EP 142: Angeli Moeller - Why AI Isn’t Transforming Healthcare Like It Should

Artificial intelligence is heralded as the future of healthcare, but why do so many innovations fail to make a tangible impact?

Despite the hype, countless companies are missing critical opportunities to leverage AI effectively. What’s holding them back?

In this episode, Angeli Möller, CEO of Sequoia Growth, reveals why healthcare AI often falls short and what leaders must do to turn potential into reality.

🎙️ What's in the Episode:

1️⃣ The Real Barriers to AI in Healthcare: Explore why many organizations struggle to integrate AI into their core business, and how to overcome these challenges.

2️⃣ Unlocking True Innovation: Learn from Angeli’s experience at Bayer Pharma and Roche on why understanding the problem is the first step to meaningful solutions, not jumping on the latest tech trend.

3️⃣ Building High-Impact Teams: Discover the critical role of diverse, specialized teams in navigating complex healthcare landscapes and driving sustainable growth.

👤 About Angeli Möller:
Angeli Möller is the founder and CEO of Sequoia Growth, a consultancy dedicated to bridging the gap between AI innovation and practical healthcare applications. With a background that spans senior roles at Bayer Pharma and Thomson Reuters, she’s a thought leader at the intersection of data science and healthcare, advocating for AI solutions that truly improve patient outcomes.

💡 QUOTES:
(31:08) "Leadership is not about knowing every detail; it's about having vision and empowering others."
(55:31) “Success starts with choosing the right team—motivated, competent individuals who share your vision.”
(01:11:43) “For any company that doesn’t find a way to make the right tool part of its core business, they risk losing to competitors who will.”
(01:14:58) "The real bottleneck isn't the lack of algorithms or computing power; it's the lack of quality data."
(02:03:38) "Do you deeply understand the problem you're trying to solve? It goes beyond what customers tell you they need."

⏰ Timestamps:
(04:31) Industry Experience as a Foundation for Career Growth
(08:24) Embracing Berlin's Vibrant Culture and Innovative Spirit
(17:41) Leadership is About Vision and Strategy, Not Knowing Every Detail
(32:59) The Power of International Collaboration in Research
(38:34) Redefining Leadership: Embracing Caregiving and Global Impact
(50:15) Be Clear on Your Communication Style and Personal Boundaries
(01:03:07) Biotech's AI Revolution: From Skepticism to Clinical Success
(01:10:33) Beyond the Hype: AI's Practical Integration in Pharma
(01:19:35) The Interplay of Data and Intelligence
(02:02:46) Understanding Customer Needs is Key to Transforming Science into Impactful Solutions

If you’re ready to dive deep into the real challenges of healthcare innovation and learn how to harness AI’s potential, this episode is a must-watch. Subscribe, comment, and share to help us bring more insightful content from leaders like Angeli Möller.

👀 Stay Tuned: Watch the entire episode to uncover how companies can turn AI potential into impactful healthcare solutions and drive sustainable growth.

Transcript

00:00:00:05 - 00:00:21:02

Christian Soschner

Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the buzzwords surrounding artificial intelligence and machine learning in healthcare? With technology evolving faster than ever? The real question isn't whether we can innovate, but whether those innovations truly improve patient outcomes.

00:00:21:02 - 00:00:28:22

Christian Soschner

and for whatever reason, you don't manage to incorporate into your core business, then you've lost the opportunity because

00:00:28:22 - 00:00:53:00

Christian Soschner

from Groundbreaking discoveries in oncology. Two cutting edge artificial intelligence applications. The challenge remains are we using the right tools to make a tangible difference, or are we getting lost in the decay? And what happens when companies have the resources to innovate but fail to utilize them effectively?

00:00:52:24 - 00:01:04:23

Christian Soschner

There's something there that could make what you do cheaper, better, faster, and you're just not using it for whatever reason. And what I, I it frustrates me. You probably can see it,

00:01:04:23 - 00:01:19:01

Christian Soschner

In today's episode, we will delve deep into these questions with Angela miller, a leading expert whose work at the intersection of data science and health care for some of the world's top pharma companies.

