More than three years ago, the German newspaper Die Welt titled the visits of German board members to Silicon Valley with Alpha Animals On Safari. The managers let themselves be shown the future here, they adorn themselves with names like Facebook, Apple and Google and Silicon Valley has actually become something like the “Ballermann (and infamous bar on Mallorca) of the tech scene“.

And in a way the article is right with its criticism. The visits are not always effective or cannot really go into depth for several reasons. However, they at least always give a certain insight, which can perhaps help to position oneself better for the future.

I myself generally see every visit as something positive. It costs a lot of effort to get out of one’s comfort zone and to expose oneself to some very provocative ideas and statements for a few days, and almost to be overwhelmed and challenged with partly new, partly incomprehensible terms and concepts.

Vulnerable managers

In Silicon Valley, I experience the managers and boards of the local companies in a different way than the general public does. Typically, they need to provide owners, shareholders, employees, customers and the public with the assurance that everything is under control, that they understand the future, and that they have the strategy and plans to steer the company safely through stormy times. Admitting weakness or ignorance is seen as a problem.

In front of me, however, they admit that they have difficulty recognizing where the future leads, what threat and opportunity there is, and what they need to do. They are vulnerable, open-minded, and interested in the future. For a few days they are released from routine and can spend more time on new ideas and concepts, thinking deeper than the demands of everyday life normally allow them. They also talk to people who often think very differently, show a completely new mindset, and tell them their opinions respectfully but openly. This is refreshing for the visitors, who are usually surrounded by yes-men and courtiers and receive information filtered.

It can be confusing to have the puzzle pieces for different trends that don’t make sense. Even if I haven’t yet met board members or managers of international companies who couldn’t speak English enough – that’s already a prerequisite in many countries – people at home consume mainly media in their own native language. The problem with this is that the information received is strongly filtered and interpreted. Every country moves in one’s own filter bubble. This is precisely why a visit to Silicon Valley is revealing, because you can break out of this isolation and a way of interpreting the information and be confronted with other interpretations and other information.

Practical Example

An example from my own practice is the development of self-propelled cars. Whenever I’m at lectures in Europe, attending conferences and listening to other speakers, I notice how little people know about the progress of developments in Silicon Valley. While in this country the first test tracks with the planned development of digital road infrastructure and the work on legal regulations for test permission are reported, not without indication that it will still take some time, in the USA 1,400 autonomous vehicles, 800 of them in Silicon Valley alone, are driving, whereby whole states are permitted as test areas. And at least one company – Waymo – is already driving in public space without a security driver on board.

Visits

One or more visits of several days a year to Silicon Valley – and increasingly also to Shanghai and Shenzhen in China – can help you break through this filter bubble and perform a reality check. For those who take the future seriously, this is not a safari, but an important part of bringing their organization into the future.

The key to a successful visit, however, is preparation and a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Above all, one should understand that the most important impulses often do not come from meetings with people and companies from one’s own or neighbouring industries, but from seemingly completely irrelevant ones. As a rule of thumb, half of the meetings with individuals and organizations should come from unrelated industries.

In American there is the sentence “monkey see, monkey do“. In this respect, the comparison with Alpha Animals On Safari is not so wrong. Only someone who has seen the future can prepare for the future.

This article was also published in German.