Ramon Vullings - ideaDJ Blog

Curation & editing are key leadership skills now 🎤

In AI times, idea generation has become a commodity.  In my new keynote I outline the importance of curation (selecting) and editing (adapting) ideas & concepts for leaders and innovation professionals. Great leaders really mix & match! 

How firms make cross-industry ideas work 🎯

Cross-industry learning can drive innovation, but implementation is often difficult.  Most organizations know they should look beyond their own sector for new ideas. Fewer know how to make those ideas stick. Researchers, executives, and practitioners recently gathered at the Stockholm School of Economics to examine that challenge. 

Helena Andersson and Soraya Hölper, global project managers at Sanofi R&D, described the company’s collaboration with Formula One team McLaren, launched in 2022 with a focus on manufacturing and supply. 

The results were concrete: sensor technology borrowed from the racing context contributed to a 50 percent reduction in equipment downtime, while a pit stop-inspired approach to team changeovers cut transition times by 40 percent. 

Decision-making practices from the racing environment also influenced Sanofi’s processes. What made it work, they said, was the scope. 

“It was narrow in scope initially, and there were clearly defined KPIs, clear engagements, and the subject matter experts were accountable for the change.” 

Book browse! 📔

The Beyond Boundaries event! Beyond Boundaries! I'm looking forward to speaking at the Event Inspiration NL 'Beyond Boundaries' event in Rotterdam on Monday, May 18th.

On an actual boat!

Together with a wonderful team — Eline van der Schaar, Corjan Mol, Ramon Vullings, Celine Cairo, and that 'great guy' Martijn Verspeek — we're going to make it a fantastic day!

Beyond Boundaries: Where the events industry discovers, explores, and pushes its own boundaries. Boundaries have always existed. They shaped encounters. They shifted. They changed. Today, we find ourselves at such a point once again.

The bar is higher than ever. Budgets are under pressure. Sustainability is no longer a choice. AI is advancing. Generations collide. Audiences expect more. Faster. More personal.

As an event professional, you work in a world where expectations grow and room to maneuver shrinks. Nothing stands still.

So: which boundaries are still sustainable? What can we learn from outside the industry? And which boundaries do we need to reconsider?

From Stockholm to Madrid!

Cow astonishes scientists with rare use of tools 🐄 🧹

Scientists are rethinking what cattle are capable of after an Austrian cow named Veronika was found to use tools with impressive skill.

The discovery, reported by researchers in Vienna, suggests cows may have far greater cognitive abilities than previously assumed.

Veronika, a cow living in a mountain village in the Austrian countryside, has spent years perfecting the art of scratching herself using sticks, rakes, and brooms.

Word of her behaviour eventually reached animal intelligence specialists in Vienna, who found Veronika used both ends of the same object for different tasks.

Ramon Vullings on stage!

Nominate Ramon for the Thinkers50 Radar 🕸️ I have a small favour to ask: would you be so kind to nominate me for the 'Thinkers50 Radar’? Thinkers50 Radar identifies a cohort of 30 up-and-coming thinkers whose ideas we predict will make an important impact on management thinking in the future.

I’m on a mission to help business and societal leaders to look outside their sectors and make more beautiful combinations & meaning… together! 

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang discourages 1-on-1s... Jensen famously has 60 direct reports. When Stripe founder Patrick Collison points out that this isn’t conventionally considered best practice, Jensen shares his reasoning:

“I don’t do 1-on-1s, and almost everything I say, I say to everybody all the time. I don’t really believe there’s any information that I operate on that only one or two people should hear about… I believe that when you give everybody equal access to information, that empowers people. And so that’s number one… Number two, if the CEO’s direct staff is 60 people, the number of layers you’ve removed in a company is probably something like seven.”

Patrick offers to steal man the other side of the argument:

“1-on-1s are where you provide coaching, where you maybe talk through personal goals and career advancement, where maybe you give feedback on something that you see somebody systematically not doing so well… Do you not do those things or do you do them in a different way?”

Jensen responds:

“I give you feedback right there in front of everybody. In fact, this is a really big deal. First of all, feedback is learning. For what reason are you the only person who should learn this?… We should all learn from that opportunity… Half the time I’m not right, but for me to reason through it in front of everybody helps everybody learn how to reason through it. The problem I have with 1-on-1s and taking feedback aside is you deprive a whole bunch of people that same learning. Learning from other people’s mistakes is the best way to learn.”

Berlin here I come! Ready for the Stage Two VC event! 🎤 🎪 ✨ Stage Two is the pan-European competition for the best startups spinning out of leading universities.

ASQ (All Sorts of Questions) - Keynote Ramon Vullings ASQ @ Fontys University of Applied Sciences is the annual networking and inspiration meeting of the Centre of Expertise HTSM (High-Tech Systems and Materials).

At this exciting event on November 4th in #Eindhoven, professionals from the business sector discuss current high-tech developments in the Netherlands with governments and with knowledge institutions such as Fontys.