Stefan Moritz: Taking bold moves to grow into

Pauline Bertry 0:13

Hi Stefan, welcome to the den!

Stefan Moritz 0:14

Hello? Thanks for having me. It's cozy at your little

Pauline Bertry 0:15

How are you? Thank you so much for joining.

Stefan Moritz 0:18

polar bear campfire here.

Pauline Bertry 0:20

Yes, yes, very cozy. Thank you so much. It's the best place to have genuine conversations, I think.

Stefan Moritz 0:28

Super nice.

Pauline Bertry 0:29

So Stefan, mean, I think we know each other for a camera. It's been forever that I think we haven't seen each other face to face, so very good to see you. I know you for a very, very, very long time, so it feels a bit weird to ask you to tell us about yourself, but

Stefan Moritz 0:48

Yeah.

Pauline Bertry 0:49

I think it's gonna be only fair. So, like, we'd love to... to hear a bit about your story and the past and the present and what are you up to now.

Stefan Moritz 1:00

the short story. mean, basically, if, if I think of myself as, you know, imagining new things and make them happen with other people. That's somehow the, now when I reflect back there, the theme that comes through and I was.

Pauline Bertry 1:13

Very cool.

Stefan Moritz 1:13

I grew up very close to where you are now, Pauline, very close to the Czech border. So sometimes I joke about that I'm Bohemian, actually. And in East Germany, I think I was so lucky and privileged. And I'm so grateful for this duality of kind of growing up without bananas and Lego. I was rockets out of cardboard in the... shop that my grandparents had and I felt very very trusted which if I think back now I remember in the flat next to us was a guy living that worked at the border police so you know I loved going there he had like this cool dancer in a bottle that you could sort of screw a screw in the bottom and they would dance I loved that as a kid And my parents just trusted me to go and hang out there. I wouldn't say anything about... I mean, it was an interesting time. But the key thing is I was young enough, maybe 11-ish, 11, 12, when the wall came down and I remember that I had neon shoelaces and there were stickers and I've seen a Kiwi for the first time. It was just everything was new. And I was working at the school newspaper because I was somehow interested in photography and ads and it just sort of everything unfolded and I had all these opportunities to try stuff. was running the Coca-Cola machines at the school as a nonprofit. I was organizing parties and I learned about

Pauline Bertry 2:52

Wow.

Stefan Moritz 2:55

design, you know. while the scanner for the school newspaper was taking its 40 minutes to scan. I was reading the book, how a coral draw works and so on. So was an amazing time. started two companies. One was organizing birthday parties for kids. And so

Pauline Bertry 3:15

So cool.

Stefan Moritz 3:15

that was the first chapter, of first entrepreneurial learning. I mean, just an amazing period. And then I studied design in Cologne. which was really cool because they didn't have, I mean, my big problem was I was really bad at drawing. And in Germany, if you want to study design, you better have a really good art folder, which I didn't. Cologne was the only place where you could apply with, you know, sort of a test. So they had an intake test and they were much more focused on getting people in that had already worked with design and created this interesting mix. If I look back now, what I really learned in Cologne was to deal with messy uncertainty, chaos, complexity, because that's all that was. there were, yeah, but you know, it's,

Pauline Bertry 4:03

Such a good skill set for nowadays.

Stefan Moritz 4:07

one of these where it makes sense afterwards. Then it was just a lot to take in. And, and I don't know, like I, I was somehow able to work a bit sort of on my intuition. I did some. weird things like for example the professor smoked at that time. mean when you think about it now it's a strange thing but you could hardly see in that room. They were super smart, it was super interesting but you could hardly breathe in there. So I was like I mean I like this but I don't like the smoke so I'm going to set up another room. We put the camera up and then those that didn't need the smoke they could watch the lecture. So the first remote work

Pauline Bertry 4:49

Wow! Hybrid!

Stefan Moritz 4:49

sort of parallel lecture. And somehow that was okay. And then, I mean, there are many stories about Colonial Super. That's how I found out about service design. So I was like, my God, this is so cool. So you can design things that are not things. Then I learned, yeah,

Pauline Bertry 5:09

And you don't need to draw.

Stefan Moritz 5:11

but nobody knew what it was. So they had hired Birgit Marger from HP who had worked with sort of an org design a little bit, but it was like, okay, let's figure out what this is. It was just an idea. There should be something. They actually invented gender design, ecological design and service design all in one go. And I happened to work in the, as a side job to make some money to finance my studies. I worked in the foreign office and I got this letter or they got this letter and I saw it that there is the attempt to create a master program that is cross-European. And in Germany, there was no master's in design. There was no PhD in design at that time. I thought this would be kind of cool. You know, I could go to other countries and I get a master's. It's like brilliant. So I signed us up for that program. We went to Paris to the first meeting where all of these schools were trying to figure out and we were just shaping this new, it was called Masters of European Design. And then I wanted to go to Italy and Italy hadn't decided yet if they want to be part of it. I was like, with one other student, we just go. So we moved to Milan and said, now we're here. Can you sign the agreements? they didn't know what to do. So they signed the agreements. So we studied in Milan. That's where met Paolo Ciocarelli. I will get back to Paolo. But they were super kind. I mean, they were just like, okay, this is a bit weird,

Pauline Bertry 6:37

You

Stefan Moritz 6:38

but we're, this is kind of cool. And Milan had service design. I studied architecture. I learned Italian. I lived in the kitchen of a Italian guy because I didn't want to hang with the Erasmus students. I wanted to learn Italian. So that was kind of brutal lifestyle, but I did learn Italian. I worked a lot on the side. Then I went to Helsinki, which I absolutely loved. Then I decided, okay, let's hang out with the Erasmus students. I'm not going to do this again. But finish. So I can sort of say my name in Finnish, but that's about it. But I just loved, I mean, that school was fantastic. I met great people. We lived in these wooden cottages, furnished with IKEA furniture by the wall. I mean, it was just like gorgeous. Love that time. The art department in that school, they had the most amazing trips that as a foreign student, you were allowed to go. So I went snow sculpting in Lapland and you know, those kinds of things.