00:01:19:01 - 00:01:33:21

Christian Soschner

and delicious journey. From cancer research to founding Sequoia Growth, a consultancy focused on sustainable innovation. She will reveal the key to making tech work for us, rather than becoming slaves to the latest trend.

00:01:33:21 - 00:01:40:09

Christian Soschner

what we do is we first of all, look, and we'll work with you on what is the thing that you're actually trying to solve.

00:01:40:09 - 00:01:50:18

Christian Soschner

what is the problem that you're actually trying to solve? Because we don't want to get into a bigger commitment with each other when we're not convinced that will actually be able to make a difference to your problem,

00:01:50:18 - 00:02:00:00

Christian Soschner

And when we reach a point where we say, yes, this is something where we could really make a difference, where you, as the client say, this is actually going to help to grow my business.

00:02:00:00 - 00:02:07:13

Christian Soschner

I see the multiple fold return that I'm going to get, from this engagement. Then we come in and we put together the team.

00:02:07:13 - 00:02:22:06

Christian Soschner

Stay tuned as we explore these three main points. How to integrate artificial intelligence into core business strategies without losing sight of the end goal.

00:02:22:08 - 00:02:35:06

Christian Soschner

The crucial role of diverse, high quality data in achieving meaningful innovation. And the third one. Leadership lessons from building a global team and fostering sustainable business growth.

00:02:35:06 - 00:02:41:18

Christian Soschner

it's not that I don't have the algorithm or I don't have the compute power. It's actually you don't have the data, you can't do anything.

00:02:41:18 - 00:02:59:08

Christian Soschner

make sure to subscribe, comment and share this episode. Your support helps us bring more insightful content to leaders like you. And remember to watch the entire episode. You don't want to miss Angeles practical advice on turning tech into tangible healthcare solutions.

00:02:59:09 - 00:03:03:19

Angeli Moeller

So you were born in the UK then?

00:03:03:23 - 00:03:06:01

Christian Soschner

Yes. That's right, that's right. Exactly.

00:03:06:03 - 00:03:14:14

Angeli Moeller

Okay. This was my first question basically because Angele is then an English name and very is typically I would say German name actually.

00:03:14:14 - 00:03:30:10

Christian Soschner

So Anjali, is an Indian first name. Oh. and I think in, in Gujarat, in India you would, pronounce it more Anjali, and and then, yes, Mela is clearly a German name. So low German name.

00:03:30:12 - 00:03:36:24

Angeli Moeller

And this is what brought you then to Berlin, I guess. marriage.

00:03:37:01 - 00:03:39:24

Christian Soschner

I, I, I had the opportunity

00:03:39:24 - 00:04:01:13

Christian Soschner

during my studies, so when I was studying molecular biology to spend a year in industry. And last week I actually gave a careers talk at my former research institute. And I strongly recommend getting some industry experience, even if you are on an academic track. and I had the opportunity to work in the UK.

00:04:01:15 - 00:04:16:08

Christian Soschner

but then there was this one placement in Berlin. And of course, if you're 21 years old and you have the opportunity to go live in Berlin for a year, then you're going to jump at it. And now I've been living in Berlin. for 20 plus

00:04:16:08 - 00:04:22:05

Christian Soschner

years. Wow. Going up to 21 years. And, just absolutely love it here.

00:04:22:07 - 00:04:22:16

Angeli Moeller

May I

00:04:22:16 - 00:04:33:01

Angeli Moeller

ask the question? I mean, England is great, Scotland is great. India is great too. What attracted you to Berlin? Why? Berlin?

00:04:33:03 - 00:04:35:14

Christian Soschner

So, it's

00:04:35:14 - 00:04:57:23

Christian Soschner

also what attracted me in the first place. And then what really ticks me, in Berlin. And I think what attracted me in the first place is just that there's so much happening. If you're interested in something like the Philharmonic, the opera, tech startups, of course. any sort of research, there's just so much happening in Berlin.

00:04:58:00 - 00:05:19:01

Christian Soschner

And from a career perspective, I felt as if there were just more research laboratories in Berlin than they were in the whole of Scotland. so I never checked that statistic, but I just felt there was so much happening. and that's what brought me to Berlin. I think what kept me here is simply the cultural freedom that Berlin allows you.

