Key Takeaways
- Realistic use of technology matters more than chasing the latest trend: pragmatism beats dogmatism.
- Waymo's self-driving cars demonstrate that AI makes different mistakes than humans, often with safer overall results after 41 million kilometres of operation.
- The Gartner Hype Cycle explains how expectations on technology rise, crash, and then stabilise at productive use – illustrated by examples like the metaverse and Apple Vision Pro.
- Three root causes of technology failure are: tools for fools, bad data and broken processes, and unrealistic expectations.
- Mercedes-Benz USA used a first-generation iPad to close leasing contracts on the spot, eliminating lost sales at the dealership door – proving simple tools beat shiny systems.
- Coca-Cola Germany reduced fridge delivery time from four weeks to 24 hours by setting a bold goal first and then adapting processes and technology to reach it.
- Ulrich Nehama's four criteria for sensible technology: it must increase speed, improve collaboration, improve connectivity, and increase scalability.
- Replacing digital whiteboards with analogue boards at Coca-Cola improved focus and productivity – digitalisation is only useful when it genuinely helps.
- AI can automate routine tasks such as bookkeeping, freeing advisors to focus on strategic, higher-value work.
- Technology should always be embedded in a strategic process: goals first, then process design, then tool selection.
This is Part 3 of a three-part series on my English-language AI keynote at the EACVA conference. Also read: Part 1 · Part 2
Welcome back to another episode of TJ's Technology Tuesday. In this episode, I am sharing an excerpt from a keynote I recently delivered on the topic of artificial intelligence. I hope you enjoy it.
Start of the keynote
Looking to realistic ideas and realistic use of technology. Another nice example is self-driving cars. Don't know if anybody of you has already driven a Waymo car in San Francisco. Anybody who has already taken a... I see some drivers there. I hear a lot of Germans say, Self-driving cars? I would never go into a self-driving car. What they did is they just said, Okay, don't be dogmatic, be pragmatic. They now have more than 41 million kilometres with self-driving cars in San Francisco and in Waymo and the other cities. In that time, they had 11 crashes. They compared it to regular ones, and they are above the 100. Yes, of course, a human being would never be so stupid as a Tesla to drive into a white lorry. But an artificial intelligence would never be so dumb to look at a smartphone and crash into the car ahead. Actually, I have a very good friend of mine who lives in San Francisco, and he says, I have a very simple strategy. When I want to cross the street, I always check: is this a real driver or is it a Waymo? The moment it is a real driver, he stops.
The moment it is a Waymo, he crosses the street because he knows the Waymo car has seen him before he even saw it. So artificial intelligence makes different mistakes. We have to understand that, yes, artificial intelligence makes mistakes we as humans would never make. But in most systems, the bottleneck is not technology. My team always says, Boss, it is not the system, it is the person sitting behind the system. You are the problem. And looking into how we judge technology, there is a very smart company with a hype cycle, you have probably heard of it — the Gartner Company. They are always looking into how expectations on technology develop over time. I always compare it a bit to riding a bicycle. Who of you has children? We see some hands. Who of you has ever been a child? I assume you are all in the game now. I still remember when I got a bicycle for my birthday. Of course, I was excited: A bicycle? Yeah, I love it. I can explore the world. Everything is possible with my bicycle. Then came step number two. I will never ride a bicycle again.
I always crash and nothing works. Of course, my father was smart enough to say, Okay, give it another try, give it another try. I assume some of you can relate to that experience. Probably, riding a bicycle is not as exciting as when I received my first bicycle. But now I can move very productively with it and still have some fun. That is also what you see with technology. Nowadays, nobody talks about the metaverse. The metaverse was the big thing before artificial intelligence. Three years ago, if I had said I was going to a conference, people would say, A conference? That is so 1980. We are meeting in the metaverse. We all have artificial intelligence. We have VR glasses, we have AR glasses — virtual reality, augmented reality. We will all be there. Nobody is going to meet in person. Then the Apple Vision Pro came, and while the press is now writing that the Apple Vision Pro is a flop, Porsche is implementing it in their car dealerships. So the next time you choose your new 911, you see the one in black and say, Okay, that is a bit boring. How does it look in yellow? No problem. You get an Apple Vision Pro and you can change the colour.
Or while other people are saying that the metaverse and Apple Vision Pro are dead, Lufthansa is using it to train their cabin crew. They can choose whether they want to practice with a friendly passenger or an unfriendly one, and have a very realistic training experience. This is what I always say. Summing all of that up: what are the biggest mistakes in terms of why technology usually increases complexity and costs, but not productivity? It comes down to three things. Number one, tools for fools. Number two, bad data and broken processes. Number three, unrealistic expectations. Therefore, it is a very good idea to start not necessarily with the shiniest systems, but with the systems that actually work. Which is all to say: before we start with artificial intelligence, let us start with common sense. Or, as Andreas already put it, switch on your brain first and then the technology. A company from a very different sector that did this very smartly some years ago was Mercedes-Benz in the USA. Buying cars in the US is a bit different from buying cars in Germany. If you tell an American that they have to wait nine months for their Mercedes-Benz E-Class, they would ask you, What on earth have you been smoking?
