Micro
Karsten Baumgartl

Rethinking Time as Engagement Infrastructure

What Pebble’s Timeline concept reveals about cognitive load, ROI, and the future of empowered work What would actually happen if every employee carried a Pebble Timeline–enabled smartwatch? At first glance, this sounds like a lifestyle or perks question. In reality, it’s an organizational one. Not about gadgets, but about infrastructure.

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Macro
Karsten Baumgartl

The Power of Focus in an Over-Featured World

Why niche products keep outmaneuvering giants — and why enterprises should pay attention For a long time, progress in technology followed a predictable arc: more features, broader platforms, tighter ecosystems. If something could be added, it usually was. Capability was scarce, so accumulation felt like the safest bet. That logic

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Macro
Karsten Baumgartl

Fail Fast, Fail Cheap

Why admitting you’re wrong early is a leadership capability, not a weakness BlackBerry famously asked: “Who would ever want a phone without a keyboard?” It wasn’t a dumb question. It was a reasonable one, grounded in everything that had worked before. BlackBerry dominated enterprise communication. Physical keyboards were a genuine

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Macro
Karsten Baumgartl

Why AI Rewards Business Builders, Not Just Employees

What incentives, leverage, and fear really have to do with AI adoption “People don’t resist AI because they fear technology. They resist it because they don’t trust what success will cost them.” That sentence tends to land because it reframes resistance as something rational rather than emotional. For a long

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Macro
Karsten Baumgartl

Creating the Conditions for Excellence

Why AI adoption scales like good leadership, not good mandates “Arouse in the other person an eager want.” — Dale Carnegie, 1936 While we spend a lot of time talking about new operating models, the dawn of AI, and the behavioral patterns of younger generations entering the workforce, it might

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Macro
Karsten Baumgartl

AI as an Exoskeleton, Not a Prosthesis

The most valuable uses of AI are rarely dramatic Over the last years, working closely with front-office teams across product, commercial, and leadership roles, one pattern has repeated itself with almost boring consistency. The most valuable uses of AI rarely look like replacement. They don’t show up as jobs disappearing

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