In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen - Siemens CEO: Automation, digital twin and grit

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Siemens has played an important role in shaping the technological evolution of Europe, and beyond. Their impressive CEO, Roland Busch, shares his rise to the top, leadership principles, and also discuss the new trends in automation, digitisation, and AI.  The production team on this episode were PLAN-B's Pål Huuse and Niklas Figenschau Johansen. Background research was done by Sigurd Brekke with input from portfolio manager Martin Prozesky. Links:Watch the episode on YouTube: Norges Bank Investment Management - YouTubeWant to learn more about the fund? The fund | Norges Bank Investment Management (nbim.no)Follow Nicolai Tangen on LinkedIn: Nicolai Tangen | LinkedInFollow NBIM on LinkedIn: Norges Bank Investment Management: Administrator for bedriftsside | LinkedInFollow NBIM on Instagram: Explore Norges Bank Investment Management on Instagram Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Well, I'm really honored to have the CEO of Siemens, Roland Busch, on the podcast today. Now, Siemens is the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe and global leader in industrial automation and industrial software. So really, really big. We own 25 billion kroner worth of it, 5,000 kroner per Norwegian, 2% of the company. Very welcome. Good morning, Nikolaj. If you were to kind of distill down, what is it that Siemens actually do?

What's the most important thing that you produce? So this is the challenge to explain because Siemens does a lot of things. And we explain it that way, that we say Siemens transforms the everyday of everyone. And we are really touching everybody's life. But you have to look behind the scenes. So we don't produce cars, but eventually every car which you see outside was touched by Siemens technology either design phase in the automation phase actually 30 percent of all automation works with Siemens automation technology so that's one already one answer to your question which is we are automating everything we automate manufacturing sites is it discrete or process manufacturing we automate trains we automate buildings

so we are we automate grids so that this is one element and the other point is talking about buildings for example building technology you cannot walk a block in new york without passing by a building which is automated by siemens technology eventually roughly a little bit shy of 50 of the electrons which you consume or the world consumes is running through Siemens technology. We are running SCADA system for whole countries. We are automating grids, as I said. We make electrification in low-voltage products, medium-voltage products for data centers, but also for national grids. And you've been doing it for a long time.

So Siemens was founded in 1847. It's actually the oldest company we've had on the podcast so if you would kind of distill down the the the essence the dna of siemens what what what's the constant very good a very good point i mean when we celebrated now we are 176 year when we celebrate our 175th year i was on stage and I was sharing two amazing facts. One amazing fact is that over the course of our life, 4 million people worked for Siemens. So that's a number. That's pretty much the whole population. And then the other point is, and this is even more amazing,

there's one constant in our 176 years of history, which is transformation. We reinvented the company again and again, all over again. I mean, we had at a certain point in time, and you know that we had, we were producing gas turbines, steam turbines, the whole energy sector. It's gone now. We are about to sell our share there completely. We used to make communication technology. This is where our founder started, Telepointer, which was bringing communication to the people. We were market leader in communication networks and we missed the boat in innovation.

So this is not with us anymore. We used to produce household equipment. We still have the brand out there, but it's not our business anymore. So Siemens transformed itself all over again and again. This is the reason why I do believe the company survives. They're not just survives. We are one of the leading companies, technology companies in the world if it comes to industrial and technology. And what I'm saying to my people is that we are in the midst of another transformation with one difference. This is the fastest one in our history because it's driven by digitalization, by software, by AI, and this accelerates everything that we do.

If we zoom in on the link between the digital world and the real world, I think it's interesting to see that you are wearing an informal shirt and a formal jacket so you are kind of silicon valley meets germany in your in your dress code um now this whole concept of digital twin tell us yeah so when people ask us okay tell me now you know what you're doing what siemens is about we're transforming the everyday of everyone. The question is, what's your strategy? And I'm saying the strategy is very simply explained. You can say it in one sentence. We combine the real and the digital world. That's how it is.