Pauline Bertry 7:33

Wow. With Santa Claus.

Stefan Moritz 7:37

Yeah, I met, that's another story, but I did actually help Santa Claus a little bit with service design. But I ran into the trap that if anybody has worked in the Nordics, they'll sort of laugh at. But, I wanted to stay in Helsinki and I had some really good conversations with people finding work. And then I was really surprised that they all ghosted me. I was like, okay, then I found a job in London or go to London. And then in September, they all called me. They were obviously on vacation during the summer, but I didn't know. They were just gone. So

Pauline Bertry 8:14

Yes.

Stefan Moritz 8:15

I found a job in London and I worked there in house in a media company because I thought service design belongs in a company that's very research based, very customer driven. And a lot of design was either sort of an advertising or creative agencies. So I thought this is interesting, like get into media because they help companies be closer to customers. And I worked in a think tank that was basically trying to combine design and brand and re-imagine how brands work. And I thought service design was a great fit. It didn't make sense to most people until Nike Plus came. Then everybody understood what I was trying to do. Then it was a bit difficult decision to should I finish my master or just follow my amazing career that's going great. And I decided to finish it, which I'm really grateful for. And I used the moment that was 2004 where a lot of people found service design as the thing they were doing that now had a name.

Pauline Bertry 9:25

very nice.

Stefan Moritz 9:26

and a lot of it was in London. I actually had one. students. So I had to teach a little bit as part of the master. I had a team in Cologne where we won the first prize in service design at the, I can't remember what it was called, not Royal Academy of Art, but there was an institution in London that had sort of the first prize. I met Livework and Engen and Spirit of Creation, which was the main player at that time. So I learned a lot from these different perspectives. And basically my master became just a sort of a state of the art. What is going on with service design? What is it? What are people doing? And I shared that for free as an ebook. It's translated to languages I don't even know. Just floating around. But for me, that was great. And then I basically decided to go in-house. to service design at this company that I worked at before. And then we moved to Sweden for family reasons. Happy to tell you more about that side story, but the gist of it was that I ended up running service design change programs from a local office. It was

Pauline Bertry 10:50

Hmm.

Stefan Moritz 10:51

motivated by a private choice. So can I? try out living there for two years. So my company was like, yeah, okay. So was kind of a good win-win setup, but it was super interesting to be in a local country running global change. learned so much. I worked asynchronous. worked, you know, going to London every two weeks. I realized that, you know, that's not how you, where you do work. That was purely social. Right.

Pauline Bertry 11:19

Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 11:20

I mean, meeting people when I was there, making the most of that social. time. And then I was super efficient when I was back in Sweden. I mean, I could knock out two weeks of work in a couple of days because nobody was disturbing me. So I was kind of test driving hybrid remote asynchronous work. really enjoyed that, especially with small kids. Great. And then our company was bought by Denso and all of a sudden it was like, well, you should come back to HQ. It was like new. things going on.

Pauline Bertry 11:53

Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 11:54

And I was like, well, actually, this is tough, right? This is career versus life. What is more important? The same for my wife. So we had several long walks, really struggling with that decision. We both had global jobs in London. We had a house, we had a nanny, or we stay here. And we decided to stay. And at the same time as I was then trying to find myself in you know, where to, where to place myself in that company, but in Sweden. Very day, which was called Egonomy Design, called me up. And that was because I was teaching service design. So when I came, thought, should help Sweden be not making the same mistake as the UK made. I founded the service design network. I started teaching. And one of the teachers in ethnography was Marlen from Agronomy Design. And then she asked me, do you know somebody that could build like a service design function at our agency? And I was trying genuinely to find somebody that wanted to move to Sweden into the middle of nowhere in the forest. And I really liked those guys. And it was like being in this global company, working more with marketing, even though I was doing service design in-house, what we did was basically helping Coca-Cola sell more sugar drinks. And it was fun, but I sort of felt this longing for meaningful something else. And they did a lot of work in healthcare. And they were just great people. I mean, it was almost like when I lived in London, I had a conversation with IDEO, who as the history goes, came to Sweden once to learn about co-creation from, guess who? Ergonomy Design.

Pauline Bertry 13:52

Ha ha ha.

Stefan Moritz 13:53

So it was like visiting the original IDEO somehow in this beautiful old missionary school. And I was like, I'm just going to do it myself. So I took a huge salary cut and opted again for life. And whenever I came to these points where you're trying to, you know, in your head, feels like there's a trade-off. between this or that. An old friend of mine, Matthias, he had this thing that said, Stefan, want life. You know, think about it, born life. And, you know,

Pauline Bertry 14:31

That's good. Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 14:34

he, he always pops up in my head and it's like, yeah, I mean, of course. And, know, if I look back in 20 years from now, what is less regrettable? That's another really good filter. And if, if you think about it from a longer distance and not from what could go wrong or what could go right, but sort of more, if you try out these two options, which one is less regrettable? You know, it's still not an easy decision, but you sort of know. And I mean, I love that time we did all kinds of crazy things. And it's often around the people, If you're with people that really care, that are stellar at what they do, it's just a very... I mean, it's impossible to describe, if you haven't experienced how magical this place was. And then, I mean, many stories from that place, of course, but to keep it short-ish... McKinsey had bought Luna in San Francisco two years before. So this was kind of seven years in. So

Pauline Bertry 15:53

in meditation.

