Self portrait, Zurich, 2025

It's easy to mistake data for signal,

analysis for insight,

and activity for impact.

I've spent three decades learning the difference.

I've spent three decades
learning the difference.

Here is how I see it.

I observe

I've found that a lens does something a spreadsheet can't:
It forces you to look where it matters, and to chose how to frame it.

I'm not making a living as a photographer, but I do use photography to look closely,
to notice what is really going on, and to capture what's gone the next instant.

Here are some of those observations.

I've found that a lens does something a spreadsheet can't:
It forces you to look where it matters,
and to chose how to frame it.

I'm not making a living as a photographer, but I do use photography to look closely,
to notice what is really going on, and
to capture what's gone the next instant.

Here are some of those observations.

Homo Performativus

Field notes from the presentation of self in corporate habitats

"It's all about Me", Abu Dhabi, 2025

"Parentingground", Switzerland, 2020

Over Parenting

I spent years on playgrounds watching parents not let their children play. What I captured in hundreds of photographs across half a dozen countries is disturbing: A generation of parents actively training their children to be helpless and anxious.

Here is the evidence.

I make sense

I'm trying to understand why things seem like they do and whether they are what they seem.

I'm mostly astonished by what I find. I've spent a long time learning to get to the core of things,
and sitting with the discomfort when the truth is hard.

On why large corporates cannot innovate and how not to get shot in the face

Most corporate innovation fails. Not because the people running it lack courage, mindset or vision, I've met plenty of that. They fail because their organizations have misdiagnosed and misaligned the problem. Here is what I've learned in more than two decades on the inside.

On artificially intelligent saviors

I believe AI is the most transformative technology of our lifetimes. I also believe that few companies are aware of what it actually means for them. AI will make most businesses more efficient, and maybe more profitable.

And that's exactly the problem. It's a trap.

On what business can learn from poker

Poker is a game. Business, in many ways, is too. They have more in common than you'd think. I think business leaders can learn a lot from playing a few rounds.

And it's not the bluffing.

How to overcome corporate gravity

Companies can grow. But it's hard. This is my conclusion of decades of professional successes, and failures. Growing, at the essence, is about overcoming gravity. Our research proves the point empirically.

Read on my company blog

Read on company blog

Why Thomas Cook failed the digital transformation

Why Thomas Cook failed (digital)

Thomas Cook, the oldest and one of the largest travel companies of its time, went bankrupt for failing to transform itself. I claim that their fate was inevitable. Read why.

Read on my company blog

Read on company blog

Diversify or Die: Why diversification does pay off

It's one of the biggest business myths; focus on the core business. We can prove substantial above-market shareholder returns from the capability to diversify.

Read on my company blog

Read on company blog

I publish a lot of my sense-making on my company's blog these days.

I create impact

I am driven by impact. Insight without consequence does not satisfy me. Hence I've built products, and whole companies, I've repositioned others, and I advised executives to help them move forward.

Never from a single vantage point, but from wherever I can make something move.

Here is a little, non-exhaustive collage of impressions from my professional live.

But this is not the space for case studies, you can find those over at my company, Stryber.
However, it's important to me that my thinking is always geared towards impact.

Lake Walensee, Switzerland, 2025

Richard Dratva, Founder of Crealogix
(thanks, Richard, likewise)

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Working together with Jan has always been very inspiring for me.

About me

I never felt comfortable being confined to a single role or perspective. I never quite fit the boxes people tried to put me in and for a long time, I thought this was a problem. With time though, I learned to see that as my biggest strength.

I'm interested in how systems behave, why people do what they do, and how behavior and outcomes can be shaped. That lens was formed by an unusual blend: business, finance, sociology, psychology and technology; in the largest corporates and the smallest startups; in boardrooms and cubicles; by building things myself and advising others on them.

For over 25 years I've sat at many tables and on different ends of them: as a web developer, strategy consultant, corporate executive, investor, startup founder, and as a husband and father. I co-founded Stryber to turn that breadth into impact for large organizations.

But this is my personal space: a place to observe, reflect, and shape my own thinking, in writing and in images.

I'm glad you're here.

"Exhibited", Dubai, 2025

I'm Jan.

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