Show Notes
For 35 years, Dr. Rainer Balbach built automotive supply chains for Daimler AG Mercedes-Benz across Germany, India, Singapore, Egypt, and Russia. From deep-drawing aluminum to high-pressure die casting that replaced 150 sheet metal parts with one, he witnessed firsthand how innovation struggles against organizational resistance.
In this episode, Rainer tells host Sasan Hashemi what nobody wants to admit: Europe stopped promoting entrepreneurs and started promoting controllers. The engineers who built empires were replaced by consultants who worship spreadsheets. Meanwhile, Singapore became a paradise for innovation.
The technology isn't the problem. Europe has world-class engineering. The problem is cultural: we stopped acting like entrepreneurs and started acting like auditors.
We're not failing because we can't innovate. We're failing because we won't.
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