from this conversation how much
he believes in his colleagues to
want to drive the organization forward, and
exactly that is the reason why he's
driving venture client. Daniel, hi.
Great to have you.
Thanks for having me.
Pleasure to be here.
Super excited about our conversation today. I
want to start out with introducing you
to our audience. I already know a bit. I
know you're a pilot.
How did that come to be?
So that's actually one part of my job, not
maybe the main driver while we're talking
today. I work for Lufthansa Group. I'm leading the
venture client unit in a group
called Startup Gate. And as you
said, I am a pilot.
That's actually how I started with Lufthansa
Group back in the day.
I'm the poster child of wanting to become a pilot
early on and actually making it
happen. I was quite fortunate that
it worked out.
I've been with Lufthansa Group for 18 years. Started
off as a pilot, did the classic
pilot cadet program, and then things happened along
the way, such as moving into
some management positions up till now.
What made you want to be a
pilot in the first place?
There are some family genes in there. My dad
was a fighter pilot for the German Air
Force, so I was very exposed to
aviation early on.
He actually moved on to work with the Lufthansa
Group at some point, for one of the
airlines within Lufthansa Group, in a management
position, not as a pilot.
To be honest, while my dad was flying as a fighter
pilot, I never wanted to move in
that direction. I'd like to fly one at some point,
I would just simply fly one,
because I bet it's a lot of fun. I can do stuff I
probably can't and shouldn't do in
a commercial airliner. But I always wanted to
become a commercial pilot.
There was never this desire to fly in
military aviation.
It was always commercial aviation.
I watched a documentary on Lufthansa, a
couple of them actually, in preparation for
our conversation. Right now there are a bit more
than 100,000 employees at
Lufthansa, is that correct? How many of
those are pilots?
And what are the other big buckets?
That's a good question. I can't really say to
a hundred percent degree of certainty,
but roughly, within Lufthansa Airlines itself, so
the Lufthansa branded airline
itself, it's around 5,000 pilots. Obviously, then we
have a lot of other airlines,
our colleagues at, for example,
Discover Airlines.
Lufthansa City Airlines. We have, of course,
Austrian, Brussels, ITA nowadays,
right? So I would say, I can't really say, but it's
a five digit number for sure.
I might be wrong, but probably around 25, 30,000 pilots
across the airlines, I would reckon.
Crazy. I mean, still, aviation has this
lure. This special, dreamy place, I think,
for many. But just to imagine the amount of
aircraft, then the planning out of the
routes, having the maintenance system behind it,
it's such a massive operation.
Oh yeah. And I'm still
excited and amazed by it.
There are a lot of industries that are quite
regulated and also complex, but
aviation is definitely one of them. It's heavily
regulated, it's super complex, and
operations, managing and steering an operation,
that's a different ballgame.
This is quite a challenge, because
stuff happens daily.
If you were to ask my colleagues in the
operations control centers, they have
aircraft diverting, which means they're not able to
land at their destination for
whatever reasons, whether it's weather or something
happened along the route, it
could be a medical incident. We have it
happening daily.
All those small or big disruptions are
happening daily.
And there's this team in our operations control
center just managing and making sure
that the small disruption or bigger disruption,
to the best of our abilities,
doesn't have a huge impact and doesn't have the
ripple effect across our operation.
It's amazing. But it's also one of the
opportunities where I believe technology
actually will be a real game changer, because
of this complexity we have.
We have a lot of experts, and a lot of times the
human factor is still quite
important. Sometimes, just by experience, an
experienced operations controller can
make a really, really good decision. But there's
so much data flowing into the
operations control center and sometimes
it's disjointed, right?
So you need to look at different sources, and
it just creates complexity.
For us as humans, I think we can do probably a
better job in supporting colleagues,
in making sure that the data that is feeding in
there is, to the best of the
technology's capacity, being delivered in a way that
the human in front of a screen
can actually make the best decision. And then set
up a scenario, if they come up
with different scenarios, choose one, but have
different scenarios already
calculated by technology. I think this is a huge
leap that we will see in the next
couple of years. Also in managing
complexity.
As we go into the use of technology within
the Lufthansa Group: how did you broaden
your horizon? Initially you started out in your
Cessna and then upgraded your planes
as you went up the ladder. When
was the moment?
Did you get asked, or did you initiate to broaden
your horizon beyond flying towards
the whole holistic model of the
Lufthansa Group?
So, once again, with careers in aviation in
general, there's no one straight line.
Mine is probably also an example of not your
standard career path.
I used to work as a paramedic for
20 plus years.
Already during high school I went into emergency
medicine and got super hooked on
medicine. And this was also my plan B, just in case I
couldn't make it to the flight
deck for some reason. I was like, okay, then I
might just go to medical school,
become a doctor, or go maybe to a
fire department.
So I've been working in that capacity for 20 plus
years, and I continued doing it
even though I was flying. I always did it on the
side, three to four shifts each
month as a paramedic. Also after having
moved to Berlin.
I was fortunate enough to actually work at the fire
station next to Berghain, which
was quite interesting for me, coming from a smaller
town in Germany, and actually
having a Monday lunchtime call to Berghain, where
it's like, that can't be true.
It's Monday around lunchtime. But that's
true, it's not closed yet.
Oh, it isn't. Oh, wow. I'm wondering who you might
meet at this time of day on a
weekday, after having the weekend
behind us.
You did that in parallel to flying? Like you
were already flying, and then when the
autopilot was on, you would check
your books?