00:05:19:01 - 00:05:51:01

Christian Soschner

So you are really free here to express yourselves to experiment with whatever sort of, culture or theater you might be interested in. and that also leads to, a very innovative environment for technology. Now, I do, think that we need to, to really grow the industry in Berlin and grow the technology so that you get from startup to mid-sized company to successful, large company.

00:05:51:01 - 00:06:02:12

Christian Soschner

And I think that somewhere where, Berlin is, it's not doing so well, and yet, for a place to live, I, I'm just really happy, that I chose my city. And then I get to remain here.

00:06:02:22 - 00:06:20:09

Angeli Moeller

I totally agree to the last parts to to say that we have to grow the economy not only in Berlin, but I think, across Europe, when I look at capital markets and service fees. Seriously, there is some DuPont way for European startups, and this is the United States currently. So we have a lot of work to do.

00:06:20:12 - 00:06:51:07

Angeli Moeller

But I found the first part very interesting that you said that, Berlin has a unique culture, an environment where people are free to experiment. with arts, with technology, with different ways of life. And it reminded me a little bit of, what I write about Silicon Valley that also the, attitudes that seemed to have started to appearing are in the 40s and 50s of the last century with the pizza generation.

00:06:51:09 - 00:07:00:22

Angeli Moeller

the similar dynamic. Can you expand a little bit on the dynamic on the cultural sites in Berlin? What makes Berlin so unique?

00:07:00:24 - 00:07:01:06

Christian Soschner

And so,

00:07:01:06 - 00:07:25:05

Christian Soschner

so, so most of, what we'll talk about today is, is my scientific and technical background. But I also, very much enjoy going to music, going to listen to music. I enjoy, going, painting myself and also going to, to see exhibitions. and when I first came to Berlin, I felt that nobody had one job.

00:07:25:07 - 00:07:54:00

Christian Soschner

But when I was out and I was meeting people, everybody had three jobs. Four jobs, everybody, of course, was a DJ that's, in Berlin. but then, as well as something creative, they would then go to working, in a larger company also maybe had a startup or a venture, had a series of investment. It felt, and still today, it feels like a place where, there's just not so much restriction.

00:07:54:00 - 00:08:02:05

Christian Soschner

And when you meet people, they have very full, very diverse and interesting lives. And that's just a very stimulating environment to be in.

00:08:02:05 - 00:08:29:03

Angeli Moeller

That's a difference to the structured chairman approach. I got to know in the 80s and 90s with, with the factories and now it seems to be, more evolving to a more dynamic, environment, especially in Berlin. We are talking about, approximately 20 years ago or 15, 20 years ago this time. and when I think back to 2008, 2020 ten, you also have biomedical backgrounds, a song, a profile.

00:08:29:05 - 00:08:50:10

Angeli Moeller

So when I think back at, my experience with venture capitalists and with the farm industry in that area, whenever I tried to convince them to look towards digital solutions, they pushed back and it was not something very logical to do. So there is pharma, there is the digital world. And it seemed to be more like silos.

00:08:50:12 - 00:09:02:12

Angeli Moeller

And you were very attracted to artificial intelligence in healthcare. What motivated you to go into this direction? Although back in these days it was not a common thing to do.

00:09:02:16 - 00:09:25:08

Christian Soschner

and I think, Christine, that a lot of my experiences resonate with yours. So even I remember, speaking to someone in 2016, you just said they didn't believe in artificial intelligence. That was their entire statement and sentence. And this is quite an influential person in the industry and said, I do not believe in artificial intelligence. Okay.

00:09:25:10 - 00:09:52:05

Christian Soschner

End of discussion. I would say that it's still very important to look at what is the reality of how the money is made in this industry and how a patient really is supported and benefits in this industry. So ultimately, the question isn't, is it using machine learning? The question is, does the medicine work? And that should be the question.

00:09:52:05 - 00:10:13:07

Christian Soschner

That's the right question to ask. Does the medicine work? Does the diagnostic tool work. Those are the questions that you need to ask. Does it use machine learning yes or no? Okay. That's interesting, but does it work? And and that's true in many, many industries, not just in healthcare. Does the product work? Does it meet an unmet customer need?