Stefan Moritz 15:54

we've had built service design practice. We've created a customer experience team. We've grown in New York. We've grown in Asia. We were just about to start an office in Singapore and McKinsey came and it was like super interesting. you could say joint venture because it was so complimentary on the perspective, on the skills, on the resources, actually, surprisingly, very overlapping in terms of values and what is important. Of course, McKinsey was a huge entity compared to us, but it was also driven by partners and people that basically if they really believed in something, they could do it. And that was also how the acquisition happened. There were some senior partners that sort of felt this is something really meaningful. Many companies need to rethink what their identity is, not just create new products, but really sort of reimagine themselves. And that's a capability that McKinsey didn't have, but it was complimentary. So we basically became the heart of this Venn diagram that everybody had at the time of business, technology, design.

Pauline Bertry 17:14

Mm-hmm.

Stefan Moritz 17:14

belongs together, that's what we did. And when that worked out, it was amazing. The challenge was to make that scalable at the way that we felt honors what design is all about, which means it's not copy paste and not on the first day you already know what it should be and it's a machine. So that became, I mean, there were a number of conflicts or tensions in that, where sometimes in that period I felt like in these medieval pictures when you have a horse on every legament, know, tells you how do you keep a design culture in this beautiful studio? How do you teach organizations how design, what is really about? How

Pauline Bertry 17:58

Mm.

Stefan Moritz 17:59

do you find this one plus one is 11 where business and designing becomes really magical? So we learned a lot in that period. And some of it was just amazing. Some of it brutally hard. but I really enjoyed it and then I decided I mean, pretty much every time I sort of wondered, should I move on? Should I do something else? I sort of thought, what's the boldest thing I could still try before I go? The first time I felt we should have an employee experience practice. So I helped build that. The second time I thought virtual reality and immersive design is super cool. And that was just before COVID. So we actually built a virtual design lab. We actually run a board meeting with one of the biggest medical companies in the world in VR, kind

Pauline Bertry 19:03

Wow.

Stefan Moritz 19:03

of designing the future of work in this new space. Maybe a bit too early. The McKinsey Security Council found out about it and they didn't like it that we were running things in the cloud, which is the only way you can stream to be our headsets in remote lockdown. So that got a little bit stuck. then, so I did a lot of future of work combining sort of my passion for employee experience connects to customer experience. And during COVID, obviously that was an opportunity where I was super disappointed that at the end of COVID, very few companies wanted to reimagine how we work proactively. I was really thinking, okay, now it has happened to us. We've seen it works different. Why don't we now take the chance to shape it the way we want it? Then, I mean, I'm trying now to, I'm failing and trying to keep this short. You can tell, right? But

Pauline Bertry 20:14

It's alright, we have time.

Stefan Moritz 20:20

I want to tell you about warp and I want to tell you about AI, but maybe I'll pause here because short version of the background.

Pauline Bertry 20:28

Yeah, it gives me quite some follow-up questions. But maybe before we move to the next topic, what are you up to now?

Stefan Moritz 20:38

So I've been for a year and a half in a pension advisory firm, very beautiful 130 year old, very human company. And I helped create the North Star value proposition for the future where we should go. We worked on how to do AI that is not just automating everything away, but rather cherish what is human and see how being more human could be facilitated by AI joining the team as a partner rather than a tool. So we have now a maturity model in place and launched the first AI, so agentic teams with humans mixed in. And I worked a lot on preventative health, still inspired by a workshop that you and I once upon a time did together. Because that really fascinated me how much we know that if we only did it, it would save lives and keep people out of misery. And so I feel we've made a real meaningful dent in that. Happy to deep dive in that. But so I spent a lot of time on that. And we now launched a new platform helping companies support their employees on sort of not even proactive, but really preventative look after themselves and own their health. Super cool. And so now Now I'm moving on. I want to do more speaking and keynotes and workshops to help kind of, you know, think about, want to help a thousand companies not predict the future, but make their own future happen. Because I feel again, this moment that we had after COVID is now again, AI is happening to us. It's really important that we take a step back and actually shape how we would like it. And not many leaders have the the time, the headspace, the structure, how to do it. And one thing that I'm super passionate about that has also emerged, like many things just around passion and cool people is the Doodle Time Institute. So six months ago, we started that as a...

Pauline Bertry 23:17

Oh yeah, I I've met Jan, I I talked to Jan of course, but I'm

Stefan Moritz 23:22

Yes.

Pauline Bertry 23:22

super curious to learn more, what are you guys cooking?

Stefan Moritz 23:27

So. The fascinating thing is that we all share time as the, I mean, we're all equal in the time that we have. Of course, some live longer, some live shorter. That's, you know, part of life, but essentially, is the sort of most human thing and everybody knows that it's valuable, but we are valuing it. in a way very much colored by an industrial mindset. And much of the effort around time has been focused on efficiency and performance and productivity. Basically getting more into the time that we have, like getting more done with the time instead of taking a step back and really valuing the time for what it really could be. And I feel this is especially important now as we see AI giving us the possibility to do things faster, free up time, but it's very elusive, right? So the last few years, many organizations have thought, okay, we use AI to free up time, but it hasn't freed up any time. The best people that are really good at AI, they don't work 30 % less, they work 30 % more because they get inspired and they see new possibilities. And it's cool in many ways. It's not sustainable in all ways. Whilst there is research about time, there is no place where it's been sort really brought together from, especially from different perspectives. So the first idea with the Doodle Time Institute is to gather what we know about time. I mean, you know, since Einstein, what has happened? I mean, we sort of have heard about that time is relative, but many people don't understand what that actually means. And I think we have a lot of assumptions that the way you experience time and the way I experience time is the same, which surprising is not. And so people are people, they

Pauline Bertry 25:48

No, I think it's, yeah.