Almost. It was more in the hotel. There
was quite a period in my life where,
actually, I can remember, back in the day we were
flying to Kuala Lumpur, a really
nice destination by the way, and we had a couple
of nights in Kuala Lumpur.
I usually went out with my
colleagues, with the crew.
We went out for dinner, maybe one drink,
then they moved onwards.
Given the time difference, it was very easy to stay
awake during the night, during
the local times. So my colleagues might have gone
out, having a good time in Kuala
Lumpur, and after dinner I left, I went back to the
hotel and I studied for a little
while, at least for a little period. Can't really
recommend doing it constantly,
because it is also a little bit
lonely at some point.
But that was the trade-off. So I did it basically
when I was in layover or I had my
off days. And then ultimately I became an
instructor pilot on my fleet and then
started doing additional work in the training
department within my airline, and then
moving on to different jobs from there. I was
fortunate enough to be part of a
project team that founded Discover Airlines, one
of our youngest airlines.
So I was heavily involved in that one, and had the
chance to move to one of our
executive board offices to work also on a very
different flight level, so to speak,
on a very strategic flight level
within the group.
And then before ultimately now having joined
Lufthansa Innovation Hub about a year
ago, taking over the leadership for the
venture client team.
Can we dive a bit deeper into
that? How did that come to be?
Why were you asked, or did you hear about it and
saw, hey, this is something that I
want to do? Because that really is then a full
mandate across every single element
of the value chain.
It all started actually in the project team
that was tasked with founding this new
airline, which is nowadays Discover Airlines. Some
of my colleagues from Lufthansa
Innovation Hub back in the day, around 2020, were
involved also in that project
team. As you will recall, those were
challenging times.
They were exciting times for us as a project
team, but they were also very
challenging times, because the
pandemic kicked off.
It was basically the midst of the
pandemic, really tough.
So a different set of emotions happening. And
obviously there were more than once
where the project itself was probably at risk. But
it was very, as Lufthansa, very
strategically relevant. We needed an airline
that is able to also offer our
customers looking into more leisure, vacation
and holiday travel, a good
opportunity. We didn't have that anymore. So for
whatever reasons, we got lucky and
the project just made it through the pandemic, and
the airline was founded and is
operating very successfully already. But
that is where I met them.
So you're a co-founder
of an airline.
A founding member, let's put it that way.
There are so many other people, there's no
one that could do it by themselves. So many
people were involved there.
But I was one little puzzle piece, I was
fortunate enough to support that.
And that's actually where I met the colleagues
from the Innovation Hub.
Sometimes you just bond with people, whether it's
because you share the same mindset
or the same culture, or it was just a special
time to work together.
You have something that kind of bonds
you to those people.
And we just stayed in touch. As I said, I used to
work in the executive offices, and
the executive board member that I worked for,
Lufthansa Group innovation was
basically always in that executive office, so
that executive board member was
responsible for innovation. So there was also
this connection always.
And it remained, this connection to innovation in
general and also to the Innovation
Hub in particular. And then it was pure coincidence
that we talked randomly around a
different topic. I believe back in the day it was a
supervisory board topic around
innovation that I needed to clarify with my
colleagues here in Berlin.
And in that conversation, it just came up that
they're actually looking for someone
to take over that team and scale it. And I was
like, wait, that might actually be
interesting for me. We should talk.
That's how it ended.
Wow, super cool. And then
what were they saying?
Okay, we're looking for someone to
scale this team.
But in the end, what's the mandate, or what's the
task that you have received?
What does Lufthansa want from you?
So Lufthansa, first and foremost our
colleagues there, they had obviously also years
back already this, I mean it
wasn't new, right?
Venture client has been around for
a while now.
And whether you want to call it venture client
or partnership management or
whatever, they had this vision to promote and scale
up basically the partnership
between Lufthansa Group and startups. And then it
moved into the terminology of
venture client, and basically looking for someone to
take over and actually scale it
across the group. Because the vision was there, the
belief was there that there's
huge value to be gained for the ecosystem, for all
parties involved, but especially
also for us as an airline group. We just didn't have
the structure or the resources
in place to that extent yet to actually create the
impact that makes it relevant for
the whole group. So with a corporation as big as
ours, if you pursue innovation in a
very niche, small environment, it doesn't really
create the impact for Lufthansa
Group. It needs to scale, and it needs to create an
impact that ideally translates
across the different business units. So if you try
something out in one place,
ideally this scales across the company and then
actually creates the impact that
within one business unit it wouldn't have had. So
the mandate, that's a really good
question actually regarding mandate, because we're
in really interesting times.
Lufthansa is also really looking into how we can best
set up our internal innovation
ecosystem currently. There's some stuff happening
and we're really excited about
what's going to come out of it. We're hoping to
have some more clarity in autumn.
But our mandate for us as a venture client
unit is: create more impact.
Just make it easier for our colleagues within
Lufthansa Group to work with startups
and vice versa. Really make sure that it's as
smooth as possible for everyone
involved. It should become a standard. It should
be a no-brainer, so to speak.
It should be that simple to get in touch and work
with a startup, and vice versa.
And that's basically what we're
trying to pull off.
When you say the task was to
scale it, I heard two things.
On the one hand, okay, we tried something out in
small and that worked well, now we
want to roll it out, scale it across
the entire group.
Versus, you can also say, now when you say it needs
to be easy for everyone, okay,
we want everyone in the organization, those 100,000
people, or maybe a subset of
those, to be able to try something
out in small.
Is it both of them, or how do you think about
these two dimensions of scaling?