00:10:13:09 - 00:10:40:03

Christian Soschner

I do think, though, that, the big hype cycle it cost Gartner just popped out, latest report and I got that, sorry, the AI hype cycle I did lead to, a lot of, fraud. So a lot of false claims, people continuing to claim that artificial intelligence could do things that it simply couldn't. And that level, fraud led to a lot of disillusionment.

00:10:40:03 - 00:11:08:23

Christian Soschner

It also led to certain investors losing money because they were big claims made. And then those claims didn't pan out. so I'm very sympathetic to people who who went through that situation. But on the other side, there was a trend in which some companies really rebuilt their entire pipeline of how they developed new drugs, how they developed new products using all the technologies available to them, one of which was artificial intelligence.

00:11:08:23 - 00:11:31:14

Christian Soschner

They said, I'm going to use whatever's available to me to make the best product. And they've been tremendous, really successful. And Boston machine learning was a big part of their success. And then you see others who just continued not to use all of the tools available for them to make the best product, and then suffered accordingly. that's a shame to see.

00:11:31:16 - 00:11:50:15

Christian Soschner

and I think that's where at the core of everything I do is saying you have to marry the technical expertise, with the business acumen, because you there are people who will claim something can do everything when it simply can't. And you need to be able to see through that and find your way through

00:11:50:15 - 00:11:51:13

Christian Soschner

that.

00:11:51:15 - 00:12:17:09

Angeli Moeller

I totally I totally agree to that. There is a lot of storytelling on the market and to sometimes divorced from reality, but I find interesting in your career, you know, started with a scientific career, basically an academic career, and then transitioned to the pharma industry and took over leadership roles. How was that for you? I thought, if I teach you to go out to go into leadership direction.

00:12:17:11 - 00:12:18:09

Christian Soschner

So,

00:12:18:09 - 00:12:38:09

Christian Soschner

I would say as a leader, it's a journey. but, I'll go back then to the first point where I took on leadership roles and it was, really because I couldn't stand it when somebody else decided which project was getting signed. It's just absolutely couldn't stand it. Even as an academic, I

00:12:38:09 - 00:12:38:16

Christian Soschner

could I.

00:12:38:16 - 00:12:39:23

Angeli Moeller

Could relate to that.

00:12:40:00 - 00:12:40:07

Christian Soschner

And

00:12:44:01 - 00:13:06:12

Christian Soschner

the time about what I thought should be getting the funding, why I thought it should be getting the funding. And then that naturally led to me being put into leadership positions. so, gradually over time, it became, a lot more about, looking after people, maintaining people's welfare, allowing the team to shine.

00:13:06:14 - 00:13:28:22

Christian Soschner

that became a bigger and bigger part of the leadership roles that I had. But, that initial trigger, was very much I want to decide which of these initiatives, which of these channels is going to get the funding. And I have strong opinions and a voice about what I think should be getting the funding. And that voice was heard, leading to those leadership

00:13:28:22 - 00:13:29:14

Christian Soschner

roles.

00:13:29:16 - 00:13:51:14

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. They usually put you turn in charge when you open your mouth next 12 months. So they then decide and do it and then you're responsible. It's, how how do you see leadership to stay? So, I mean, on one hand you need profound, especially in pharma onboarding. You need profound expertise in the traditional pharma areas, which most least track development.

00:13:51:14 - 00:14:17:08

Angeli Moeller

When we talk about pharma, then you also need scientific, expertise in the digital world. And then you need leadership expertise. Is it really necessary to be successful in pharma in the digital world to have all three areas covered? Or can someone just say, okay, I focus on leadership and I have my experts, then I can go to how do you see the mix of this free would say free fund fundamental pillars of leadership.

00:14:17:10 - 00:14:17:21

Christian Soschner

I

00:14:17:21 - 00:14:45:11

Christian Soschner

think leadership covers a big swathe of term. So if we look at a large pharmaceutical company, they have several global executives who have slightly different roles to play in that company and therefore will lean on strengths more than others. I, would say that when you're in a large corporation, any type of corporation, pharma corporation, automotive, company.

