Malte Polzin has been active in the digital business since 1999 with a focus on marketing and digital commerce (B2C and B2B). As former CEO of DeinDeal AG and Brack Electronics AG and Onedot Advisor, Malte is a passionate speaker, consultant and moderator.
Who is Malte Polzin?
A fun-loving and humorous person with a great passion for digital and working with people.
What is it like to work as a consultant? What are the biggest advantages and disadvantages?
Well, my really active time as a full-time consultant ended after my work at Carpathia. But as an advantage I experienced the changing problems in projects with different clients (size, industry, client segments). This is very exciting and you can learn a lot. On the other hand, you never really get to one place, which was the reason for me to switch back to the operational side. I am currently looking for a new challenge and I am doing smaller mandates in order not to get "rusty". Supporting Onedot as an advisor is a very exciting part-time job for me. The product and the team convinced me very quickly and I would like to support and accompany this with my experience.
A word that best describes how you work.
Empathic.
Tell us a little about your background and how you got where you are today.
If you are interested in my career, I refer you to my LinkedIn profile. Some people say I've had a great career - to be honest, sometimes I have to admit to myself that I've been able to fill many exciting topics and positions. But titles, for example, have never been so important to me. I have always done what I enjoy doing and then I put my foot down with a lot of passion. Then almost automatically a certain success results. The cooperation with people is always important to me. Whether as a colleague or as a manager - I don't make any explicit distinction here. The joint achievement of goals is then always in the foreground for me.
How is your workspace set up?
I don't have a permanent job right now. I try to use my desk in the home office very little. At the moment I either work in coworking spaces, at Starbucks, at friendly companies or with clients when I take on smaller mandates. It's refreshing not to be tied down for a while. But in my job I prefer a desk with two monitors, for example. Once you get used to it, you really don't want to miss it anymore.
Lead us through an interesting, unusual or complicated process that you have experienced at work.
Interesting and rather demanding than complicated are of course topics concerning employees, e.g. during a reorganization. Even in younger growth companies, which are constantly changing, it is always very challenging to pick up the sensitivities of everyone involved and to moderate them in a motivating way. Even if this happens again and again, it is of course something completely different from the day-to-day business of management. How do you charge up or take a break? Time and exchange with my wife are very important to me. When I play a round of golf, I like to really switch off - if not, the score is correspondingly bad. During the day I take breaks - unfortunately with a cigarillo.
What is your favorite hobby project?
I'm trying to learn to tango.
What are you reading or what do you recommend?
I'm not a bookworm. I read a lot of technical literature / blogs and increasingly listen to podcasts. I recently compiled a list of the trade sources I read in my blog.
Who else would you like to see answering these questions?
Jeff Bezos.
What is the best advice you ever got?
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast" It's old but so true.
What is a problem you are still trying to solve?
Quitting smoking.
How do you see artificial intelligence / machine learning in the retail and commerce?
I think it will become one of the main topics, whether it is in analysis, customer access or the optimization of internal processes. I don't think we can really imagine yet how important this will become.
What is the advice you can give to commerce companies?
Continually reinvent yourself or create unique experiences for customers and develop services (preferably with a separate revenue model) that are clearly distinguishable from Amazon & Co. from Amazon & Co. In the backend you have to automate wherever possible. Especially e.g. in Switzerland where the personnel costs are so high.
How do you see the development of commerce in 2019?
Further disproportionate growth of large platforms but also many that can serve customers in their niche even better with new approaches and business models and thus create a real raison d'être for themselves. In general, the online share will grow again this year in double figures and for many stationary retailers it will be really tight.
What do you think best describes the future of retail?
"Reinvent or die".
More about Malte Polzin and his thoughts on digital topics at polzin.ch.