I believe one leads to the other. I'm a
strong believer and advocate for the latter.
I believe you should have centralization to the
extent that it's necessary and
beneficial for a cause, whether it's in innovation
or in operations or whatever.
And you can see this within the group already.
We have different airlines.
They have their own brand. They are very
recognized in their own home markets.
But there are some things that are
happening very centralized.
So managing, for example, the network, making sure
that not every airline of ours is
flying to the same destination at
the same time.
It might not make sense. Maybe it makes sense to
align a little bit on that one and
steer it maybe a little bit more centrally, to
ensure that we have the best offer
for the customers and also don't create
any redundancies.
But then again, maybe it makes sense to have
something that you experience that's
very unique to your airline, such as the brand, or
maybe also the food and the
beverages that you experience on an airline, that
might make it really unique.
So Swiss, for example, might, or not might, they
definitely have a very different
catering setup, a different product. If you fly
with Swiss, you will immediately
know, okay, this is Swiss. This is not a German
company, even though it belongs to
Lufthansa Group. But this is a Swiss
company. Same with Austrian.
Belongs to the group, sure, but it's very unique in
the sense of the culture, of
what it's offering. And it might actually make
sense to leave this within the
airlines, not to move it centrally,
because they know best.
They know their home market. They are deeply rooted
in their country, in their hub,
whether it's Vienna or Zurich. And I would say this
also translates a little bit to
innovation, I believe. So maybe there are some
benefits to having some central
elements, to just make sure that we don't
create any redundancies and
inefficiencies. Also to make sure that it's simple,
that we can measure it, so we
actually know, does it actually make sense?
Because just because I believe that
might be the right move, a couple of years down the
road we might look back and look
at the numbers, like, well, this didn't work
out. Then you need to
If you have
draw a conclusion.
Because if you don't have
them, you can't even draw
If you have the numbers, yeah. And so we
have this belief that moving some of it
decentralized, enabling, empowering colleagues in
our business units, because they
are closer to the problem, they are closer either to
operations, or they have their
own network in their business unit. Right? And a lot
of times this is a key enabler
for innovation: managing your stakeholders, your
colleagues, just getting people on
board. And who could do it better than people
that are in that business unit?
But what we can maybe offer and support them with
is the tooling, the knowledge,
making sure that we have a
governance in place.
As boring as it sounds, but something that enables
it for them, so they know they
don't have to worry about it. We provide this
centrally because it's applicable to
everyone. We get the feedback, we try
to improve it.
But basically we can provide tooling, we can
provide, as I said, knowledge,
training, everything. We ensure that we get the main
processes in place so that it
is as smooth as possible, as easy as possible for
colleagues decentrally to work
with startups. For example, if you talk about
venture client, there are other
innovation tools obviously at our disposal, venture
client just being one of them.
So that's why I personally believe there is a
central element that is creating
value. And then most of the value is
probably decentralized.
So it's a hypothesis for now, because
we're not there yet.
I've got to be quite honest that
we're not there yet.
So we're moving into that direction, but
it's work in progress.
I don't know, if we speak 18 months from now, I
might have a different view and I
might have some numbers to show. But for
now, it's a hypothesis.
It's our working ambition, and we
need to prove it.
So Lufthansa Innovation Hub is
a separate entity, right?
The Lufthansa Group at one point decided, okay,
we're going to create a lab in
Berlin as a separate entity, so that we can
do innovation there.
That somewhat is this centrally, or like this place
where something can be organized
centrally. But at the same time, I've heard often,
especially from the people that
are sitting in the main organization, that, ah,
these people in white sneakers over
there in Berlin, doing some stuff of theirs that
never is going to reach our main
operations. So from that perspective, I can also
imagine that the Lufthansa
Innovation Hub people were quite happy to get you
on board as that very necessary
bridge into the organization as a whole. And I
think also the hypothesis very
naturally comes from you, because you
believe in your colleagues.
You know who they are, what they need, and that they
themselves have a motivation to
improve the way they work, that maybe they're just
limited by how complex it is for
them to try out and bring new
improvements into their work.
Honestly, someone from the Innovation Hub,
from before they hired me, needs to
testify as to what the reasoning
behind it was.
But I would probably agree that one of the
elements is probably, besides the
mindset, you need the right people,
the right mindset.
It's obviously quite valuable to have someone who
has quite some experience within
the group, also in different functions. Because
it's not only about the network.
Network is a big part of it, it can be quite an
enabler, but it's mostly also having
the understanding, the empathy of what is actually
happening within the group, what
is on people's mind, when is there an opportunity
or a good time to speak about
stuff, and maybe when it's not. So we're really
focusing on trying to create value
and solving pain points within our group. We
shifted basically from also creating
solutions maybe for the ecosystem that you could
potentially spin off, which we did,
right? But now we're focusing completely on making
sure that our group can achieve a
sustainable competitive advantage with the
innovation that we provide.
Lufthansa Innovation Hub is moving way closer to the
group over the past couple of
years already. But this is particularly
true for our team.
So we need to be definitely super close to
the company, right?
The ecosystem is super relevant to us, the startup
ecosystem as well, but we need to
balance it, because mainly we need to
understand: where are we hurting?
Where do we have an opportunity? Where should we
leverage something, or where do our
colleagues need support? And this is not happening
by just sitting in Berlin and
waiting for someone to pick up the phone. So we
need to talk to our colleagues.
We need to be engaged with them. We need
to be where they are.
