Business Chief Europe Magazine February 2018 | Page 22

understand that the people are the core in this changing process . Daimler is a fantastic company and it knows that we have to change because the world is changing , the customer is changing .

“ In our department , there were around 250 people from IT and the business unit together . We said , ‘ Okay , these are our problems we have to solve and these are the people we have ’. Then you see white spots because there are new roles we didn ’ t make ! When you build digital products like apps , you need all kinds of experts – so we built a team from both outside experts and inside experts .” A vital part of the process was establishing the new working models , with the scale of change broken down into step-by-step parts – an approach

CONRAD FRITZSCH Director of Digitalisation Marketing & Sales at Mercedes-Benz to transformation that Fritzsch likens to developing a key piece of software .

“ When you build software , you go out with beta , the version one , version two etc . This is the same method . With the people , we said ‘ let ’ s change in this direction ’. We built a Daimler blueprint which combines the strengths of start-ups and global company ,” he adds .

“ Everybody was on the boat , they had the right mindset . They didn ’ t say ‘ so we made something wrong and now some guy ’ s come here and has some big answer ?’. We built a solution together and everyone could see that solution . That is super important when you want to change .”

Fritzsch ’ s energy for his mission is career , and it ’ s a passion that powered a unique career ahead of him taking up the role at Mercedes- Benz one and a half years ago .

Back in 1993 , he co-founded the advertising agency Fritzsch & Mackat , where he served as Creative Director , leading on all creation and consulting . His innovative spark saw him launch tape . tv in 2008 , an online music video streaming service that , at its peak , serves 3.9mn unique users , hosting videos from high-profile

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