Innovation & Vodafone's Mission To The Moon | By CEO of Vodafone Germany Hannes Ametsreiter

It's nice to listen to the past, but it's even nicer to hear about the future and discuss the future. You've chosen the topic of innovation, and this innovation is something I think is not important enough for companies, and it should be more important. Why? Because it's the only resource which is guaranteeing a future. It's the only resource which never ends. It's the only resource which always generates ideas and provides the opportunity to grow. Innovation is always about people, about humans, about society. You need to understand the development there and also gain the right insights. On the other hand, it's about technology. You also need to understand technology: what is to come, how does artificial intelligence work, what can it do for my company, what can it do for me? Society and technology understanding is important, so it's embedded there. And society also means — and that will be immediate after digitization — the next end will be connect to society, connect to people. And here, if you have digital and algorithm, there will be a strong longing for the other part, for the warmer part, for the people part. So it's that mix of close and warm and people, but also moving into using the new tools of digitization. That's something we learned from Facebook. When I was at Facebook, I learned that Mark Zuckerberg is always on Friday speaking to everybody. You know what we did before? It was like the top-down executives communicating to the Paris, later to the minus one? Yes, but only them because they want to have the information and bring it to all the other people. So we changed that. They said no, it's town hall talk, it's Monday morning, and it's to everybody. So everybody every week is getting all the information and having the chance to ask any question that person wants to ask. I mean, it's just very direct, it's very close, and it's very, you know, the pace is pretty high. Every week you have the chance to talk to the CEO, to anybody else, to point and to have induction things. It's mission-driven. I think if you go to Silicon Valley, one thing you can learn is how you can have a company with a purpose. How many companies are having a clear purpose? How many companies really want to save the world, change the world, do something big? And how inspiring can it be? So that's why innovation is closely related to clear vision, mission to the moon. That's I mean, when I came with this idea, when I told my boss, Group CEO, to allow with all we are now building an LTE network on the moon, and he read something in the news, he's like, 'I'm serious, why?' And what he said is it's some sort of marketing fake, right? So it's not really true. No, we are flying out there, we built an LTE network, we now have the lightest space station in the world developed together with Nokia and Vodafone, and now I can fly so it's now doable. But at the beginning it was like nobody really, it's like moon LTE, why? Nobody's up there, there's no people, why should we connect? We are connecting now this robots, and in 2030 it's already planned by ESA that will have a — call it moon village — that will be a few houses built there and people will be up there. And there's another thing that it will be lots of experiments being done by this. But it's mission to the moon. What I really liked with that project is the can-do attitude which was generated in the company afterwards. Because it was like it's almost impossible, but we can do it, and then technology developed, and then all the others they said wow it's a super cool thing, and then we brought it to Barcelona now at Mobile World Congress. And at the beginning nobody understood it, also from Vodafone Group, it's like what the chairman said to India we don't really know, and then we explained, and then we're like that's a big thing. So it's now it's starting, and we expect with Red Bull Media House that there will be 1.5 billion people watching the mission to the moon, which then will be the biggest ever stunt in the history of the company. I'm fascinated by the opportunities. I think I could get through how much we like innovation, how much we're pushing for it, how firm we are believing in our vision, and how much we would like to change and bring things to the better. I think one thing will be very very important with all the changes: some will be nice, some will not be nice. We need to stay optimistic, because only then we can drive things to the better.