Lecture Tim Rudolph, Hermes: It takes two to tango – Established companies and their labs

“Cross-functional teams are not an end in themselves. They integrate all necessary skills into the team and thus avoid dependencies on others.”

Many companies have founded very different labs in recent years. Time for a cash check: What do you actually need labs for? And what is necessary for labs to be successful?

Tim Rudolph is Head of Digital Lab at Hermes Germany GmbH. For almost 20 years, he has been enthusiastic about value creation through software and data as well as associated business models. Studies at KIT. Then start-ups, SAP and Capgemini. Rudolph has been working in eCommerce logistics at Hermes for seven years. In his spare time he teaches children programming and basketball.

Key Takeaways “It takes two to tango. Established companies and their labs”

  • Before you set up a lab, you should clarify three things:
    What is the strategic goal of the lab?
    Do I need a lab or is the “normal” organization enough?
    Is the subject worth the money to me?
  • Labs are subject to the same expectations regarding goals and economy as the regular organization. However, they do not have their established tools at their disposal.
  • They must therefore start developing their own tools at an early stage in order to provide answers to questions on strategic goals and economization.
  • In this way, it is important to make goals operational, to be comprehensible and transparent throughout, and not to forget the spirit of innovation and to deliver results.
  • The essential success factors of a lab are a high speed, a spatial separation from the actual company and its own culture, which at the same time promotes openness to and solidarity with the parent company.

Full lecture in live recording