Innovation Value Award
On Sept 21st 2021 I have had the honor to receive the Werte-Preis Innovation (“Value Award for Innovation”) from the the Werte Stiftung (“Value Foundation”).
I feel honored to be chosen for this award and want to thank everyone supporting me on this journey, but especially
my colleagues from Solvemate who are an incredible, innovative bunch of people,
my gorgeous wife who is supporting me at every breath and covers my back,
my parents who taught me the core values of entrepreneurship.
I will donate the 10,000 € prize money half to the Stiftung Deutsche Sporthilfe as they are doing an awesome job supporting athletes in Germany and half to Junge Tüftler, an non-profit organization from Berlin that are empowering especially children with digital tools and education.
Find below the 3-minute video laudation (German audio, automated English translated subtitles are available):
I want to take this opportunity to quickly reflect on two topics, namely values and innovation:
Values
I deeply align with the Werte-Stiftung as their core purpose is to promote a positive mindset and to act value-driven in any situation. As you might know, at Solvemate we are having our culture deck, which acts as our constitution, our base law that is the first criteria for any job posting and shall never be violated. On around 15 pages we have described our core values and in detail how we want to interact with each other and our stakeholders.
A core principle of the culture deck to me is the Golden Rule: Treat people the way you want to be treated yourself. In addition to that, we have written down our core values: Transparency, Teamwork, Candor, Commitment and Curiosity.
Values are important, but they also need to be lived on a day-to-day basis. That' is why we opted for a detailed description of behaviors - examples are our Decision Making Policy, the Conflict Resolution Policy, our (unlimited) Vacation Policy, our Feedback Culture and how the Culture Deck can be iterated by a democratic two-thirds majority.
I am convinced that a non-hierarchic company culture like ours fosters great creativity and drives the pursuit of innovative ideas as well as colleague happiness. Ultimately, company culture might be the hardest thing to build, but a value driven culture has the biggest impact on long-term success of an organization.
Innovation
Innovation to me is mental agility paired with the wish for improvement, fueled by curiosity and topped with positive thinking:
mental agility: A mindset where one embraces change.
wish for improvement: The internal desire to do things better than they have done before.
curiosity: The wish to learn more, dig deeper and understand.
positive thinking: One rates the chances higher than the risks associated with an innovation.