00:14:45:13 - 00:15:19:16

Christian Soschner

And your response to saw many people in many different countries, you have to be somebody who takes that people leadership seriously, and you have to take it seriously for two reasons. One, which is, a little bit, cold. You can really damage your company if you don't take that responsibility seriously. There are, legal employment laws that you have to be aware of in each of the countries you're operating in that, working to get the very best out of those people, because a company, in the end, is all.

00:15:19:16 - 00:15:41:04

Christian Soschner

It's the people that it's composed of. It's a community that has to work together effectively, and you have to care about that just for that basic success of your company, the enterprise. then the other part of that is, looking at it also from, a more human perspective is are you passionate about helping people further their careers?

00:15:41:06 - 00:16:00:23

Christian Soschner

And I think that's where you get really great leaders in companies and people, to others, really want to work for you. Go and work for someone and you know that your career is going to benefit because this person is going to look at you. This person is not just going to look out for themselves, but they're going to make sure that you're progressing, that you're doing well.

00:16:01:00 - 00:16:17:23

Christian Soschner

I've been lucky enough to have leaders like that to try to be that kind of leader. and I think, the success story again, for companies is that the best talent? I want to work for this person. Yeah. and they stay in their retained, working for this person.

00:16:18:00 - 00:16:18:24

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. It's.

00:16:19:01 - 00:16:19:15

Christian Soschner

Yeah.

00:16:19:17 - 00:16:21:15

Angeli Moeller

Go ahead, go ahead. Sorry. You don't have to do.

00:16:21:17 - 00:16:45:02

Christian Soschner

All the scientific and technical acumen. I was actually speaking to a client yesterday about. So, they were asking me about how necessary, this is in a role, which is customer facing. So for customer facing role, how critical is it to have this document? I would say that, first of all, it's you can learn it.

00:16:45:04 - 00:17:12:06

Christian Soschner

So if you didn't come up as I did through academia, don't imagine that you can't choose to learn a new skill set. I think we nowadays lived quite a long time, since we live quite a long time, it's important not to be afraid of of jumping in and learning a new skill set. I do think that in the scientific and technical industries, it does make a difference to be able to bring that background.

00:17:12:08 - 00:17:38:07

Christian Soschner

But you have to remember, nobody is an expert in every single part. the biotech, pharmaceutical business. That's why you have a cluster of experts, usually. I'll give you an example. So I've specialized in molecular biology, machine learning. And right now I'm doing our work on quantum computing, with the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which is, based in the UK.

00:17:38:09 - 00:18:07:22

Christian Soschner

so those are areas in which I would go and feel very comfortable. Okay. But if you look at, a completely different area like the go to market strategy, there are other people who are better qualified in a go to market strategy. And I think a key strength as a leader is to be able to say, now I will bring in somebody else who has that strength and make sure that the client, the customer or the company is getting really what they need in terms of the right expertise.

00:18:07:24 - 00:18:37:22

Christian Soschner

I think, then, you know, the third part of leadership is really strategy and vision, knowing where you want the organization to go, being able to have that resilience as you pay, setbacks, as you continue to drive the organization into the right direction. And that is, I think you you just have to do just, just have a lot of control and just be the sort of person who has a very clear idea of what the direction is.

00:18:37:24 - 00:18:59:21

Christian Soschner

and I think then where I really see leaders that I admire, those who are able to have that urgency, that sense of direction to overcome obstacles. And yet the still at the same time, listen to that teams so that they don't switch off and become blinkered while they move towards that goal. And then that's really, for me, the true strength of a great leader.

00:19:00:00 - 00:19:30:15

Angeli Moeller

Yeah, I totally agree. Totally agree. You mentioned that, leadership is about leading people. And I think the answer to what you say that, the leader must not be the best expert, you must have should have an interest in the area his company is operating in. But actually it's leading if you get to spec. 15 years ago, when I experienced sometimes in small to medium sized companies that you would like to have over 5% to 10% leadership role.

00:19:30:18 - 00:19:55:05

Angeli Moeller

So 20% leadership probably, in my opinion, it's not to ever my opinion. leadership, management people selecting the right people, motivating people, getting them on board. Also cutting people from the payroll when they don't perform is a full time, focus and cannot be at it's 10% or 5%. How do you see that?