Stefan Moritz 25:50

are very different. And we have never really articulated that. And of course it is not that nobody has done any research and nobody has thought about it, but just making that accessible is super powerful. And then of course we want to fill any gaps there are in. and knowledge and further that agenda. So we're not trying to be a sort of time productivity movement or religion. We want to inspire people to be more intentional with their time. And what we call time agency basically means that you're taking more control of your own time. And I think it's a little bit like in an airplane, you need to put your own mask on first. Everybody has to reflect how they want to spend their time, take it more seriously. But where it becomes really meaningful is, of course, in organizations where people work together. And we've been struggling the last few years with some of the wrong questions. Should we work from the office three days a week or two days a week? You know, maybe that is not the question we should think about. We should think about How can we spend our time most meaningfully to collaborate, to make decisions? And the amount of smart people that I've met that basically run around and they are proud that they are back to back. That's like the coolest thing to have a lot to do and be back to back. So we are calibrated by that as the norm and recognizing it doesn't have to be that way. It doesn't mean that you can't work a lot or you can't enjoy work. So we're not trying to install sort of a new life balance thing. But I think the struggle that many people have around balance is wrong expectations and a hard time to synchronize with other people. So on an organizational level that is becoming really problematic. And so we've started by gathering a really cool advisory council to bring different perspectives, because that's the first thing that is really important to us that we recognize there is behavioral science, there's physics, there is design, there is policy. So there are many of these things that we need to consider when we want this to happen. But we don't want to be just a think tank where people sit around and write reports. We want to be a do tank as well. So we are very experimental. We have an experimental designer that is right now looking at smell, how smell can help people experience time differently. We're preparing some creative workshops where we want to engage people from different perspectives to help actually build different ways to experience time. We've collaborated with Stanford University on a research project around time health, how to define time health and help people appreciate what is important. We wrote a super interesting white paper, how uncertainty changes how we experience time, which if you read that, it explains everything that's wrong and why companies are not flourishing with AI. So I think it's super interesting and what I love about it, it's a quest. it is not like a project that we need to take it off. We're really on a journey to figure this out with some great people. And it's the coolest thing I know. I mean, it's just amazing.

Pauline Bertry 29:40

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I can only imagine because I often work or interact with my husband and the way we experience time is completely different because for me, if we said in 15 minutes, it's like in 15 minutes. If it's not in the calendar, it's not happening. So I'm very much like, you know, outlook type of person. And for him it's like... 15 minutes can be five, can be 40. And he's totally fine with that. it's so... And we both, of course, think that we are both right. So

Stefan Moritz 30:18

Yes.

Pauline Bertry 30:19

I think it's so interesting how, like even... I think we are kind of growing up together in the same environment, but still we are taking completely different... kind of insights out of it and we experience the time completely differently. So, not much agree.

Stefan Moritz 30:38

Yeah. And I mean, isn't that wonderful how in relationship we humans compliment each other, right? It doesn't have to be, we need to be the same. Actually

Pauline Bertry 30:47

Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 30:47

you find joy and growth and I mean, that's what relationships are about, that we're not the same, but that's being aware of it and being able to make the most of it. That is super powerful.

Pauline Bertry 31:02

So true. And Stefan, I want to go, I mean, I have so many questions to follow up on, but I think I only have a limited amount of time. So I wanted to go a little bit onto your experience running and building the service design team in Veride. And I think what I would love to understand, I mean, I've been at the Veride office, I worked with with very big folks. it's like you guys had an amazing culture and amazing kind of internal connectivity. People stayed there for very, very long time. It really felt like not even a family, but it felt like, I don't know, a healthy group of friends hanging out together and having fun around it. So can we go a little bit on like what... What are the elements that make a great culture in an agency? And what are the patterns you saw working for your team or not working or the things to avoid? So for those who are now scaling the team from, let's say, 15 to 30, 40, 50 people, how do you keep this personality of the company as it grows?