You mentioned the Innovation Hub changing
its proposition ultimately towards the
Lufthansa Group as a whole, right? And I do feel
that the time at which these were
initially started was still from a mindset of, look,
all of these startups or all of
these new companies are creating
massive businesses.
We don't want to lose out on that. Not an aviation
example, but WhatsApp, and then
all the telecoms companies realizing, oh, we
should have built WhatsApp.
Back then, still, the mindset was very much of,
corporations are competing with
startups and they need to adopt the startup
methodology in order to build their own
startups so that they keep having control. It's like
an improved way of doing R&D,
in a way. And I think now, and very much also with
venture client, the perspective
has changed a bit. Not anymore of corporate and
startup are competing with each
other, but actually, no, it's one ecosystem.
And it's also not separated.
There's not an invisible line between the startup
ecosystem and the corporate world.
Instead it's just the economy and the world
developing, and corporations then
realizing that they need to be able to tap into what
comes out of the startup world
rather than compete with it.
There's fluidity, I would say,
more so than ever before.
Probably also because times changed. That's true for
us, probably true for a lot of
companies that have corporate innovation units, or
are thinking about corporate
innovation in general. And it's way
more structured now.
There's way more opportunity now to
collaborate in a structured way.
So it's not purely opportunistic, because someone
within the company learned about a
young company that is doing something
quite innovative.
It's way more deliberate, I would say. And then
there's always this question, and
honestly, to me personally, this question is nowadays
again super relevant: how much
should you build in-house versus procure? Or maybe
you can't really distinguish or
decide at the beginning, but maybe you need to try
it first and then decide, after
having tried something, whether it actually makes
more sense to continue pursuing
that direction by doing it in-house, or by actually
trying to use someone from the
outside, from the ecosystem, to support
you on that journey.
And this is especially true nowadays with where
LLMs and AI in general have
progressed. Probably a couple of years back, if you
would have asked me, should we
build or should we buy, it'd probably be
more buy than build.
Unless we're super, super good in building it, or we
have this unique advantage, for
whatever reason, where it just makes sense to build
it in-house, simply because we
need to protect the IP, we need to
protect the data.
So if I just go out there, take for
example computer vision.
We actually have had multiple computer vision
cases within one of our business
units, in the logistics sector. So picture this:
you're a logistics company.
So you move shipments from A to B basically. And
you, as Fabian, might be a
customer, like, hey, you know what, I have this
package, those are the dimensions,
I'm going to pay online, I'm going to send you my
package and you just transport it.
Then every now and then the company realized, well,
Fabian booked that dimension,
but actually the shipment is a little larger than
expected, but nobody really realized that.
That
Yeah.
Right.
Right. So it just happened, just
by checking in randomly.
But if there's one, there are more. So we realized
there are multiple shipments that
might have exceeded their booked
dimensions, so to speak.
Obviously, since most of it is transported in
planes, us being an aviation company,
space is super limited and super valuable on a plane,
whether it's in the belly of a
passenger plane or in a dedicated cargo plane.
Either way, it's limited, so it's
expensive. So if your package takes up more space,
okay, that's fine, but then at
least pay for it, right? So one of the use cases
was: all right, we can actually
recharge. We'll transport it, no worries, but at
least pay for the correct
dimensions. We didn't know that before. Now with
computer vision, everything is
being measured. We know the dimensions. We can
check it against the papers.
And if it is exceeding what you've booked, then we
just add that to the booking.
Right? That's one use case.
A great use case, actually, because
it generates revenue directly.
You can do it on a small sample once and show, okay,
look, this is actually like 10%
extra that could be charged.
100%.
Which means 10% extra
revenue across the board.
Any parcel that is exceeding the booked
dimensions basically, you can charge for
that one. It's immediately adding to your
incremental revenue.
Yeah.
The second use case: if you know the
dimensions, you can kind of plan already how to
build up the pallets that need to go
onto the airplane.
So it's basically 3D Tetris. And that was done a
lot of times manually, by quite
some experienced colleagues that
needed to check.
Okay, so some parcels, obviously you can also
transport dangerous goods.
So if something is a little bit radioactive, it can
only be transported if it's, for
example, far away from anything that
is living, right?
So you can't transport it in the same
container, obviously.
There are strict rules that need to
be followed.
Also, if something is super heavy, it might not make
sense to put it on top of the
pack, but rather maybe on the bottom.
Mhm.
For obvious reasons, right? But those are
some of the thoughts that go into it.
And then obviously you need to check weight and
balance of the plane on that
particular flight. That can't be exceeded. So
there are certain weight limits.
You need to make sure that the aircraft
itself remains in balance.
So a lot of stuff to factor in. And it was done
mostly manually, after having done
some previous checks obviously. And nowadays, if
you know the dimensions, if you
know everything that is going onto your flight and
you measure it, you can already
have technology calculate the best
loading plan.
Freeing up capacity by another, whatever, 10%
again, that costs, that you actually save.
The loading will still be done, and many
people will actually move the process onto
the plane. But at least you know
exactly where it goes.
You don't need to think about it. You can
immediately just follow the plan that has
been calculated and just go with it. And that's the
second use case that's coming
out of this one. And this will ultimately now be
scaled across different warehouses,
because that company has multiple warehouses at
our hubs and destinations.
And this is a huge improvement,
obviously, right?
And that's just one example.
A couple of questions about that. Initially
the packages land somewhere and there
they get measured, right? It's not as they go into
the airplane, because then I guess
It's on the conveyor belt basically,
right? So as they are being transitioned
through the warehouse, at different stages
you can set up cameras.