00:19:55:07 - 00:19:55:12

Christian Soschner

I

00:19:55:12 - 00:20:18:11

Christian Soschner

would say it really for me, Christian depends on the size of the team. So if I look at early leadership roles, I had, when I was at the Max Dell Brook center here in Berlin and I was, research in Europe, proteomics. I supervised a team of a couple of PhD students and a few technicians, and some of the students were always there.

00:20:18:13 - 00:20:41:14

Christian Soschner

and I worked as a researcher at the same time. So I still in the lab. I was still, actually, that's when I was doing quite a lot of machine learning work myself in my own research, and it was perfectly comfortable. It also added to the respect I had that I would be in the lab, that I would be producing research, that I would just be sort of orchestrating other people's research.

00:20:41:16 - 00:21:09:23

Christian Soschner

then if I look at, my most recent role at Roche, I've had, I think my first role at Roche, I had something like 650 FTE. So 650 people. And then in the second role, we, brought that down to 460 because it was, having a different goal, that organization, it was a global hub, and that seemed like the right size for it.

00:21:10:00 - 00:21:37:03

Christian Soschner

when you have, an organization that size and I mentioned it before employment or when you also have to be aware of employment law in multiple different jurisdictions and countries, and you want to make sure that everybody is working towards shared outcomes, shared goals, that they're able to bring that creativity absolutely, 100%. wrong. He has to really care and and be passionate about that.

00:21:37:03 - 00:21:59:08

Christian Soschner

He has to be passionate about the outcomes of the organization and the company, but also very passionate about that, the people leadership. In order for that to be successful, you spend then you may have had this experience, you spend quite a lot of your time in those sorts of roles, just listening, just being there, watching around, being available to your team.

00:21:59:10 - 00:22:03:24

Christian Soschner

My case, it was playing around, just being available for the team.

00:22:03:24 - 00:22:33:23

Angeli Moeller

I had a similar experience back in the ground up, and it was about, can you imagine acquisition? And, first it was building a new division supporting that. Then the second one was then with the traditional sugar business. And initially, I mean, it was 2002 345 this time. And initially efforts by North managed from Vienna and we have now email, we have telephone and my position was as one of the biggest leadership women here in Austria back this desk.

00:22:34:00 - 00:22:53:14

Angeli Moeller

And is that security is that if you think you can do it, you can try it. But I say you go talk to people. And it took me a month to really come to the same conclusion as you did. This was mostly traveling, talking with people, finding out what problems to have, how the headquarter can support them, solving that problem.

00:22:53:16 - 00:23:03:14

Angeli Moeller

but issues and all this stuff. So, it's really talking to people, traveling and being with them and not just being someone sitting around.

00:23:05:19 - 00:23:26:10

Christian Soschner

been a big, topic that I spent a lot of thought on in the last 12 months, because it's also the CO2 emissions. So the CO2 emissions are shocking and business travel. And if you're environmentally conscious as I am, it can be tough to reconcile this lifestyle, together with flying around.

00:23:26:10 - 00:23:45:19

Christian Soschner

So I'm a big train taker if it's in Europe. Just in Paris two weeks ago, I took the train from Berlin to Paris. That was lovely. If I go to Geneva, that's a longer trip again. I'm just taking the train. even I've been looking at trips to Madrid on the train, and, you know, you have to change real networks, to do that.

00:23:45:19 - 00:24:17:03

Christian Soschner

But again, if I can take the train, it will take the train. but we know, you know, I had a role where my team was spread over 120 countries, you know, going to take the train, you really, are going to end up on an airplane. And I think I do push the limit of what I can do remotely, largely because of the CO2 consumption, because I really conscious that I'm not, being, someone called it once, corporate tourist.

00:24:17:05 - 00:24:36:17

Christian Soschner

and I thought that was very funny. So the sort of person who travels, on the companies, does just because they like to travel and not because it's actually really important for the company. So if I go out and I travel, I want to be really sure that it's impactful, that it's impactful. But the people I'm going out to see that it's impactful.