Stefan Moritz 32:22

Super interesting question. It's interesting to reflect back on that because you probably have a different view when you're in it versus when you're looking back on it. What I would look at is almost like... What are you trying to build and why from the perspective of alignment around the ambition? The purpose as a torch you carry was your going with all the ups and downs and the contract and expectation management you have with people. And once in a while... what you celebrate, what you check in on, how you hold yourself accountable. I assume a lot of agencies that are, you know, how do we grow this from 15 to 50 people? There is a risk and a question to be sort of honest with yourself. Are we just growing this for growing sake? What fascinated me with ergonomy design, they were basically two small hippie collectives that joined forces in the seventies. And they moved into this building in 1980 and that building was huge. I mean, still is huge. And there were maybe 20-ish people, maybe 25. I don't know. I don't remember exactly, but you know, the kind of sort of size that you're talking about. they went, yeah, you know, if we want to grow a world-class design agency, this would do. We can grow into this. It is a really interesting. mean, bold move, ambition to say, we have a dream and we want to grow into this. And the building is just one representation of that. You could do that in other ways, but they sort of knew that they want to build something bigger, but it wasn't about we're going to sell this and we're going to maximize and we're going to, you know, double the shareholder value. was like, we love what we do and this would do to have some fun. Like we could have a digger in the office. Cool. And they did. You know, there is a picture of a sort of huge digging machine in the office that they were then designing for a yellow company. And I think that is really important to remember that that story and that sort of ingoing ethos is what will live on. And the other part of that is when people left... I mean, supposedly when I joined, which was end of 2012, nobody had ever left that company. Since I joined, people have left, so maybe it's all on me. But people have retired, yes, but nobody had actually sort of gone anywhere else. And I will come back to how you make that possible, but the interesting thing The other side of the ethos is when people leave and they said things like, there is something magical that lives in the walls. I can't really describe it, but there is something in this place. And of course, as the story later on goes, the place is shut down now. I was there for a friend's or ex-colleague slash friend's wedding. had a fika stop outside in the garden and just like Maybe there are things still in the walls. I don't know. The people have left and it means nothing. And I was reflecting on this the other day, walking by that I don't miss the place as much as I always believed I would. I when I said my goodbyes, it was like, you know, difficult to imagine how it would be after many years in that special environment. But I think for the people that left when it was still going, there was a bus in a building. Now it's just the building. And the building has been a symbol for the culture. We had this famous lunch bell that was also ringing at three o'clock when there was fika where people gather. And the reason the bell was so symbolic is that that is where cross-functional cross-pollination Serendipity, basically a ritual, right? So the building has facilitated all of these cultural things. So it is important, but it is almost like using buildings, technology, infrastructure. You know, if you work here, you can borrow our flat in the mountains. I mean, There are so many things you can have as cultural infrastructure or as meaning operating system. But you sort of need to lean in on them to build something that is meaningful first. And then of course it needs to make money. Of course you need investors. I'm not saying that all of these things are not important, but I think sometimes young agencies that are sort of up and coming and growing. There's a danger that you do that for growing sake. And it's maybe not everybody's dream to grow a long lasting company that is for generations, right? I mean, maybe that is also unrealistic these days. That's a big honest question if you should even attempt that. But I think in order to create that culture, that is one... one thing not to be underestimated, this sort of ingoing belief or the ingoing, should say, hope or dream that fill this with. And then one practical trick is you bring the best people from all over the world to a place that is really weird, where there is no other option. I mean, that's one way to create loyalty. And to make that even more extreme, if you're in the forest outside Stockholm, where it's dark half the year and you know... Not everybody from Colombia would like to live here, let's say. You create a school for design in the north of Sweden where it's even more brutal. And then you make that one of the coolest design schools in the world. You have your people teach there. And then you attract people from all over the world to study there. And then when they look for a job, they want to work at the coolest agency that they've obviously now gotten to know during their studies. And then when they come to Stockholm, it's a bit less cold and a little bit less dark. So it feels great. So, so that is a little bit joking, but there, there are many people that have come to Veride that way. And many people that stayed because it was exotic and they found their place. And like you described it, it's not just the location. It's, it's a family. It's a, it's, it's a level of quality and a level of commitment that is rare to known. And I think if you find that you then also have people that make that choice for more reasons than a salary, for more reasons than convenience. You know, they would bike for 40 minutes every morning to come to that place. And even if it was snowing, they invented some heated gloves for their bike. mean, but you know, that also brings people together. End. The tagline that informally we had for ourselves was caring rebels. So there was something about being really human focused, but also challenge the status quo. And I think you need to have some rally or some joint mission that you're on that is a bit against the odds and everybody is in on it, that enables you to do things. I mean If you think about those people at different stages of time, the metaphor that I think about is bumblebee. Like it

Pauline Bertry 41:24

Mm-hmm.

Stefan Moritz 41:24

can't fly. Everybody knows it, but it's flying. Like, you know, it's a bunch of people in the middle of nowhere creating, you know, innovations in areas that everybody thought everything has been done. And there they come again and completely blow a whole industry out of the water. And

Pauline Bertry 41:46

Yes

Stefan Moritz 41:47

they've done this again and again, physical interactive experiences. But every single thing you can go back on the passion for finding out how to make life better for people. And when you came in, there was this big exhibition that for me was almost like the spectrum of life. It started with a baby pot and ended with bicycles and phones for old people and medical products. So you had kind of in the spectrum of life, everything you could imagine. And I think what made it commercially very powerful is that the clients that we worked with not only got infected by the passion, They actually use this as their capability lab. So whenever IKEA wanted to try a new thing, they would come to that safe sandbox to say, we figure out how to do this? We don't

Pauline Bertry 42:55

Thank you.

Stefan Moritz 42:56

even know yet what it is. Can we figure it out together?

Pauline Bertry 42:58

and

Stefan Moritz 42:59

And it made... the companies that worked with us disproportionately more successful, not just because the product was cool or the new service worked, but it did something to the brand. So for example, Thule was a long-standing client that very day. They had made roof racks for cars. It's not the most sexy thing in the world. But we helped breathe life into that and made it meaningful by saying, you know, actually what you are is helping people bring the most valuable things in their life along. That's what you are. And it could be

Pauline Bertry 43:37

Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 43:37

camera backs. could be baby buggies. It could be other things. That's how that company became, I mean, disproportionate, the more valuable and actually developed these capabilities than themselves over time. And that has happened in multiple occasions. And I think. For young agencies, that is really important to think about the impact beyond what you do. Like how does that make the people that you work with better? How does that make these companies into something that they could not become without you? Because that value creation is a kind of ever giving. mean, people come back for that and it stays, right? I mean, you can go back to these companies now and they dent in the universe. is still there and I think that is phenomenal if you can achieve that.

Pauline Bertry 44:29

Yeah, so true. I mean, I remember this hole in Veride. When we were building the office for Pasha, the future lab, I think I even asked someone to sketch me how it looked so that we could reuse the idea. I loved this hole. It was amazing. But I have, I think, a last topic where I would love to go together. I mean, my observation now is that the world is, as you were saying, like the world is changing a lot, right? We had COVID, there are a lot of like global changes, there is AI, like a lot of things are happening and it's very volatile. Things are moving. I don't know. The technology is moving faster than the project sometimes. And I've... noticed that what is happening now, especially in agency world, it's becoming increasingly difficult for them to hire junior talent because if you take like one good senior with some AI tools, it's becoming a very powerful employee or a very powerful part of the team. And I would love, I mean, I know you've been teaching, maybe you are teaching now, I know you have a metaphor club. And the question I like asking people is a little bit about... like what is the future that you see for design specific elements. And I think a lot of people perceive design as like this visual angle only. And how do you see, like, what's the future you see for it and what is the future, like, how, what is the right way for agencies to build this future to make sure that in three years they don't find themselves in a situation where, like, senior folks live for whatever reason and they don't have the junior talent to pick up

Stefan Moritz 46:27

Mm-hmm.