And why is that a useful thing to do? And we do that because in combining the real and the digital world, you can have higher productivity in terms of labor productivity, space productivity. You can grow faster while using resources. Whenever you want to recycle, you have to implant it in your design process already, which is digitalization. Then you can do that.

Whenever you combine the real individual world, you can shorten cycle times. You can develop your whole world your products the manufacturing lines where you originally produce it even the maintenance phase you can plan it fully digital and when you're happy with it you build it saves your time it's much much faster saves you then whenever you whenever you bring software into into a process you can increase your yield your your productivity, your quality level. So it is, and the point about leveraging the value

and accelerating the way how you work with your assets is driven by digital technologies. And this is the beauty and the power of combining the real and virtual worlds. You need to have both. So for instance now, when you crash test a car, it's enough to crash test the car digitally.

The point is, finally, you still run a car against the wall. But you don't do that 50 or 100 times, you can use it to a very, very limited amount and very late. So you can basically simulate all your crash tests in a way that you optimize your product much much better then you build it finally you need crashes maybe at the end of the day you don't need them anymore um and then you and then you build it meant for trains you do that already when you when you build a train um obviously you cannot test it then it runs 40 years so you simulate it that it has this kind of lifetime stability, and then you build it. So that's an absolutely powerful way. And I'll give you one

example, which is for me a mind-blowing one. And we do that all over again. We built a brand new plant in China, in Nanjing. We built it twice. We built it once in a digital world. The shelf, the whole building, the lines, even the people working in the line, we optimized it. We shift things around. We put robots in. And once we were really happy

and really get rid of all the hiccups, which we had, then we started building it in the real world. We sent the excavation machines. This saved us a year of building time. We got it right the first time. We have 20% higher space productivity, 20% less energy consumption. And at the same time, we run a plant which is much higher in terms of flexibility of the variants you can build. And here comes the beauty. This digital twin is still alive.

So if my plant manufacturer says, I want to introduce a new AGV or new robot, he can test it in the digital world, optimize it, and then he shuts down the line maybe by a day rather than a week in order to run it all over again. The robot which comes in is already programmed because you optimize it in the digital world, you run it in the digital world, you even again the robot which comes in is already programmed because you optimize it in the digital world you run it in digital world you even program the robot in the

digital world and the same program sits then on the real control system of this robot and runs it straight away very cool and how does um how is artificial intelligence going to help this um ultimately what i was talking about is a digital twin of the real world in a kind of a batch processing. So you do it, optimize it, then you build it. The next step is the industrial metaverse, which brings it to the next level,

which means real time. So we have this digital twin real time at any point in time. It's photorealistic and it's physics-based. Physics-based means that, and I was differentiating between an animation and simulation,

when you animate, that's what the gaming industry does, you can run a robot very smoothly as fast as you want. When you simulate, then you recognize if you're too fast, your robot arms start swinging. And that's what you don't want because of safety reasons. It's not precision anymore. So the physics behind is very important. And this is basically the idea that when we bring that further to the next level,

we will have it connected and we select, we get all the data, the relevant data uploaded to the cloud. And then you start optimizing based on the data you get. You're analyzing what is your outcome? Why is your yield going down? What is the combination or the information which you combine? So data are making the digital world valuable. And the more data you get, the more algorithms you can run and optimize your system. Continuing on with technology, smart infrastructure. What is that?

What is a smart city, for instance? So smart infrastructure from the perspective of the business, one of our businesses is called smart infrastructure. It has basically three legs. It is building technology, which is security fire safety building efficiency anything uh even workflow management and asset management of building um space management what's what's the smartest city in the world um i would say amongst this amongst the smartest cities, it's definitely Singapore.

I would put Hong Kong outside of it. Why I'm saying that, and this is the second answer to your question, is a smart city goes all nine yards. It's not only about automating your traffic management. It's not about automating your traffic management. It's not about automating your grids, but it's also driving digitalization in your healthcare system. So having a digital passport for people. So I'm going to, for instance,

I'm going to spend quite a bit of time in Singapore in April. I walk around in Singapore. What's so smart about it? How do I see that this is a smart city? So, I mean, you would experience it much better if you're a citizen, better if you're a citizen, because if you're a citizen, then you can do everything, everything that's government controlled,

including your healthcare system digitally. I mean, you order your bus passport digitally, you can, your health record is digitalized, so all the data. And this is absolutely convenient. At the same time, you will experience one of the highest quality of public transport in the world. Is Oslo a smart city? I'm not so deep into Oslo.