The usual situation is that you go to your dealership and drive away with your car the same day. But Mercedes-Benz had a challenge. You can see that challenge in the picture here. Because the moment someone said, I want that car, the response was, Great, let us go to the office and finalise the leasing agreement. The problem is right here — those doors. Because some clients decided to use one of the exit doors before they ever reached the office. The question became: how can we close that gap? What can we do to solve that bottleneck? And what they did was simple: the moment a client says, I want that car, the response is, Wonderful — please sign here. And what you see here is a first-generation iPad. It is about as glamorous as signing for a parcel on your doorstep. Is it about shiny pictures or flashy systems? No. It is about the mechanism behind it. It is like when I always ask: what is the ugliest web page in the world? The ugliest web page in the world is Amazon. Every designer says, This is a piece of rubbish.
But it is one of the best-converting web pages in the world. So it is not about shiny and bling-bling — it is about the mechanism. And therefore, I always say: relevance beats flamboyance. Another company that has understood technology very well is the Coca-Cola Company. On one particular day, much like today, they had a management meeting. The former CEO of the Coca-Cola German organisation, Ulrich Nehama, stood in front of his management team and said, Guys, we have a problem. When a client wants a Coca-Cola fridge, it takes us four weeks to deliver it. Four weeks during which the client is making no revenue, we are making no revenue, and the competition can jump in. And what he did was not ask, How can we make that a little bit faster? He stood in front of his team and said, What do we have to do to reduce that from four weeks to 24 hours? At that moment, it was even quieter than it is in this room right now. And he was very generous. He said, We can discuss whether we reach that this business year or next one. By the way, this was at the end of the business year, so he was indeed very generous.
He said, We can discuss which processes we need to optimise, which technologies you need, and how we need to train you. But one thing I am not going to discuss is the goal itself. What Ulrich Nehama said is that technology only makes sense when it meets four criteria. Criterion number one: it must increase speed. We have to get faster. Criterion number two: it must improve collaboration. Criterion number three: it must improve connectivity — between departments, suppliers, and clients. Criterion number four: it must increase scalability. Only then does it make sense. And this is a picture of their meeting rooms, because what they also did was replace monthly meetings — where everybody was simply complaining about why nothing was working — with daily stand-ups. They had these metal blackboards, and in small groups they would ask just two questions: How many refrigerators did you sell yesterday? And how many refrigerators are you going to sell today? Because Ulrich Nehama and Coca-Cola are very clear on one thing: within Coca-Cola, there are only two jobs. Either you sell Coca-Cola or you help to sell Coca-Cola.
The interesting thing is that I came in there as a digital process advisor, and the first thing I noticed was those digital whiteboards. I observed the teams, and I saw that at a certain point they were spending more time debating how to change the digital colour of the digital pen than discussing how many refrigerators they were going to sell. The first measure I implemented was to say: throw out those digital whiteboards. We threw them out. The team said, You are a crazy digital guy. We hired you to help us become more digital, and you are telling us to go less digital. My answer was: yes, digitalisation makes sense, but you do not have to do everything digitally just because you can. Do it when it helps you to be more productive and to solve the problems of your clients in a smarter way. Speaking of smart solutions — here is one, for example, invented in 1849. I do not have many ideas for how you could improve it. Breathing, for instance, is a very old concept, but do not sit there wondering whether it makes sense to change it. On the other hand, when you look at this: a friend of mine posted that in May — What is a solopreneur doing on a Sunday morning in May?
I said, Jens, I think we need to talk. Because there are solutions like Get My Invoices, for example, where this kind of work can be fully automated — and where you, as a service provider, can recognise that your role is no longer about entering receipts. That is something artificial intelligence can do more efficiently and more accurately today. Your role is a different one as an advisor. It is important to think about strategic IT in terms of: what are the goals you want to achieve? Like Coca-Cola — how do we generate more turnover? How do we need to adjust our processes to deliver those fridges faster? And which technologies do we need to use to achieve that? It also makes sense, of course, to think from the other direction as well. For example, a new technology emerged where they realised that the iPad is able to measure the exact dimensions of the space available for the refrigerator.
I hope you can take this away: one of the issues they faced was that many refrigerators arrived even before the four weeks were up, but the problem was simply that they were two millimetres too wide. They said, The iPad can measure that. We can optimise our process to achieve our goals. It works both ways, but it should always be driven by a strategic focus. Tools and gadgets are important, as I said at the beginning, but always embedded in a strategic process. For your next event — if you are looking for an informative, inspiring, and motivating speaker for your team, your sales partners, or your service partners — I would be very happy to speak to you, whether as a keynote speaker, workshop facilitator, or in other formats, including with your clients. When I work with your clients, I am naturally not just there for the one hour of the keynote — I am present throughout the entire event, so that your participants leave saying: Wow, what outstanding value. That has been my ambition since I began in 1988 at Nixdorf: to bring together the topics of digitalisation, sales, and productivity — with energy, with motivation, so that new technology does not create fear, but inspires people to embrace digitalisation and artificial intelligence with enthusiasm.
