The right Timing

When is the right time in Germany to go public with a visionary idea? Our mentality demands that you must first prove yourself before you’re taken seriously. Visions, however, are based on imagination and faith. Only time will tell if they’ll deliver on their promise. Vision requires time, involves risks, is intangible, and even in its raw form is often incomplete. It’s a picture of a potential future.

So when is the best time to start sharing visionary thoughts and plans with the public, especially in down-to-earth Germany?

I find myself asking this question repeatedly. If you speak too soon, you’re not taken seriously and quickly labeled a big talker or delusional. You risk being confronted with gaps in your vision and incomplete ideas in a way that could, at worst, damage your own confidence in the matter. If you speak too late, Silicon Valley or Asia has taken the lead. But not talking about it at all? That’s no solution either, because no founder has ever succeeded without support, encouragement, and constructive critics by their side.

This tightrope between too early and too late is a constant companion when you have big plans here. Whenever a big vision fails in Germany, those who “always knew it” are quick to make themselves heard, unintentionally – or maybe even unknowingly – dampening the atmosphere for many future visionaries.

In the U.S. visions are regularly celebrated. The Steve Jobs and Elon Musks of the world shared their visions early and, not only succeeded with them, but shaped entire industries. The massive success of a few big tech companies fostered a culture of entrepreneurship that’s produced hundreds, even thousands, of smaller, successful companies. They might be unknown to us in Germany, but they’re part of why California alone could rank as one of the 10 largest economies in the world.

Germany, too, would have benefited greatly as a location if only one Apple, Amazon, or Google had emerged out of ten thousand start-ups – even if thousands of other visions had failed, it would have drawn unimaginable amounts of venture capital to Germany.

But Germany has been shaped by former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, who once said, “Anyone with visions should go see a doctor.” For decades, in my opinion, we completely misinterpreted this statement and linked it into our collective subconscious in the wrong way.

Because – as paradoxical as it may sound – in the 1970s, this down-to-earth approach was the only correct one! It was the kind of vision Germany needed back then. And for two reasons:

First, the country had just, in a little more than two decades, worked its way out of the ruins of the Second World War when Helmut Schmidt, as Minister of Finance, faced the oil crisis. This likely brought home just how fragile Germany still was. A down-to-earth and solid economic policy was essential to maintain the newfound prosperity of the republic. For uncertain ventures, or indeed visions, he rightly saw no room – stability was the order of the day.

Second, there was a clear driver of prosperity in Germany: the automotive industry and its suppliers. Had we pursued the vision of electric cars 30 or 40 years ago, it could have completely knocked the ground out from under the German economy. Even today, with a more stabilized prosperity, we see how these shifts still challenge and sometimes overwhelm the industry here.

I remember the 2008 global financial crisis. Germany knew we were the champions in the auto sector, and just needed to wait for people to buy our cars again. There was no competition. The mistake was that after the crisis, as things picked up between 2010 and 2014, we didn’t develop a future-proof global vision for the future of mobility and establish its cornerstones from a position of strength.

Even though times have changed and we’ve missed a few trains: We are still one of the leading and wealthiest industrial nations in the world. Even if many people don’t feel it in their wallets, Germany ranks after the USA, China, and India in terms of the number of billionaires.

But let’s be clear: This refers to the absolute number of billionaires, not their percentage in the population. Remember that India and China each have about 17 times more inhabitants than Germany, and the USA about four times more. These billions weren’t only made in Germany; they reflect the global business activity of these people. But this wealth originated in German industry.

Our engineers and researchers develop groundbreaking technologies; our mid-sized companies are globally successful. Or should I say: they were successful? In the last 20 years, when we had the means and the momentum for visions, we rested on our laurels instead of thinking about the future. But it’s not too late: Right now, as new technologies and global challenges approach, we need visions more than ever. We’re facing disruptive changes in areas like climate change, artificial intelligence, and digitization. Without visions, there will be no new solutions to secure the hard-won prosperity here in Germany in the long run.

And here lies the dilemma: Germany finds it hard to let go of the Helmut Schmidt mindset. Visionaries are often eyed with skepticism – until they’ve proven their ideas work.

This is why I, like other visionaries in Germany, struggle with the idea of going public with big visions until I can present something concrete. The so-called “proof of concept” is not just important to take the wind out of skeptics’ sails and test the vision itself. Going public too early without a proof of concept risks established companies adopting the vision and realizing it themselves, thanks to their greater resources. On the other hand, these companies could also become the right investors and partners. This depends heavily on their leadership and corporate policies, which are hard to assess from the outside.

The truth is probably this: Finding the “perfect” time to share a vision is up to the tactical instincts of the visionary. This instinct likely makes the difference between success and failure.
And sometimes, the solution might also be to reveal a vision in stages. The famous “salami tactic.” The art here is to link the vision step-by-step with the surrounding reality. It’ll be difficult to generate hype in Germany. Instead, visions must be presented here as something that’s ambitious yet feasible, and to show the roots from which they spring. But ultimately, every visionary and every founder relies on the ecosystem in which they are creating. And Germany’s economic ecosystem urgently needs to learn that failure is part of the innovation process. There’s no such thing as a vision without setbacks. If visionaries wait until all uncertainties are ironed out, the public will probably never hear of their vision. Or to put it differently: The right time to go public with a vision always depends on whether society is ready to listen and think beyond the familiar. If this isn’t the case – as is unfortunately often true in Germany right now – a visionary will have to take the risk of sharing their idea, even if the environment is less than ideal.

I’ve seen for myself that it’s possible to positively shape such an environment within just a few months. Two years ago, no one in Germany besides me was talking about cognitive robotics. Today, I can hardly keep up with interview requests and speaking engagements.

Maybe the answer to the question of when the right time is to share a vision lies in how clearly the visionary sees their own path to it. Can you explain the first steps? Can you already inspire others here and now with one aspect of your vision? If so, then go for it! Visions need to ripen. They rarely grow in isolation but require support, feedback, and, of course, capital to be realized.

If everything is a hundred percent certain, plausible, and tangible, then one thing is for sure: It’s not a vision. Even when buying a car, you can never be completely certain… yet we take that risk over and over. So why not, when it comes to the future of our country?

If founders in Germany have to worry that society will laugh at their visions, then we’ll continue to watch many of our brightest minds boarding trains bound for Asia and Silicon Valley – visionaries who simply weren’t in the right place at the right time here.