I would say it is, I would put them in the upper quarter, so to speak, definitely. I know that also the other Nordics, big cities, they do quite a bit in terms of digitalization and in automation of their infrastructure. And you are helping us doing this through the digitization of Barn and Ore, right? Exactly. So this is a very cool project where actually this was a lead customer of our new technology. I think when you visited Norway, you also visited a battery factory.

Oh, yes. How do you assess the possibilities for battery production in this country so um the the environment and uh which is basically what you need is green electrons if you want to run a battery manufacturing site in a modern way, nuclear electrons, is there. Norway is amongst the most green energy supplies. The cost of energy are low. What you need is lithium. I don't think that you find lithium in Norway, but we have to import it anyhow from the mines globally.

And then what you then need is battery manufacturing is high-tech manufacturing. You need good people, educated people who can run that. I would say you can't find good people, educated people who can run that. I would say you can find good people, educated people in Norway. At the same time, the big difference is made by the people who run it, who have to make a decision on which partners they're working with. These are eventually 19 process steps, which you put in sequence to produce a battery. If you assume now you have a yield of 99.5 for each

multiplied by 19 then your yield is completely bad so what i'm telling you is that you have to bring each step has to be and these are complex steps the stacking of battery very complex the mixing of your sludge very complex the the coating of your material very thin material with high precision extremely complex. And you need clients, right? I do think once you have capacity with a good battery technology and a good yield, you will find clients. I think that's not the problem. You have to get your cost under control.

This goes back to my point, which is the inflow of material. Okay, you have to buy globally anyhow. It's the energy cost. And this is the way how you run your how you run your manufacturing side it's all about yield if you bring your yields to 90 you're in the game so 10 years from now what's the probability that we have successful battery production in a way i would say 10 years from now you will have one definitely you're in the game you're in the game. You're in the game. Okay. Moving tack a bit here. You are one of the most important German companies.

Do the politicians kind of help you decide where you should have your footprint? Yes and no. I mean, yes, because they are, obviously, they are very much interested in German companies still investing in Germany. But you might have heard about this discussion that due to the high energy costs which we are facing, we have high taxation. There's a lot of companies, in particular the energy intensive companies. We talk about chemicals, metals, glass, and a lot of cement. They are looking into investing in other places, in particular the United States. Cheap Energy, Inflation Reduction Act, so they are really pulled there. At the same time, the German government is also giving support subsidies.

That's about semiconductors for Intel, for TSMC. They talk about hydrogen. They support hydrogen quite a bit. So new technologies, green technologies. And therefore, it's a mixed bag. Germany is an aging society. If you don't get our immigration policy right, getting the best talent in the world to come to Germany, education and training system is so-so.

We have to invest there. So what I'm saying here is that we are still good. And this is the reason why Siemens is also investing in Germany. But it's a lot of homework to do in order to stay competitive if you could change three things in Germany to make it a better place to the business what would it be number one is a massive investment in our infrastructure and we talk grids distribution grids in particular we talk mobility systems, which is completely out of time, and communication. Secondly, I would have our government to massively support the people part, which is education and training, spending more money on education and training. Is it schools? Is it colleges? Is it universities?