How much does it actually happen that I'm
flying on holidays now and I'm in my
plane? It's not my plane, I just booked my
seat, but fair enough.
Still with me.
Exactly. Still with me comes
that radioactive package.
How much of that whole space actually gets
used for the cargo business?
It's still quite a lot. Talking commercially
about it, you could, a route could be
positive in terms of revenue even
just by cargo.
Just by the passenger tickets it might not be the
best route, but adding the cargo
to it, that's obviously a huge lever.
So then you might still be profitable when
I sit in one of those planes where
everybody has three seats for themselves.
Yes. In general. Obviously I don't have the
commercial background, my colleagues in
the commercial department could explain it way
better, but generally yes.
And then sometimes it's also the
diversification of what you're offering.
Take the pandemic, for example. That was an
absolutely extreme example, right?
Let's not hope that will ever come back in
the same way again.
But back then, cargo was the name of the game.
Obviously we couldn't have survived
purely off cargo, otherwise we wouldn't have needed
support from the government.
But still, cargo skyrocketed. The demand for
cargo air travel skyrocketed.
Was it because of
masks and the
Yeah, personal protective equipment. At
some point we ripped out passenger seats
from our passenger airplanes and converted them
basically into cargo planes.
Obviously you didn't have a cargo door like a cargo
plane, but basically we moved
non-heavy equipment such as masks, for example, back
from the sourcing countries to
Europe. So I personally did a couple of flights to
Asia without any seats in them,
with most seats removed, where basically there was
just, on the way back, boxes of
protective equipment.
And you did some of
those flights.
One or two, actually two. Countries were
closing left and right on short notice and
in short intervals. And basically the government
was scrambling to get German
nationals back to Germany, or at least have an option
for them to come home, because
they were stuck, because air travel was
just canceled on them.
So we had flights for the government as far as
Australia and New Zealand, South
America, Central America, the Caribbean, because
there was so much demand.
And we weren't the only ones. Obviously Lufthansa
Group took a huge part in that,
but there were other German airlines that
also contributed to that.
And it was happening in the shortest possible
time, sometimes within days.
So you can just imagine how many people in
operational functions came together to
plan and manage those flights. And then the crew was
basically just the last puzzle
piece to actually get the task, get the
mission, fly there and fly back.
And during those times, those operations weren't
always the easiest on the crews,
because sometimes you couldn't spend a night,
sometimes you were allowed to spend
the night, but only if you stayed in
quarantine in the hotel.
So you were not allowed to exit your room. Those
were the extreme cases, where you
entered your room, you were basically accompanied
by some local representative of
the state, or at least someone that was tasked with
accompanying the crew to your
room. And then it was basically not locked
down, but basically that's it.
And then maybe one or two days later, whenever it
was time to fly home, you would
exit the room again. So that was obviously really
challenging for people that
probably chose aviation for the freedom that it
also brings, along with traveling
places, going out, experiencing the world. And then
you find yourself in this really
rare situation where you fly somewhere, but you move
into a hotel room and you stay
in that hotel room for the next 48
to 56 hours.
Were you scared on some of those flights? I
mean, with the pandemic I can imagine
less, but if it's real geopolitical
At Lufthansa Group we have a really, really
good corporate security department that
has a really good network, that is highly
professional, that assesses basically
whatever is going on in the world and how it's
impacting our operation, how it's
affecting our crews at that destination, if
something is happening at that
destination. We are trying to connect
cultures and economies.
So it's all about freedom of movement. And this is
obviously being limited by some
of the recent geopolitical situations. The
corridors where you can actually fly
through certain regions have become
very narrow.
And then obviously everyone needs to
go through those.
And our colleagues in corporate security assess
exactly where we can fly.
And sometimes there are airspaces where there's
just a minimum flight level where
it's okay to fly over, and others
are simply no-go.
So you trust that team? When you get put on a
mission, you trust that this has been
figured out, and you're going to
do your part.
Yeah, I trust my flight operations
department. Our flight operations department,
tremendous team, and our corporate security team,
they work jointly together and
they make a decision. And I trust
that decision.
I could go so much deeper into this, but
we're also here to talk about venture
client. Still, maybe we can make a bridge between
the safety that you talk about a
lot, right, which seems like one of the, if not the
top value that you guys strive
to embody. How does that work together with
innovation, that by default is going to
at times compete a bit, or be a bit
inconsistent with that safety?
Yeah, that's a very fair question. So first
of all, that's why, we talked about it a
little bit earlier, maybe we're now in an era
where innovation, especially with
startups, is happening in a more
structured, more consistent way.
Take the computer vision example. Huge
value, perfect, amazing.
So if it didn't work, what would be the risk?
If it failed, what happens?
The scanning didn't work, or maybe the build-up of
the containers didn't work to the
same extent, but it's double-checked anyways. So
no real risk to operations.
But now take something that is close to
flight operations, right?
Where if you add a technology, make
changes to a system.
We're striving for a really high degree of
safety in what we do.
And there are so many people, so many resources
working on making this happen,
unknown to the customer usually. If we just make
changes to that, we can disrupt
operations, right? And we're not just talking
about putting safety in jeopardy.
Sometimes it's just about an IT system shutting
down in operations, but it's a
centralized IT system. So maybe you can't board
or check in any passengers.
Then your entire operation is being disrupted,
with a huge financial impact.
That is a way different danger, I would say. So we
need to be very deliberate and
obviously also more mindful. And we take even more
planning when it comes closer to
operations, I would say. Even in today's cabin, in
the new cabin that we have on
board of our Lufthansa airplanes, you can do more
with your own device already.