00:24:36:17 - 00:25:03:09

Christian Soschner

So the organization I'm representing. And so one of the things, coming out of the pandemic to have being very thoughtful about is what are those occasions where it's really going to be impacts? Also the organizations, the people who are going to meet and what are the times where just actually could could be a longer virtual coffee, with somebody one on one giving them the chance to open up.

00:25:03:11 - 00:25:15:15

Christian Soschner

that's making a call from, their home office in a wholly confidential environment where they feel relaxed and they might, then just find that a comfortable, space to talk to me about what's going

00:25:15:15 - 00:25:16:07

Christian Soschner

on.

00:25:16:09 - 00:25:37:11

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. Digital solutions have come a long way in the last four years, so it's, really improved. What's different before 2020? environment is, of course, a problem, but I think the leaders are aware of that. And, you should agree to what they say usually makes the decision very environmentally conscious if it's necessary to travel or if it's not necessary to travel.

00:25:37:13 - 00:25:58:13

Angeli Moeller

And sometimes it's just a question. I mean, like Covid, you brought the example to you wants to have a new vaccine on the market within one year, then you need to do what's necessary. If you can live with five years, then you can do more from home. But the and then it really speeds up things. Sometimes when people feel seen and heard and get positive feedback from leaders.

00:25:58:13 - 00:26:28:00

Christian Soschner

Absolutely. And I think also, it's making sure you don't underestimate the differences between different sites and different countries. And, now that I, focus more on client and the different clients, I spoke with my company. And you want to be face to face with your clients, and, I do as much as possible face to face with the clients, just to make sure that I have that deeper understanding of what their needs are.

00:26:28:00 - 00:26:35:05

Christian Soschner

What's that environment they're in every day? I want to be able to really easily visualize the environment that they're experiencing every day, because I've been

00:26:35:05 - 00:26:36:02

Christian Soschner

there.

00:26:36:04 - 00:26:55:14

Angeli Moeller

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, sometimes to me, to see how they live, especially in the psychological side, what is the reality in the company we podcast? We can do easily. Why, why are some cars. It's not necessary to fly you into Vienna. I'm going to go to Berlin. But client work, especially when you have to deal with the organizations.

00:26:55:20 - 00:27:15:04

Angeli Moeller

It's really helpful to see that. But when you go back to your career and, maybe to sidestep so you don't see shift later on, you started in cancer research. What motivated you to start early on, including artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital tools into cancer research?

00:27:15:06 - 00:27:17:17

Christian Soschner

So I would say, I mean, it would obviously

00:27:17:17 - 00:27:25:12

Christian Soschner

it would be lovely to claim that I was just some sort of genius, but I would say it was a lot of the influence of the European

00:27:25:12 - 00:27:39:02

Christian Soschner

Institutes of Bioinformatics. And I'm a huge fan of the European Institute for bioinformatics. So it's funded, by 17 different countries, who have a multilateral agreement to fund this organization.

00:27:39:04 - 00:28:11:00

Christian Soschner

it has two headquarters, one in Cambridge and one in Heidelberg. And it it was hugely influential throughout my research career. It provides, resources that reduce the cost and the burden of research in terms of wholly integrated data sets. So data sets and also bioinformatics tools that you can just easily access as an academic researcher. So I began my journey simply accessing their resources, what is available to use, and everyone around me.

00:28:11:00 - 00:28:41:00

Christian Soschner

And in the lab I was working in, cancer Research UK was making liberal use of all the tools available to them. It was then, during my later research. So I moved out of cancer research into and working on new regenerative diseases. And that was here in Berlin at the Max Steinberg Center. And there I had the opportunity to collaborate with some strong informatics groups, that were at the same research institute.

00:28:41:02 - 00:29:06:07

Christian Soschner

and that was the time where we really got into machine learning and we had problems where we really needed to use machine learning. So we were taking a human chemical synapse, and we were creating in silico models of that synapse. And, one of the interesting transitions was in cancer. There are a lot of very well defined pathways.

00:29:06:08 - 00:29:29:10

Christian Soschner

I think you could almost call it a mature research area, oncology. And when I went into neurodegeneration. And how does healthy brain work? So we were, first of all, just modeling how this completely healthy, brain work. It's not like we knew nothing. It was so surprising to me going into neurological research. How little was known. How do you follow my memory?