Including a proper and really well-thought immigration policy? You have to attract the best talents. And the third one would be, I don't talk about tax reductions. This is a thing which you can do. But the third one would be that they decide precisely where to invest and support new technologies, the future, with subsidies, which maybe OPEX credits, talk about hydrogen, for example, they don't only support the CapEx of a hydrogen plant, but you say for the first years,

this is done in the United States, for the first five years, you can have a tax deduction on your hydrogen because you're not producing at the market prices so that you really stimulate. These are the three elements which i would wish staying in germany is there such a thing as a german corporate culture i tell you i would not phrase it that i would not use that way but i would i would

explain i know where you're coming from um i would say what question what makes german German industry so strong? I mean, 80 million people and now the third largest economy in the world. How is that going? Without gas, without oil, without resources, nothing. It's just people. Peeled innovation. The answer is, we have a very, very strong ecosystem of large, medium-sized and small

companies built around certain vertical markets. Take car manufacturers. I mean, the big car manufacturers are not just good because BMW is good or Daimler. It's because they have these suppliers, the Bosch, the Contis, ZFs, Scheffler. These ecosystems are outstandingly competitive because of their structure and the way how they're built over the years. You said it's about people. How do people think differently? Yeah, this is the point.

The people are brilliant in what they are doing in their turf. For example, take machine tools. If you go to the best machine tool manufacturer in the world, I mean, if you talk to these guys, they live and breathe machine tools if you go to the best machine tool manufacturer in the world i mean if you talk to these guys they live and breathe machine tools german engineers have this quality ambition to really be best they have also a kind of a i do believe we have very great engineers who are producing and and the combination of great engineers and great um blue color workers

who really know how to stitch things together and make it work and make high quality. And this is embedded in the German DNA, so to speak. And what exactly is that DNA? I think you can find it in a positive or negative way. These guys are really, really geared up for quality and constantly asking, can it be done better? Can it be done better?

At the same time, this is a kind of a treat which you find also negative because these are people who are, it's always something wrong. I mean, the service is not good enough and here you complain about it and whatnot. Well, perfectionism has upsides and downsides. it's always something wrong. I mean, the service is not good enough and here you complain about it and whatnot. So, but.

Well, it's perfect, perfectionism, perfectionism has upsides and downsides. Perfectionism is maybe the right word. No, but it's, it's true.

And again, we, we do believe we have a, we have a very strong education system. Also the vocal, vocational training, which we bring in pro color work into it. Because at the end of the day,

if you have great engineers, design a great car and you don't know how to build it with good quality, you have another problem. So this is a combination which you find in Germany. And what's the challenges as a company

to combine engineering and some of the old technologies with the new fancy software engineers? You know, combining your turtleneck with your old jacket. This is the biggest biggest challenge if you ask me what's what's my biggest challenge is is the getting our people along with um with their hearts and minds in this transformation what is it about um number one is we have this call it some

call it the incumbent syndrome others call it innov dilemma. When you're sitting on a business where you're market leader, in automation, we are clear market leader. In many of our businesses, we are number one. Explaining to people that you cannot rest and you have to do something really new, eventually disrupt yourself because technology is there.

This is damned hard because you have to make your money on your existing business while doing the new one so and the new one is again it's not only hardware anymore it's it's also software it's the complete stack it's compliant combining hardware and software you need to know the digital space and you know the ot space and there are very very little people who know who can go in both worlds and are literate in both worlds. So therefore, it means then I have to get talents

from the outside world who know how new technology looks like, bring this technology, give them a chance to really prosper and to bring their knowledge into the organization. And at the same time, educate and train people to go beyond. same time educate and train people to go beyond. Who do you promote in Siemens? What does it take to get promotion? It's about the values which we want to have.

So we have to treat people like you want to be treated, compliant. Being compliant is very important, but also the way how you appreciate people, how you help people growing. Empathy is one. So this is one thing. The other one is, I mean, there are many ways. One way is being a deep expert in what you're doing and grow within your vertical, within your technology. The other one is people who really go abroad, who go from one technology to the other other one from hardware to software so in in both dimensions we are promoting people you you use um um an expression i've heard uh with uh you know

double and triple steps so instead of promoting people just one step you take them up two steps or three steps and that and that uh that happened to you exactly tell. Tell me about it. When you want to really develop some, eventually all the young leaders to the top, if you want to end up in a managing board of Siemens with the age of, let's say, 50, maybe younger, or at the beginning of 50s or younger, you need a double step in your career. Because if you go through your manufacturing experience five years,

selling experience five years, R&D experience five years, before you get really a full P&L, I mean, then you are just outdated. So what does it mean? It means that you have to spot some of your talents where you believe this person can go far from the trades, which I explained, but also from the intellectual capacity, but also from the growth mindset that people who want to learn, who improve again and again and again.