Pauline Bertry 46:29

the game. I mean, I hope this makes sense.

Stefan Moritz 46:31

It makes perfect sense. And it's not only an agency challenge, it's a societal challenge to some extent. So the way I'm coming at it is... What would we like it to be? So, you know, what would be actually love to be the intergenerational value creation mode that we think is future proof. And if you take a step back from it, the incumbent companies are facing this transition and they're confused, they're distracted. It is super hard to know how long does your unfair advantage, your mode hold. Can you rely on your B2B distribution that nobody can copy forever? And they are all, of course, reacting slightly differently, but I think the common theme is that it is reacting. So I see a lot of companies that are trying to deal with this situation and in some ways, a streamline and kind of use AI to be more efficient, which will get us to a point that it doesn't get more efficient than that. Where, you know, the thing that we used to do is not so valuable anymore. So inevitably there will be a point where every incumbent company will realize, whoa, we need to figure out how to grow. And now we got rid of all the marketing people, design people and research people and innovation people. because we were streamlining and keeping it tight. If we want to kind of reinvent ourselves, we better need those kind of people back. And maybe they still have some phone number of somebody, but essentially they'll come to an agency and say, hey, we need help to do this rebuild and create new muscles and differentiate and grow and create more value. I mean, that is inevitable that that will happen. When it will happen, if it's this year or next year, the golden question. But in some ways, the best thing you can do is bind the stellar talent in a dynamic way where you capture as much value as you can and create an incentive model that is long-term. And we can get back to what that looks like. Essentially, if I go back to Verity, were periods where we really had it tough and we didn't have that much work. And we asked ourselves, know, is there a way we can use our creativity and our bandwidth to sort of bottle up something? Can we be proactive and create something that, you know, instead of just not having anything to do, we invent something to do? So we tried a lot of different things and that has always created the best energy because then people do what they are best at and you flip from this, you know, not knowing what to do. You actually take agency and you shape something. any creative agency. Yeah. I mean, you

Pauline Bertry 49:41

and then you created a master's program, right?

Stefan Moritz 49:46

basically say, okay, what do we want to build? And in that sense, it's never been as good a time as now. to have all the possibilities to build things. I mean, it's just incredible what you can do. The challenge is that it's overwhelming because you have so many possibilities. How do you choose? So being good at choosing is critical. And that's why I would say as an agency, if your first step is have the best people, find meaningful things for them to do, then use clients as your filter. And as always, don't ask the clients what they want or the customers, but try to understand what is going on and probe them and prompt them and help them imagine what could be with your help that they didn't even dare to imagine themselves. And basically become an engine of value creation and maybe put some skin in the game, maybe co-invest. There is one company... that one former student of mine has created and they basically do only very small scale projects and they always take equity. So they get paid very little from startups because they know they don't have the money, but they take equity and now they have a portfolio of amazing growing companies and they've probably made 10 times the money they would have made if they would have done the traditional model. if that might not even be enough. And there's a lot more fun because you get to work with cool companies and you pick the ones that you believe in and you help them become what they could become and unlock potential. The other side of it is of course that there are In the spectrum of startups, there's a lot of disruption and a lot of spaces where the incumbents won't cut it. They'll get stuck.

Pauline Bertry 51:47

you

Stefan Moritz 51:47

They're not fast enough, but it's not so easy to differentiate who is just building some wrapper with AI to get some investment and sell it. And who is actually solving something meaningfully that you can partner with. And there are opportunities in all of it. You just need to choose a little bit where you want to play, which means you need to have a backbone and the belief and your own identity or your own purpose to filter these things with. So it kind of goes back to what we said earlier, going in to say, you know, this building would do it or this technology would be good enough for us. And not everybody has to aim for world class, right? I think you need to... You need to make your own trade off. Just like with any builder, you can not have quality cost and time in harmony.

Pauline Bertry 52:43

Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 52:44

It doesn't exist. So if you want to be world class, you're going to have to make sacrifices. Maybe only for 10 years,

Pauline Bertry 52:50

And it's gonna take time.

Stefan Moritz 52:53

maybe for 50 years, but you know, very, they didn't become the most award-winning agency in the world overnight. That was a 50 year journey, literally. And not everybody wants to do a 50 year journey. That's okay. But I think ultimately... As a society, if we take a step back again, we are paralyzed right now. A lot of things are happening to us and we are all a bit unsure what to do. I think in Europe, we are extremely privileged that we have what we have. It's relatively safe. have, I mean, really good standard of living. Data-wise, could say globally, have the best standard of living that we've ever had in humankind history. But I think we can't take any of that for granted. And it's not going to be one entity that will sort it out. So we can't lean on politics to fix it. That's pretty clear. We can't hope that private companies will fix it, even though there are some great examples of private companies then going into philanthropy or you know, having nonprofits that actually really contribute to society. So there are lot of good examples and maybe that is what we should do more in this period of uncertainty and more question marks than answers to look for the examples that we actually like. Because, and that's not just for agencies, that's for all of us. It's like, well, you know what? I don't know if this makes any sense, but one thing that I always really liked in Germany, somewhere there is a place where they've combined the kindergarten and an old people's home.

Pauline Bertry 54:36

Yes, I heard about it.