And this will just, with Starlink coming on board
now, since we just introduced the
first airplane, we're starting again,
innovative technology.
Not the first ones to put it on a
plane, right?
Others have done it before, but then again, it's an
innovative technology and it
will create ample opportunity for use cases on the
flight deck, because now you can
have more data sources. You can leverage that
bandwidth to actually do something
with it. Or on the passenger side, whether people
are now engaging more with each
other via their phones, more
integration in the cabin.
It could be interesting use cases
coming up.
I think also it's interesting that you bring
up Starlink, because SpaceX, are people
going to call that a startup? I mean, now they are
publicly traded, but they are not
that old yet. So from that perspective you
could say it's a startup.
I think overall it just shows that the whole
conversation about startups is
unproductive. Like, we're doing this
for startups.
In the end, we're doing this in order to validate new
innovations that can come from
anywhere. Startups are a huge source, true. But in
the end, to determine this one
yes, this one no, that's not the point. It is
about the validation of the
innovation. That's the real mandate
and purpose.
I would agree. Cancel out all the
terminology around it, it's basically exactly
that. And you can ask them, okay, so what
is a startup to you?
And sometimes we ask that question to our
colleagues, just to tease a little bit.
So what is a startup in your perspective? What do
you picture when you picture a
startup? You could have like two dudes in a beanie
hat in a garage, that's one
extreme. And then you have other companies that have
been running only for a couple
of years but are tremendous in size already, or
have created a huge impact.
Raised 100 million in venture capital
for just this one focused problem.
So you can always make up some potentially
defining elements of what a startup has
or has not. But ultimately that's not the
point, I would say.
And going forward, there probably
shouldn't be a clear line.
In terms of organizational responsibilities and
just making sure, okay, clarity,
who's doing what, it might be helpful
to define the line.
But in reality, I would say this is
very much fluid.
Isn't the line within a certain budget
constraint, within a certain time constraint
and within a certain liability
risk constraint?
Like, you're clearly not going to try something in
the cabin now on some flight like
that. But ultimately it's that, right? You're
sandboxing from all the dimensions to
make sure that ultimately, applying lean startup,
you're trying to make maximum
learnings with minimum investment in order to
then go through the next cycle.
I would actually say this is probably the
way, if not being implemented yet
everywhere. And the same goes for us. But this is
ultimately what it should be,
because it's not the point whether it's a super
young company or an older company.
It's about the technology or the innovation
that they bring to the table.
And it's more about us being, I would say, experts
and enablers of testing that
technology in a very defined scope and budget, as you
said, but having the expertise
of navigating the governance of a bigger
corporation in the most seamless way, to
allow for us as a large company to test that
solution in the quickest way with
limited resources, and get the maximum learnings as
quickly as possible to make a
decision moving forward. This is just a
cycle on repeat.
Repeat, repeat, repeat.
Because the world is moving and it's all
just about, how can we make sure that we
continuously use and adopt the good stuff that the
good people of this world are
creating? I have two points there. One: before you
even heard about venture client,
maybe, or maybe just got in touch with the
Lufthansa Innovation Hub, did you have
thoughts of, hey, here are things that
could be improved?
And would you have known ways to actually
move these things forward?
So that would obviously be more in
an operational capacity, right?
Because as a pilot back then, or in operational
management roles, or on the flight
deck, you definitely realize, if you are the pilot
of a flight and you reach your
destination and there are no stairs. Most people
have experienced it: either no one
is unloading or loading your bags, or there are no
stairs, or for some reason things
are not moving as they're supposed to, right? So
that you can experience firsthand.
And actually, it's super early, so I can't really
speak in detail about it, but
we're currently looking into one use case where we
might look at how we can create
more awareness of where the ground service equipment
is, GSE in short, and actually
have it maybe technology-steered in a better way,
especially when things happen in
operations. Because generally on the first flight
of the day you could start on
time, but as the day progresses,
stuff happens.
Weather delays, technical issues. So one flight gets
delayed, one might be canceled.
This obviously affects also the use of
the equipment needed.
Because if one plane is delayed and they still need
to load or have access to the
airplane, one piece of the equipment is still stuck
at that plane, but it might have
been needed already at another plane. So maybe
leveraging technology, not only
knowing where it is on the airport, but also
steering it in a more efficient way.
And especially when a disruption happens, to be able
to leverage technology so that
it can quickly derive a new plan. Like, you know
what, move stairs A to flight C,
and stairs D you move to flight A, and this
is actually more optimal.
But that is not an airline responsibility,
that's typically the airport themselves.
It depends. You're right to the
most extent, at least in Europe.
But there's also for us an
exception to the rule.
At one of our hubs we do have our own
ground service provider.
The group has its own ground service provider. And
that's exactly where we might
potentially look into this use case. And it's
different in the US, for example,
where there's still a bigger dependence on company
employees working on the ground
handling, whereas in Europe it has always been very
much on having partner companies
doing the ground handling for you.
But so that wouldn't be the airport
itself, like BER here or Fraport.
It's not even them that are responsible for that,
it's the airlines that then get a
contractor to be on the ground.
Most airports do have their own
ground handling team, or
So it's a service.
their own company that they offer
basically, and you can contract it.
But there are other companies also
in that domain.
But then again, that's not even the point. Once
again, it's an ecosystem game.
With one company of the airport in Munich that
provides ground handling services in
Munich, and our company, we just started
pooling equipment.
And it just makes so much sense.
It's so obvious.