So once you spot these people and you bring them into place and they prove that they do good things, then you have to have the guts to promote them two steps. So rather than going five years more another five years before you just just believe in the people and they learn and they learn fast so what about the colleagues that i mean it is a trade-off right uh they have exactly he's like hey wait a second what just happened to that dude so and you will see a blend you will see some people who make their way step by step and they go up and we will in some places we have these guys we are we are just pulling out and and go go ahead you can't it

can never be just justice to everybody but if you don't do that if you don't trust some people you will never explore their potential in their lifetime so and i tell you a nice story when i was sitting in china with my management team, in China it makes some 8 billion. So we have four people running this business. So it's 2 billion each. So it's substantial business. It was the CEO, the CFO, their HR as well. And I said to the people in the room,

I bet with you, everybody in this room who are sitting where you are, had at least one time in your career, the experience of getting at least one or a double step, eventually twice. All of them were nodding and you can recognize from their faces that they were thinking of the very same moment

when somebody told them, this is your new job. And then I asked these guys, now tell me, how many people do you have in your organization on a single or double stretch right now? It was death quiet because it requires guts. Most of them have chosen the safe way of promoting people who are very safe hands to put the next step, next step. So it was a wake up call. You need guts and you need to know what you're doing. So who was it who sent the elevator down to pick you up?

My elevator. My elevator was going back when I was working. Siemens at that time had a Siemens automotive industry and it acquired VDO. So it was, I mean, an 8 billion company. And I was running through strategy. I was never in operation, neither in manufacturing nor did I develop a product

or in sales. But I did have a quite good insight in the quality and the process management, but also in strategy. And there was a board member of this business, of this 8 billion company, who said, I trust that you could do everything. And I give you the responsibility for a 1 billion business, right, in navigation systems, completely screwed up, making 200 million losses. 1 billion business, radio navigation systems,

completely screwed up, making 200 million losses. It's a three times acquisitions, not integrated, five different navigation system platforms, which have to be consolidated. And by the way, we have five projects with customers which are about to miss their start of production. And this was the double stretch I got. And the next three years, I didn't have holidays. I worked day and night.

I experienced my physical limits. I mean it literally. I convinced my, for example, for a BMW project, 400 people to work without holidays for three years. And selectively, no, really. Do you think holidays overrated? No, really. Do you think holiday is overrated? No, it's not. This was really hard, but we had a mission.

We wanted to be successful because if you're not, then this was it about this business. And sometimes I really sent people to say, no, you go off because you need holidays. But again, this was my double stretch. I managed this business. It could have gone wrong, but it went right. And then they sent me to China, which was the next stretch. It seems like it all went very right here. continuing on um on leadership i mean you got 300 000 people it's like a big city working in seems how do you actually know what's going on so um okay you have your structure you have your

your management team core management team you have your businesses you have the regions and i'm traveling quite a bit i talked a lot of people you have normal reports You have your management team, core management team. You have your businesses. You have your regions. And I'm traveling quite a bit. I talk to a lot of people. You have normal reports. So, and I'm a long, I'm a lifetimer for Siemens. So, I'm working 30 years now with this company. So, I have my networks of people.

And the most important element, so therefore you learn a lot and you get to know the important things. The most important thing is that the higher you come, the more difficult it is that you have this kind of speak up. If people come to you and speak up and say, I have a problem here, I want to bring it to the table, and they do it because they know that you help or you step in when needed, you don't kill these guys because of problems, you don or you step in when needed. You don't kill these guys because of problems. You don't go nuts and crazy. You need this openness of people who are still coming to you.

Could be somebody who even don't know who just sends me an email and said, I have something here. It happens. Some emails are crazy, which you should not react to. But very often you should. These are my direct reports who are very open to say, I just want to know, to let you know we have a problem here, but I don't want you to do something. And I follow the rules. But it's a constant effort to give credit to the people who speak up with their problems and don't overreact. This is another one.

