It always starts with an Idea

Dr. Lars Janzik

Passion for Innovation & Transformation

  • Born April
  • Grown Up Rheingau Area
  • Languages German, English, some French is left
  • Wine Makers Francis Ford Coppola, Cantine San Marzano
  • Sound Ibiza Global Radio
  • Movie Once Upon a Time in America
  • Home Town Berlin

My Blog Acadessa

Innovation is a passion. And you can get addicted to it. But it is a positive addiction.

When you think about a certain business, a company or a product….you should always ask yourself what is next? How can I create additional value for my customers or user? In the online world you can think every day about new things. It is really difficult to focus on what is important to change, especially if the business is running good. That is the best time to think about innovation. And you should every day ask yourself “what can we do better”. But most important is to ask the user or customer. This should be the center of any innovation….


Professional Skills

Transformtional Leadership
Digital Transformation & Change Management
New Work Methods & User Centric Development
Digital Business Models
Innovation & Growth Strategies
Online Marketing & Audience Development

Work Experience

2021 - today

CEO

Berlin / Stuttgart

As part of the Klett Group, I will now support the Pons Langenscheidt team (for the brands Pons, Langenscheidt and Klett Lerntraining) with all my strength and passion.

2021 - today

Advisory Board

Berlin

Supporting the GruenderGeist team in a different role.

2020 - 2021

CEO & Co-Founder

Berlin

Building a company from scratch with a b2b "platform as a service" model • MVP developed with small internal team • signing and implementation of +30 partner suppliers with approx. 100.000 products and services • MVP as stand alone platform launched after 8 month • first PaaS customer signed after 6 month, partner platform launched after 10 month • first revenues after 10 month • team of 13 employees in year one

2018 - 2020

CEO

Berlin

Responsible for complete P&L of Vertical Media GmbH / Gruenderszene (part of Axel Springer SE) • business models: online advertising, events/webinars, online career services/jobboard, content marketing, membership/freemium model, print premium products • 60 employees • sustainable transformation of organization, product portfolio and business models

Responsible for digital product strategy of WELT and N24 (Axel Springer SE) • leading teams for website and apps including UX, SEO and A/B testing • user centric conception and realization of new web destination and apps for WELT • online advertising revenues • research, development and implementation of new business segments such as WELT travel and a brand studio unit • member of the management team

2011 - 2015

Senior Director Product Management

Frankfurt, London

Leading Product Management • effectively managing the product portfolio & online platform in central Europe within B2B and B2C, incl. job board, database, community network, apps, mobile products, cloud service • developing new regional products from conception to realization in co-operation with sales teams and customers (e.g. whitelabel solutions) • user centric realization of products & projection with internal and external agile teams • member of the Senior Management Team

2011 - 2011

VP Customer Communiction

Berlin

Founding and managing two vertical business units (1: B2C online community, ticket eCommece shop; 2: utility software) • managing a 25 person team with global and P&L responsibility • successfully utilised technical expertise to licence all new and supporting technology

Effectively managed the global product portfolio including market release and development for 15 core software/game titles and four cloud services • inventing user centric product development, customer integration & research • effectively managed strategic B2B projects for Aldi, Swiss-Com and T-Com • co-ordinated the planning for products and releases in 25 countries in 18 languages

Managed and extended the global product portfolio (from 2 software products to 15) • successfully built, expanded and managed teams for product management, marketing, PR, communication, editorial and events • successfully expanded the eCommerce shop and introduced Magix cloud services

1995 - 1997

Product Manager / Managing Director

Berlin

Managing the music marketing agency BLJ-Music / Loewe Songs Publishing • development of new product and marketing concepts • consulting for clients, direction and coordination of media ad production (e.g. Axel Springer, Disney, Hasbro)

1992 - 1995

Managing Director

Frankfurt

Foundation of a new record label (Solid Music Zone, SMZ Records) including business plan, marketing strategy, cooperation with sponsors and distribution partners

Education

2007 - 2011

Ph.D. (Dr. rer. pol.)

Hamburg University of Technology

1991 - 1995

Diplom Kaufmann (similar to MBA)

Goethe University Frankfurt

November 2017

Certification In-Memory Data Management

Hasso Plattner Institute

May 2015

Certified Scrum Product Owner

Scrum Alliance

November 2013

Professional Scrum Product Owner I

scrum.org

Mindset

User First

User Centric Development


I worked with many very creative teams in the last twenty years. And there was no day without any new idea. The fantastic thing about new ideas in the digital world is: you can test it! The user can decide himself if there is a great value for him behind an idea (that might be great). The user is the center of any product development.

The Team is the Star

Cross-Functional


Some years ago I can remember there was always a fight between departments: fight for resources, for responsibilities and for dependencies as well as discussions about “who’s fault is it”. Cross-functionality is a great opportunity to focus on common goals, to share responsibilities and to get a commitment from each involved individual.

People Culture

Never stop Changing


Any change is starting with people and mindsets. You cannot transform a product into something new if the responsible team is not supporting the idea of change. And this is not related to product management or development teams only. "Agile" (=new work) principles make sense in any part of the company and as more people support this as better it will work. And of course the so-called top management must support it too!