But it's about thinking beyond company boundaries
and just pooling equipment.
Does it hurt me if I have stairs available and you
use it, even if we don't have a
contract, if we find an arrangement that
we pool the equipment?
If I'm working for the airport ground handler, I
can provide my customers with
equipment at the right time and place, just as you
can leverage my equipment if you
are running short. It makes so much sense. But
obviously you need to have a very
trustful relationship. But ultimately that's why I'm
saying it's an ecosystem game,
and you need to have the right players and partners
in the ecosystem, because it's
so interconnected.
I want to move, you spoke about, it's a bit
back, about procurement, and how without
your procurement colleagues you could have never set
up this fast-track procurement
process that allows you to test new
technologies and validate suppliers.
How did that go? Did you just go to them and explain
the concept, or because you had
a top-down mandate they had to move? How did
that conversation go?
So, no top-down mandate, which I
think was honestly also helpful.
Not to have it.
Yeah. Obviously now it would make sense
to have it, just, this is also about
clarity, because you don't want redundancies. It
should be clear who's doing what,
just so you don't waste your resources. I think this
is clear, whether it's Startup
Gate or someone else, but there should be
clarity on who's doing what.
Simply because there needs to be some ownership in
terms of making sure it's done in
the right way, that you can actually account for
it, that you can measure it, and
that you don't waste your resources.
So that I agree.
But coming back to your procurement question, I
believe back then it was actually
exactly as you described it. I just went to one of
my procurement colleagues, which
I knew from my previous role. He's in a senior
leadership position, and I just
approached him like, that's where we are, and we
have this issue, and we're trying
to do this PoC, but there's no setup yet, and we're
running into this issue, can we
talk about it? And he invited us then to his team
meeting, his leadership round.
And we explained it. And obviously there
was some hesitance.
Well.
Aren't you guys doing what we're doing? And
so obviously we needed to get to know
each other and then develop an understanding of how
this is actually beneficial for
the group, but also
for them.
how it's also complementary. And by no
means is it taking over a role previously
done by procurement. It's extending the role that
procurement does and adding just
this area of expertise without removing
anything, basically.
Right? It just took a while. We had really honest
discussions and workshops on how
this could work. And we trialed it, and we developed
this, as you said, fast-track
process. So a unique process under which, in a
defined scope, we can just move
freely, I would say, with dedicated touchpoints
that we have, so we maintain this
close relationship. And so far it works great.
Amazing, it works great.
And we're just trying to now find the right way to
move this forward for the entire
group. But I've got to say, we could have been way,
way worse off, to be honest.
They know how it's been done previously, how their
standard sourcing usually works.
And then just taking them and showing them a clear
way, a clear path through it,
that is very much agreed upon, it
makes it really easy.
And then at some point you realize, oh,
there's some sort of relief.
Are you actually compliant? Right? Yeah.
Contrary to the belief.
Oh, we are compliant. But actually we're not only
compliant, we're actually fast and
compliant. That's the entire value
proposition.
We are fast and compliant, right? And once we have
done it with our colleagues, and
we do it again with them, it's a no-brainer.
It's only the first time.
But having this process, it's about the scalability
and about the number of projects
and PoCs you do on the one hand. But it's also a
really good, I would say, business
card to show, to address the hesitation and
somewhat also the anxiety on our
colleagues' side, which is totally understandable,
because if it's novel, if you've
never worked with each other, you don't know
each other, there's no trust
relationship yet. So a process, a clear process
and a structure, in my point of
view, enables this trust relationship
a little earlier.
And also, coming back to the centralized
versus decentralized, I think it's also
extremely important initially to have faces to it,
because before I trust a process,
I trust a person, right? And right now,
Daniel stands for that.
Hopefully at one point you don't even need
to be associated to it.
You've just added some lines of code, ultimately,
to the source code of how the
Lufthansa Group operates. But I think that's
exactly also why it typically starts
with a small team that is setting up these initial
processes and is also vouching
for, guys, we're on a journey here, but this is
compliant, in order to then
hopefully eventually, which I don't think any
organization has fully reached yet,
have this standard process fully available.
Because it's like online marketing
didn't exist in the past, right? That function needed
to be created, some iteration,
some learning, and eventually you decided, okay, it
sits within marketing, or we
actually move it into our digital
department, whatever.
But now online marketing as a business
function exists.
Or QA, or product, on the software side, also as
functions that previously didn't
exist, where standards were created and now every
organization just has them.
And you're talking about trust. It comes back
to why we believe also moving it into
the organization makes sense. Because if you have
never done this, but you know
there's someone within your business unit also
pushing this, supporting you on that
road, there's no discussion about, what's
your game in here?
Why are you doing it? What is the
motivation? There is no argument.
You're in the same business unit. You're
doing it for the same cause.
Often the venture client thing gets framed
as, hey, there's this new innovation tool
that we're now going to use, similar to incubation,
acceleration, the likes in the
past. But the truth is actually that it's
not a new invention.
It's just a methodology that was developed around
something that companies have been
doing forever. Right? I don't know how much, but I
would guess at least a thousand
new suppliers are added to the supplier
database every year.
Now, a good share of those is going to fall into the
category startup, or fall into
the category of, we've done something with them that
previously we haven't, or we've done differently.
Yeah, I would agree. Because look, in such a
big company, you mentioned we have over
100,000 employees. Obviously there is amazing
talent in that company, right?
And there are so many people that actually want to
move ahead and make a change that
is beneficial to the company. So obviously, also in
the past, people have thought
about how we can improve this. And then they
started just looking, right?