Stefan Moritz 54:38

Right? Amazing example of cross-generational synergy and it's just wonderful, right? I mean, the old people don't have to be lonely. The kids get somebody that has time for them. It's amazing, right? Why can we not do the same with me as the old person in a job and a intern or student? There is so much I learn. from the students. I'm teaching at SDSI in Kuldiga. Fantastic people, right? mean, that is teaching is my learning always has been in that way. And I am super scared. You know, I need to work 30 more years, create value. The lucky thing is I enjoy my job and I want to work 30 more years. Plus, if I can, right, for me, that's a privilege. But it's not a given that anybody will want me in five years, in 10 years. Maybe I'm not relevant anymore. So my sole focus is to stay relevant and to stay energized, to stay connected and create value as a way of... But you know, it's a constant thing. You need to keep spinning. It's not that you can sort of rest and say, okay, I'm done now. And... The older generation has a ton of experience. What we don't know is what of that experience is actually helpful.

Pauline Bertry 56:08

and how we leverage it.

Stefan Moritz 56:09

Because I mean, I have done all kinds of crazy stuff. Not all of it very helpful now. Right. But if you approach it from this, dammit, you know, I spent nights learning Photoshop. I've spent nights learning Flash. Probably most people don't even know anymore what Flash was. That's not very useful. Now AI can do it. Actually, to be honest, I'm still better with Photoshop than AI, but I can see there will be a time where that's no longer true. It's very close.

Pauline Bertry 56:46

Not gonna be true, I'm pretty sure AI is better with Photoshop than me.

Stefan Moritz 56:51

Yeah. But, but I think if we get into this defensive mode of like, my God, what do I do? We can only miss out if we think about like, okay. I actually love making things and in, in, in very day when they build services, we, we always had this discussion. Like, is it because we have this workshop downstairs? that I was so excited to build sort of physical prototypes of services. I remember we were working with Doctors Without Borders. That was a pro bono project we did. And we built a physical representation of the data flow, how journals in the field get passed and how knowledge get passed. And we co-created with different, I mean, almost layered on different knowledge from different people. It was so simple. But it was like, my God, like, you know, in a couple of days we've solved this problem that was unsolvable with the biggest computers. Maybe now you could brute force. But there are two things just because there is AI, it doesn't mean you have to use it for everything. There is still

Pauline Bertry 58:03

Now.

Stefan Moritz 58:04

a point to sometimes think, okay, do I need to throw? 5,000 liters of water on a server in Nevada so that I can have some little machine go in circles and tell me something that I already knew. Is that really a good idea? think a bit of common sense. It's fun to play around and I think we need to allow ourselves to learn by playing with it. So I'm

Pauline Bertry 58:30

experiment yea

Stefan Moritz 58:31

all for, even though probably that's a terrible thing to say, but you know, to make fun pictures. It can be very meaningful. But let's be thoughtful still. The other one is that in design, really believe the doing is a big part of the thinking, especially

Pauline Bertry 58:55

Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 58:55

in collaboration and co-creation. So the act of making, when you write by hand, you think differently, literally. That's not to say everybody should write by hand again. But I think we need to unlearn and relearn how to use our bodies more. Because if we're only in our head and everything is like, you know, we have a brain implant and we just send emails all the time, that's not really where I want to be. And so I think full circle, people that have agencies with some creative people with some strategy, people with some research. They're the most important people there are right now. They have the power, they have the tools, they have the possibility to kind of say, how do we want the future to be? And engage others in that value creation. And that's how you will build the next generation of companies of, because, maybe we invent something new, maybe companies is not the way to go. Maybe it is about nonprofit, maybe it is about open source. Who the hell knows? Do we have five more minutes? I'll tell you one new fun thing that I've come to. I did this workshop once with some CEOs that was called basically Design Your Life. Super interesting session where I buddy them up and gave them a design process to coach each other how they could reimagine their career. Super interesting.

Pauline Bertry 1:00:42

Very cool.

Stefan Moritz 1:00:43

And then I found out in Stanford University, there were two guys teaching life design. They have written a book that's called life design or design your life. And just now.

Pauline Bertry 1:00:55

Yeah, think if that's the same book we are talking about, I think I read it. It's a great book.

Stefan Moritz 1:01:00

It's really good. mean, it's one of those where as a designer, you read is like, duh, I knew that, but shit, how cool. It's a new

Pauline Bertry 1:01:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stefan Moritz 1:01:09

way of using what I know. Right. But so they've written a new book, which is about a meaningful life. And I listened to a podcast where they were talking about the book. And one thing that struck me was they were talking about a thought experiment. So they had interviewed people and said, if you were on an atomic. accelerator where time becomes infinite and you could have as many lives as you want. How many would you want? Feel free to answer.

Pauline Bertry 1:01:40

I would want two, I think.

Stefan Moritz 1:01:42

You would want to. Some people want very many, some want two. The average is seven apparently. Which

Pauline Bertry 1:01:48

Okay.

Stefan Moritz 1:01:49

to me was like, okay, this is interesting. We have seven days in the week. Whoever decided that is also up for grabs, right? Why do we have seven days made up? But we have seven days every week and we want to have seven lives. What if we could design our life to be seven lives in parallel?

Pauline Bertry 1:02:12

Hmm.

Stefan Moritz 1:02:12

And you could have the life as Pauline, the creator, Pauline, the content creator, Pauline, the, you know, I help in my local neighborhood.

Pauline Bertry 1:02:22

Sophia.

Stefan Moritz 1:02:23

And, and you don't need to do all of these things in parallel at the same pace and intensity. That's not how it's a very con I don't know if it makes any sense, but it was just like an interesting.

Pauline Bertry 1:02:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like it.