You have to develop a kind of a coolness that you say, if you react all the time, then you make mistakes. You have to really balance also how much pressure, which I get from the upside, from the market, how much pressure do I give to my people? How much do I filter? And if you bring that to the right balance, and I'm traveling quite a bit and i'm

talking to customers too customers give you a lot of feedback on what's right or wrong once you have a good relationship and they they give you an honest answer what do you do with all the what do you do with all the stress so you take in a lot of stress you you give back out uh you know structured orderly instructions um The CEO of Morgan Stanley said that during the most stressful period, he just had to puke. No, first and foremost, I don't... Does the CEO of Siemens puke?

No, I don't have stress. I'm working hard. I work long, but I don't have stress. I like what I'm doing. I don't feel stressed at all. This is maybe the advantage because I talked about my first double-stretch business, which was a complete crisis mode. Then I went to China. It was another complete turnaround of businesses. Then they brought me back and they gave me this infrastructure

and city sector, which was the bad bank of the company. So I had so much of critical situations in my life that nothing really scares me anymore. So we develop a kind of, I wouldn't call it coolness in the sense of that you are not taking care, but you know how to deal with things and you know there is an answer. And don't jump on every tree somebody puts in front of you. You have a PhD in theoretical physics. Do you think that helps you? Yes.

Tell you why. How does it help? I'll tell you why. Theoretical physics is, there's one thing. What you want to do is you want to express the world in a formula. It's damn complicated. It actually doesn't really work. But if you simplify the world, then you can.

So that means you have to separate the important from the unimportant, make it as simplified as possible, and then you have a chance to put it into a numbers in your formula. And that's what I do in my world. When somebody comes to me, that I'm trying to really figure out what's important what's less important when people come to me with a with an approval process of a train a train project and this is very complicated it's different technology people tell me this is amazing if you have one problem field in our 50

pages deck it requires me two or three questions and I sit on this point. So, and this is a kind of a gift from my education that I can see through. Also, a technology background helps you because you know the principles, how things work. But you can separate the important from the unimportant and you focus on what's really important. And that helps quite a bit. Can you be too theoretical sometimes?

I think I'm quite practical. I don't try to bring everything into numbers. I think people might sometimes, when it's about technology, they wonder how deep I want to go. But this is my passion at the same time. But I can let go. So what I learned also is if you have a problem, I can dive as deep as you want, but I don't stay there.

I know that if I do that, then I, I mean, time is too short. So I come back and I try to manage and empower my people. So therefore, that's a combination. How do you look at micromanagement? It's again, only in the case when you have a problem which is endangering your business, which is too big, too risky to fail, then you have to go down and do something. But this is really exceptional cases. The normal way, very, very exceptional cases. The normal way is the opposite.

It's empowerment. Tell your people what you want. Give the strategy. Make sure you're aligned. And then get the decision power to the lowest possible level it speeds up your company it makes money for a fun more for everybody it leverages the capabilities you have in your management but you have to also make sure it's a two-way street empowerment is also about accountability i want the people also to deliver

and that they try as hard as they can to really do what what they need if they need help that's all fine for the three decades before you siemens were run by people who had a financial background as an engineer do you think you run it differently yes in what ways number one is i'm genuinely interested in technology in the sense of I'm running around. I talk to tech companies, the large ones, the small ones. I do believe that I have a quite good overview on where things are going technology wise, which helps quite a bit in making better decisions. Number two is I'm generally interested. So I'm going out to people and I say I want to have a deep dive on our knowledge graphs, which are one of the key elements for AI.