So this always happened. I agree, this
always happened.
This is more just being more structured and
deliberate, kind of creating the
Autobahn, so to speak, for it. Right? Maybe not take
the small road with a couple of
detours, but just move on to the Autobahn.
Yeah, exactly. I think it's also that, if I
now, like, I'm a pilot, or maybe I'm not
a pilot because they don't have so many improvement
potentials, but I'm managing the
ground team in Munich, the one that you spoke about
that you have, and I would want
to make a change, I would have to
find my own path.
Now I found my path, cool, I've done it. Or maybe
I was disheartened and not
motivated anymore, because it was
just so difficult.
Now someone else also does that, also
finds their own path.
Again, someone else also does that, again
finds their own path.
Actually the potential for the Autobahn is already
there, because a bunch of people
have created roads, just they don't
know of each other.
And there are probably like 20 little trample
paths next to each other in the
forest, where if you would move them all together, we already
would have a good part of the highway.
If they knew they had the same destination,
they probably said, oh, maybe we can
move together. Yeah, exactly.
Which is exactly why it is needed to
initially have someone with a mandate to
professionalize this, because no one in their
operational work is going to take that
on. You seem to be able to do a lot with your time,
but nonetheless, you've taken
some time to set up these agreements with
procurement, to align a team, to
understand. There's much we haven't spoken
about but can do in a future
conversation: compliance, IT, etc. There's still so
many other departments as well
to get into. That is a real job, to
create that Autobahn.
But the question is, is it actually a job forever, or
once you've created that Autobahn
I would say that's an open question. I
don't know the answer exactly.
But I would very much agree that if you have
established, if you have found a good
setup that works reliably, consistently creates the
impact for the group, because
it's all about the impact. Nobody cares
about the number of PoCs.
Oh yeah, I mean, I do care about the number of
PoCs, because I want to
As an activity KPI. As a manager you care
to see, okay, we're doing things.
We're busy, right?
Yeah, exactly.
But nobody cares. It's the impact that
counts. How are we actually improving
Lufthansa Group as a corporation? How are we
actually supporting that cause?
And only if that is working, then that
makes a difference.
That being said, we have now this task of creating
this, or removing roadblocks,
making it easier. Sometimes it's not only about
roadblocks, it's just making it,
instead of some pathway through the forest, making
pavement, making it easier to
move. Right? We have this. And I truly believe down
the road, while we scale the
concept across the group, we don't
necessarily scale our team.
And I don't think that's necessary. I think there
will be a very healthy balance of
where a small team can be very capable of
maintaining the Autobahn, maintaining the
concept, making sure that everyone else working with
it has all the tools, all the
frameworks, always up to date, consistently being
available for challenges that
might come up, but generally working on maintaining
the process and the structures.
And that, I believe, you can do with a
very limited team.
I want to close off with a
few quick questions.
All right.
Starting out with: if you could ask one
thing from the Lufthansa management board,
what would you ask them for?
If I had only one ask. I would ask to get the
opportunity to prove that this type of
innovation is actually creating the impact. And for
that, it actually needs a little
time, just to move across the organization. And if I
ask for time, it's usually also
asking for money, because that buys you a little bit of
time and moves forward some use cases.
Your Lufthansa colleagues: if you could ask
one thing from them, or send one message
to them, maybe some of them will
view this.
I would say, share whatever little or big
pain point you have, whatever inefficiency
you have, share it with us. The worst thing that can
happen is we can't do anything
about it. But the best case scenario is there's
actually an opportunity to solve
this. But only if we learn about it can we
actually figure this out.
Then one wish to the startup ecosystem, or
the founders of companies that might have
relevant solutions and technologies
for Lufthansa.
Again, this is repetitive: share
them with us. It's very easy.
For now, go to the Lufthansa Innovation Hub
website, lh-innovation-hub.
And there you can actually share your startup,
your idea, your pitch with us.
And we take a look at everyone. You always get an
answer back, even if there is no
opportunity immediately, if we don't see us coming
together in the next couple of
months. You always get feedback, you get an
answer, and this is how it works.
We share very openly with the ecosystem, both
internally and externally.
And if you feel the same way, just
share it with us.
If you could ask one thing from
GlassDollar, what would you ask for?
First I've got to say, I very much agree
with, or like, the decision to focus on the
technology, because I think the technology is
actually where you will provide the
most value to us. And if I can ask just one
thing, it's exactly creating this
transparency and openness to shape it, to listen to
the customer and co-create this
product with the customer. And I'm not sure you
will, but this is something that I
hope, even if the company becomes bigger,
we will retain this.
Let's put it this way.
Well, I can also say it's a pleasure
co-creating this product with partners like
you. And then the last one, this is not an ask,
but what would you recommend to
those starting out on their journey of establishing
venture client within their organization?
Be pragmatic about it. Don't overthink it.
There's ample opportunity and resources
out there to get the basic knowledge,
and then just do it.
But what I would say is, as early as possible, for
example, talk to procurement, to
your sourcing colleagues, to some
critical stakeholders.
Not to define a process per se at the earliest
stage, but to shape this with them
together, because I believe if it's co-shaped
and co-created, there's this
co-ownership. It's not our thing, it's as a team,
but it goes beyond the team,
right? And having this shared ownership and
commitment and moving into one
direction, I think it's very beneficial
to the cause itself.
Cool. Daniel, this has been so
insightful. Thank you very much.
It was a pleasure for me. This was really
so much fun for me.
Likewise.
Thank you.