End of the keynote
Conclusion
I would be delighted to bring this same energy to your next event. Yours, Thorsten Jekel.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does "pragmatic over dogmatic" mean when adopting new technology?
Being pragmatic over dogmatic means judging technology by its real-world results rather than by fixed opinions. In the keynote, the example of Waymo self-driving cars is used: instead of refusing to try autonomous vehicles, Waymo accumulated over 41 million kilometres of data and proved statistically safer outcomes than human drivers in comparable situations.
How does the Gartner Hype Cycle apply to technologies like the metaverse or Apple Vision Pro?
The Gartner Hype Cycle shows that expectations on a technology first rise steeply, then crash, and finally settle at a level of productive use. The keynote uses the metaverse and Apple Vision Pro as examples: while mainstream press declared them failures, companies like Porsche and Lufthansa were quietly deploying Apple Vision Pro for practical purposes such as visualising car colours and training cabin crew.
What are the three biggest mistakes that make technology increase complexity instead of productivity?
According to the keynote, the three biggest mistakes are: first, using tools for fools – adopting technology without a clear purpose; second, relying on bad data and broken processes; and third, holding unrealistic expectations about what technology can deliver. Addressing these three issues is a prerequisite before implementing any digital solution.
How did Mercedes-Benz USA use an iPad to increase car sales?
Mercedes-Benz USA identified that customers were leaving the dealership before reaching the finance office to sign leasing contracts. Their solution was to hand customers a first-generation iPad on the showroom floor the moment they expressed interest in a car, allowing them to sign immediately. The keynote uses this to illustrate that relevance and simplicity beat flashy, complex systems.
How did Coca-Cola Germany reduce fridge delivery time from four weeks to 24 hours?
Coca-Cola Germany's CEO Ulrich Nehama set a non-negotiable goal of delivering refrigerators within 24 hours instead of four weeks, then challenged the team to redesign processes and choose the right technologies to reach that goal. The keynote highlights this as an example of defining the outcome first and letting process and technology follow, rather than starting with tools.
What four criteria did Ulrich Nehama use to judge whether a technology makes sense?
According to the keynote, Ulrich Nehama defined four criteria for a technology to be worthwhile: it must increase speed, improve collaboration, improve connectivity between departments, suppliers, and clients, and increase scalability. Only when a tool meets these criteria does it justify adoption.
Why did Thorsten Jekel recommend removing digital whiteboards at Coca-Cola?
During his work as a digital process advisor at Coca-Cola, Thorsten Jekel observed that teams were spending more time debating how to change the colour of the digital pen than discussing sales figures. He recommended replacing the digital whiteboards with analogue boards to refocus attention on the business goal. This illustrates the keynote's principle that digitalisation should only be applied where it genuinely improves productivity.
How does artificial intelligence compare to human drivers in terms of mistakes?
The keynote explains that AI and humans make different types of mistakes: a human driver would never mistake a white lorry for open road (a reference to a well-known Tesla incident), but a human can become distracted by a smartphone and collide with the car ahead – something an AI would not do. The key insight is that AI systems are statistically safer overall, even though their failure modes differ from human ones.
What role should AI play for advisors and service providers according to the keynote?
The keynote argues that AI can handle routine tasks such as processing invoices and bookkeeping automatically, which frees advisors and service providers to focus on strategic work. Tools like Get My Invoices are cited as examples of AI-powered automation that removes administrative burden so professionals can concentrate on higher-value advisory activities.
What is the right order of priorities when digitising a business process?
The keynote consistently emphasises the sequence: goals first, then process design, then technology selection. Starting with the shiniest available tool is a recipe for failure. Organisations should first define what outcome they want to achieve, then redesign their processes to support that outcome, and only then choose the tools and technologies that best enable the new process.
Tools & Resources Mentioned
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) – central theme of the keynote; discussed in the context of self-driving cars, invoice automation, and strategic digitalisation
- iPad – used by Mercedes-Benz USA as a simple, effective tool for closing leasing contracts on the showroom floor; also mentioned as a measurement tool for refrigerator dimensions at Coca-Cola
- Waymo – self-driving car service operating in San Francisco, cited as a real-world AI success story with over 41 million kilometres driven
- Apple Vision Pro – augmented reality headset; cited as an example of technology moving past the hype trough into practical use by Porsche and Lufthansa
- Get My Invoices – invoice automation tool mentioned as an example of AI handling routine bookkeeping tasks for solopreneurs and advisors