So I go to these guys. Guess what? They feel appreciated because I'm talking to these guys and it spreads in the organization. So that means, I mean, if Bush wants to know about this stuff, I want to know about that stuff too. this stuff i want to know about that stuff too um if i go deep on a on a any kind of poc how it works um others say okay if bush knows that and if it dives deep i want to do that too so it gives a and the feedback to the people that i appreciate what they're doing and i i do believe i can ask some smart questions and i know what how can i what to appreciate because it's really cool technology, that sends such a strong signal not only to our people

but also to the outside world, to our customers. And at the same time, I would be the last to cut our R&D budget. If it's going completely south in our numbers, I would. But this is the last thing where I would cut because I do believe this is so important for the company to differentiate in technology. So in this sense. We talked about decisions.

Do you believe in gut feel? Yes, I do. But before that, you have to have, you have to make your homework on numbers and hard facts. Well, then it's not gut feel. It is, but here's the point. You can analyze to death and i did it for for a couple of topics is it and and let's say you have two m&a opportunities left and right

and you analyze it to death you finally cannot bring it down to numbers and say no i add it up and i have a five here and a four years ago for five it does not work at the end of the day it's it's a judgment it's a judgment and but the only point is if your gut feeling is too early and comes before you make your numbers and before you make a homework and make your deep dive 360 degree you have to look in everything what is the market what is the technology what is your competitor doing can you defend it whatever is a business model after all that and, and sometimes the facts bring you to a point for a decision point. That's easy. But if they don't, then you have to, at the end of the day, get your feeling.

And this is maybe an advantage of the CEO of a big company. I see so much in the world, customers' perspectives, political things, where are things going, technology. And this adds up into finally the gut feeling, which gives hopefully better decisions.

But again, don't take me wrong. It's really make your homework first. And if there's no clear answer out of all the facts and figures, then obviously you have to decide and this is where gut feeling comes in absolutely i've heard you many times talk about uh the importance of upskilling and lifelong learning and so on what was the last really important thing you learned it's a nice history i was sitting before corona I'm sitting with my wife for breakfast and we talked about a viral or bacterial infection.

And then I said, OK, what's the difference? These are both mono cells. I said, OK, what's the difference then? And then I recognized I have no clue about cells. I have no clue about cells. But I recognized that the cells are what an atom is for physics, or a quark if you want. The cell is for biology.

So I started off digging out a book on cells. There's a very good one from a guy called Good Cell. And I started reading it and this triggered really a bunch of reading up to the really chemical books on cells and to study a completely different world which is so amazing you won't believe how complicated it is and how brilliant it is, even a single cell, so a virus, for example, like a COVID virus. And we have so many cells in our body and how this whole functions. This is the most fascinating thing I ever found. And I dived extremely deep in this one. So really, I spent time.

So with your new knowledge, what are you going to do in your next life? This is a good one i could i mean if if i if you ask me what would you after after working for siemens i could imagine going back to the physics lecture hall um this time i would go deep into gravitation because this is one of the parts which i i really missed in my studies so i was my phd was on on on the small side of the physics and this one is the other end but the other side would be really um understanding more and diving deep into into biochemistry of of cells yeah i love it and what else do you read i read crisscross i mean sometimes most of the time i i don't spend my time, let's say, these books which you find on the market and they are hyped and you forget it again.

There's, you know, there's, I think in many languages you find the hundred books you should read before you die. And these are the books which are, most of them are on the list for not only 10 years, but 100 years, 1,000 years some. them are on the list for not only 10 years but 100 years thousand years some um and when you start taking regardless which one and you start reading it and compare it to a modern book you know why um why these books are are number one and um and so check out for this list and you'll find great literature and a particular book which has been important for you? I don't know. I find Utopia very interesting. There's one of these 100 books,

which is about a world, which is kind of a perfect world, it seems like. And another one, I don't know whether this is particularly important, but I found it really interesting, is Iliasas about Troia. I read it in Hexameter, which is very interesting to read. But it's a very interesting moment in history, very deep, very, very interestingly explained.

But I could pick many others which are important. And the last one is, but everybody talks about it, you have to read it in the original version, is Sun Tzu's book on war, the Chinese journal. Well, we for sure live in interesting times,

and you are in the middle of a lot of the most important developments we have in the world today. It's been fantastic to have you on the podcast. A big thanks and all the best of luck. Thank you very much.