25 Years Product Passion

Continuous Delivery


It is great fun to work with digital products. Thinking about offline software product cycles in the late 90s is still making me crazy. We worked a year for a new release and half a year to fix all the bugs. To get valid feedback from users was a long painful process. Today digital products are created in real time, increments are continuously delivered and requirements need to be re-prioritized frequently. But the passion for products remains.

Online is Mobile

Rethinking Product Design


Mobile devices are the main access point to the Internet. Sure, there are still use cases that are difficult to handle via a smartphone. But the classification boundaries between smartphones, tablets and notebooks are disappearing. Websites, content and business models must necessarily work in the "mobile world" as well. Especially as we work on the go, from home or from anywhere in the world....yes and sometimes in the office.

Trust & Empowerment

Modern Leadership


Trust is the key for success. You need to build trust from the management in the workforce, trust from the employees in the management and the organization’s vision. Trust is also the premise to empower teams to make responsible decisions. The top management is taking the role of frame keepers and frame expanders.

Work & Research

Interview / Keynote ZP Europe 2019

Projects Video

Interview / Keynote ZP Europe 2019

Projects Video

A short interview (German) after my keynote at the Zukunft Personal Conference 2019 in Cologne.

Gründerszene Spätschicht / Mobility Conference 2019

Projects Video

Gründerszene Spätschicht / Mobility Conference 2019

Projects Video

Two examples of the great events we did in the last years with the Gründerszene team.

Open Source Innovation

Research

Open Source Innovation

Research

I was honored to contribute a chapter to this new book about open source innovation (phenomenon, participant’s behavior, business implications), edited by Prof. Dr. Herstatt and Daniel Ehls from the TIM team at the Hamburg Universitz of Technolgy. My article provides some insights what motivates participants of online communities to contribute for free. The book shows open source innovation from multiple perspectives with all its different facetts including an article by Eric von Hippel professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management (the power of participation motives). The book will be available at the 3rd of April 2015.

Interview: Open Motivation

Research Video

Interview: Open Motivation

Research Video

In my research about user innovation I identified a phenomenon that I described as „Open Motivation“. Open motivation is not a complete new finding. In view of motivation psychology it is more a specific mindset you can observe at user in product related online communities. Based on the changed usage patterns and new technological option in the social Web, open motivation is an opportunity for companies to influence users and to integrate them in their value chain.

Open Motivation Interview with Lars Janzik, English from Lars Janzik on Vimeo.

Job Board Platform

Projects

Job Board Platform

Projects

In 2014/15 my German Monster team and me developed a lean and clean white label job board cloud solution. We only had a very short development period available and used agile frameworks as a basis.

User Innovation in Online Communities

Research

User Innovation in Online Communities

Research

In the beginning of 2012 I released my doctoral thesis:
Online communities in the interactive Web, driven by changed usage patterns, have become a potent means of identifying user needs and solution ideas, thereby supporting companies to innovate. That is especially the case for online communities that are related to particular products or brands. My research focuses on innovative user activities in such virtual communities mainly dedicated to tangible (physical) consumer products. Most fundamentally I analyze the motivation to innovate and contribute to online communities voluntarily. The results support companies in understanding online community members relating to the company’s brand or products as active resource and in improving the integration of such users. Thus results provide a foundation for the development of specific incentives and tools that stimulate user activities.

Customer Integration 2.0

Research

Customer Integration 2.0

Research

In 2011 I had the great honor of getting an article through the validation for the ZFB journal. ZFB is one of the most credible and famous German scientific magazines in business economics. Together with my Ph.D. supervisor Prof. Dr. Herstatt and my research fellow Prof. Dr. Christina Raasch we have written an empirical approach categorizing motivation in online communities. The goal was to make such user motivation measurable and usable for companies.

Interview Harvard Business Manager

Research

Interview Harvard Business Manager

Research

During my research project on user motivation to innovate in online communities I was interviewed by the HBM in late 2010. One important finding was that attention by others is a very important incentive for such innovators, more important than any material rewards.

Interview: Innovation & Change Management

Research Video

Interview: Innovation & Change Management

Research Video

Innovation and change management are key success factors of any company in any line of business, I try to give a very simple definition and personal view how I experienced both elements in the last years.

Ingroove: Hey Jude

Music Production

Ingroove: Hey Jude

Music Production

When I started remixing old Beatles tracks with techno grooves in 1992 I did not seriously believe that we could do any official release. But the idea was stronger and so after a longer fight I finally received support from EMI Publishing that owned the publishing rights at this time. Of course I have not been allowed to use the original recordings, but there was the rumour that Mr. Paul McCartney himself listened to the demo and liked it. So however, we re-recorded the track with the Beatles Revival Band – maybe the best Beatles cover band ever. The track was picked by Virgin Records in 1994 and released in Germany and UK. The most experts predicted a number one hit – but it wasn’t. For the most radio stations the Beatles still have been a sacred cow – they did not play the song.

D-Parture: Heartbeat

Music Production

D-Parture: Heartbeat

Music Production

I have written and produced the song in 1991 for my formation „D-Parture“. The track was released on the Sony Dancepool music label as CD, 7inch and 12inch record and reached several top positions in dance charts of five European countries. Recording and production was done at Acoustic Arts Studio close to Frankfurt with the former Frank Farian sound engineer Tammy Grohé.

Some Interests

  • Cooking
  • Fitness
  • Fashion
  • Diving
  • Music
  • Wine Tasting
  • Music Production

Contact Me

Feel free to contact me