Stefan Moritz 1:02:36

idea that we can have multiple lives in us. It gives you sort of. absolution also that you need to find the perfect life and you find sort of the meaningful life, the life that makes sense. It's like, no, you have many lives, most of them make sense, and it's just enjoying them while you do them. That's the shortcut of the whole book.

Pauline Bertry 1:02:57

Yeah, because then you get to build the different versions of yourself, right?

Stefan Moritz 1:03:01

Yeah. So instead of finding the meaningful life is like find the meaning in your life right now. I'm chatting with you with

Pauline Bertry 1:03:08

Good.

Stefan Moritz 1:03:09

thinking and stuff happens, right? This is, this is what's wonderful. And I think as creatives, we have the possibility to engage others in that, which is amazing. So we don't need to have the answer. We don't need to kind of just hope that we interview somebody and they'll tell us there is a space in between. And that's the wonderful space where we can discover and shape and, you know, kind of create things that emerge. And if I now sort of go back this whole conversation in hindsight, it somehow makes sense. Like in the real mirror life makes sense. The trick is to have the compass going forward to engage and find the things that you want to happen and develop that compa somehow.

Pauline Bertry 1:04:01

and go in the direction where you feel good. I like it.

Stefan Moritz 1:04:06

So it's not easy, but let's give it a shot. Something wonderful

Pauline Bertry 1:04:10

Let's give it a shot.

Stefan Moritz 1:04:11

could happen.

Pauline Bertry 1:04:11

It will happen, absolutely. Thank you so much, Stefan. It was really inspiring.

Stefan Moritz 1:04:14

So it's cool that you are grooming the bear cave for people to come into the cozy

Pauline Bertry 1:04:20

And

Stefan Moritz 1:04:21

polar bear cave or the den you call it, right?

Pauline Bertry 1:04:24

Yes, and listen to the fire... my dad used to take me on tourist trips when I was a kid, and they would always have a fire and they would always have a guitar, and someone would play a song. I I will not translate it in English because it's not making sense. but they would always tell each other the best stories around the fire. And I think Etta the Den is a little bit of the reimagination of that fire.

Stefan Moritz 1:04:56

There is something, there is something sort of profoundly human. If we use that fire and the den, you know, symbol, I read this book from the CHIO of the CIA. It's called certainty.

Pauline Bertry 1:05:16

Mmm!

Stefan Moritz 1:05:17

And it's basically about change, leadership and why we often get it wrong. Because as soon as you say change, it lasts something in people. So

Pauline Bertry 1:05:29

Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 1:05:29

his whole point is we should flip it and instill certainty all the time. That's also why I think examples are so powerful because it creates a sense of, know, here's an example, here's an example. It reinforces certainty. what he, he, the book is not very complicated, but the And it's sort of a simple version of Daniel Kahneman's thing, fast and slow. He basically says, our hardware has been the same for 5,000 years. So if you go back 2000 BC, people were at the fire at the den, right? And as humans to be successful by the definition of nature, it was mode one, you go. hunt and survive. So you need to be really fast when something happens. You don't think about it. So there is a mode in our whole operating system physically and the brain snaps into that mode and it cannot get back very easily. So

Pauline Bertry 1:06:42

Mmm.

Stefan Moritz 1:06:43

if there is danger, we snap into that mode for survival reasons. The problem is that physically the brain doesn't know the difference between a rock falling on us or AI has a new 4.8 model,

Pauline Bertry 1:06:57

trying to get, yeah.

Stefan Moritz 1:07:00

the chemicals in our body do the same thing and we are stuck. That is the problem in many boardrooms now that we are constantly in that mode. But if I think about the fire and the den, there's the other mode that is about social and why we have become the social creatures we are because You need to trust each other to take care of your kids when you're out hunting. You need to trust each other that you will share the moose evenly, that you don't screw things up for the community. We

Pauline Bertry 1:07:29

Yeah.

Stefan Moritz 1:07:29

weren't intended to be in communities of 20,000 people and see all the other influencers showing us what cool paintings they have in their caves. It was all very small scale by design. But if you understand that actually human existence has these two things. And the more we can be in that safe mode of joy and trust and relationships, we don't have to go into that other sort of survival mode. We're a lot more capable to be creative. We're a lot more ourselves. And that makes you realize this has nothing to do with AI. AI is in a way the mirror that we sort of realize that we are in the wrong mode all the time. possibility with the fire and maybe we should literally sometimes shut our devices down and sit with the guitar by the fire. That's one approach. But I think there are little mini fires you can light every day, right? Sort of in a meeting to get everybody to be more focused on what really matters or during a week to create rituals. And I think that's what I'm trying to focus on with my sort of time travel workshops now to get leaders to understand this is actually something they can control and we can shape the space for people to engage in a way of having agency. Because I think if we can unlock that human, I mean, that's what we're amazing at, right? So we, instead of saying, AI will never be able to do this, it's like, well, no, let's invite them as friends into our cave. could have, you know, AI can sit by the fire, no problem.

Pauline Bertry 1:09:16

Yes.

Stefan Moritz 1:09:17

But let's make sure we honor the magic of how incredible it is that we're around,

Pauline Bertry 1:09:24

Yeah, and connecting with each other. I'm fully with you on that. Thank you

Stefan Moritz 1:09:28

Yeah. So with that, thank you for inviting me to your FIRE. I hope we can inspire somebody to do something cool and maybe they'll share it back with us. But it's a great initiative that you're

Pauline Bertry 1:09:38

It did inspire me. Thank you so much.

Stefan Moritz 1:09:43

helping growing creatives grow. I think it's super cool.

Pauline Bertry 1:09:50

Thank you, Stefan. Thank you so much. Talk soon. Good to see

Stefan Moritz 1:09:53

Good to see you. Thanks Pauline. Ciao.

Pauline Bertry 1:09:54

you. Bye bye.