Exponential technology. Linear institutions. Much of what matters today is decided in the gap between them. I work on closing this gap, carrying what the frontier has researched into production and creating continuous feedback loops to advance and adapt. If you recognise the Research-Practice Gap, you are exactly who this page is for.
In 2000, Pfeffer and Sutton asked why organisations that know better so rarely do better (The Knowing-Doing Gap, Harvard Business School Press). Twenty-five years later, the question has outgrown the organisation. The most important ideas of our time are researched: plural technology, privacy-preserving data collaboration, AI that augments rather than replaces human cooperation. What is missing is the craft of making them real, in enterprises, in institutions, in democracies. The literature calls this the Research-Practice Gap; I adopt the term, and widen it. In medicine, evidence takes an average of 17 years to reach routine practice. And the same failure signature repeats at every scale: in a conversation, in an organisation, in a market, in a polity.
How does the gap close? The short answer: not by dissemination. Publishing, training and telling are demonstrably weak levers; realisation is a capability of the receiving system. The longer answer: through three coupled loops. Deliberate practice embodies knowledge in people. Software installs it into organisations; a guideline asks for compliance, a workflow is compliance. Privacy-preserving data collaboration feeds real-world evidence back to the researchers who design the mechanisms. And through bridgers who understand both worlds: I have spent 25+ years on the operator side at IBM, SuccessFactors, SAP and Celonis, and the recent years inside the research community around plural technology, e.g. as lead author and orchestrator of the ⿻ Plural Stack paper. I build the bridge in both directions: concepts flow into production, and evidence flows back into research.
The systems worth building share one property: they make cooperation the winning strategy. Positive-sum alone is not enough; every platform monopoly is positive-sum on paper while the intermediary captures the surplus. The real test is where the surplus goes: to the players, or to the middleman. Openness, Agency, Fairness and Regenerativeness are not optional; they need to be by design, not by promise. Would you like to see what that looks like in practice? The mission log below gives the missions; the flywheel further down shows how they interlock.
I work in missions: small crews, ambitious targets, sense of urgency with actions, perseverance with results. Launched where the stakes are high, because gridlock is a safe way to lose.
A DAO and SCE bridging the web3 and enterprise worlds, to upgrade enterprises' business models with nouveau digital properties web3 enables. The launchpad where Tapir lifted off. Founding member.
Unlocking data across organisations through positive-sum games: privacy-preserving, fairly valued, jointly governed. Established the concept of a decentralised data trust. Own your AI, keep your data. Early Contributor: GAIA-X, the data spaces public-private partnership of the EU. Flagship: Tapir, the People Data Collaboration platform. Founding member: Ocean Enterprise Collective, the open source decentralised data spaces association.
Building the German-speaking arm of the ⿻ Plurality movement, bringing collaborative technology and digital democracy into the DACH context. Co-Initiator.
Mapping how plural technologies compose into infrastructure that resists centralised capture, and that institutions and individuals can deploy without compromising their sovereignty, resilience and competitiveness. Lead author & orchestrator.
Declassification: 2027.
Declassification: 2027.
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The small steps of one team can be huge steps for mankind. A handful of people with one shared obsession outbuild any committee.
Failure is not an option, and gridlock is just a slower way to fail. When the stakes peak, we take calculated risks and move.
An ambitious goal attracts and aligns the right people. Mission leadership means serving that alignment: empowerment over control.
Every mission ends; what it makes possible must not. Decisions are tested against 7 days, 7 weeks, 7 years, 7 decades.
Mission craft forged over 25 years at IBM, Novell, SuccessFactors, SAP, Arago and Celonis, and in the engine rooms of RadicalxChange and the Rocketstar Foundation.
Advancing plural technology and digital democracy. Fairness by design, not by promise. Tempo: years to decades.
People Data Collaboration. Own your AI, keep your data. Evidence flows back to research. Tempo: quarters to years.
Closing the Knowledge-Doing Gap in sales and innovation leadership, through practice harder than reality. Tempo: seconds to minutes.
Accelerating execution: software as organisational change. 100x workforces. Superhuman decisions. Tempo: weeks to quarters.
Ideas are abundant. The will and craft to make them real are not. I choose missions that outlive us, and I live in the gap between knowing and doing.
You cannot collaborate with someone who does not feel met as an equal, so we meet everyone without judgement. Seeking for attention, credibility, alignment, trust: in that order.
The work is the master; we are its instruments. Status games are zero-sum, and we do not play them. We also trust the bridging process and accept the plural outcome.
Stay in your center. Cultivate and inspire awareness, courage, clarity, flow.
Categories, criteria and timing are chosen upstream. Seek high ground. The battle is won before it is fought.
Truth is found, not defended. Challenge your own thinking hardest.
The third way is not compromise. It is design. ⿻
Timing beats effort. Systems move when they are ready; the practice is feeling when that is.
Abundance is a decision. Success is measured by the games we make possible for others.
Mastery is a practice, not a possession. The day I stop practicing, I am no master anymore.