00:29:29:11 - 00:29:55:04

Christian Soschner

How do you lose the memory? All of these very, basic questions about brain function, but just not really well understood. And so, the amount of data that was available was fortunately very rich. And I was part of an EU framework seven funded grant. I was part of two grants. so we had a lot of money, sufficient money to create data to integrate data.

00:29:55:06 - 00:30:18:24

Christian Soschner

and when you have that level of data and such a challenging problem machine learning is your friend. That is knowing that you're going to be able to really make significant breakthroughs. And, and so for me, I would say one of the the point is there is a lot of, specialization in the last few years in artificial intelligence and in machine learning.

00:30:19:01 - 00:30:39:08

Christian Soschner

But for me, it is a tool. And the question is, what is the problem you're trying to solve? And then don't blink yourselves to any of the tools you could do. So there's so many different tools I mentioned. we doing my work in quantum computing. There's so many different resources. Some of them are simple, some of them are complicated.

00:30:39:10 - 00:30:54:07

Christian Soschner

You don't have to choose always the most complicated solution, but just keep your mind and your resources open to what's actually going to help you bring something relevant to your company. Bring something relevant to your patients. bring something relevant to you to

00:30:54:07 - 00:30:55:23

Christian Soschner

market.

00:30:56:00 - 00:31:01:10

Angeli Moeller

And European framework programs think this was before horizon. I just called frameworks. Programs.

00:31:01:12 - 00:31:02:23

Christian Soschner

That's right.

00:31:03:00 - 00:31:31:22

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. I worked at, one in at the end of the 90s with, analyzing how the Nobel Internet's technology changes the economies and vaccine, logistics, basically. So we had to look at logistics. It was really fun, this, so we had to define the programs and the projects that, were funded by the European Union and suggested to the community by Austrian ministries and chairman ministries.

00:31:31:23 - 00:31:36:21

Angeli Moeller

It was really interesting approach must extend to same venue, teacher framework, program.

00:31:36:23 - 00:31:37:07

Christian Soschner

so

00:31:37:07 - 00:32:01:22

Christian Soschner

we had I was really lucky in that, we had very high caliber, scientists involved in the grant. So including, the Nobel Prize winner. we're near. So that was a huge privilege to be able to work with a Nobel Prize winner. Of course. the, thing that I enjoyed the most was that we were 15 different laboratories, across Europe and Israel.

00:32:01:22 - 00:32:29:21

Christian Soschner

And so this collaborative research environment, I think, is, is the sweet spot groups that perhaps wouldn't naturally come together and share information and now funded in a way that incentivizes them to come together to share information openly with each other. So I think that's a tremendous thing about these grants. And then the other part was this was that was my first taste of really, traveling and working, internationally.

00:32:29:21 - 00:32:50:24

Christian Soschner

So I went out to, the labs in Israel for a while. I went out and, and traveled to the Czech Republic and was working for a time with a group there and, and understanding, what became a big part of my career later is these different international work environments and how to bring them together, to produce an outcome

00:32:50:24 - 00:32:52:13

Christian Soschner

jointly.

00:32:52:15 - 00:33:18:04

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. For me, it was similarly exciting. I was a student and working together with, people from Harvard University of some kind and the flash robots. network, a book about networked economy, University of Crafts, and then also industrial partners that were built in these days, and some quite the quiet later on. It was so amazing. Took it all these different inputs in practically no time.

00:33:18:06 - 00:33:18:20

Christian Soschner

Yeah.

00:33:18:20 - 00:33:47:07

Christian Soschner

and I was just, at the research institute on my PhD student retreat, last week. So I went to go and talk to the PhD students and, it's, computational, oncology research. They call it comp term. and, I just blown away by the caliber of the PhD students as well. So truly brilliant young people with so many options in front of them.

00:33:47:07 - 00:34:31:24

Christian Soschner

And I think that's the other part of having enjoyed, this academic career. But I'm always keeping, one site, connected to the academic world is you just has really next level individuals when it comes to, intellect when it comes to scientific insight, when it comes to new technical developments. Now, I think you and I would both say, and even, people in industry and in academia would say, you can be very brilliant and never come up with anything that reaches humanity because you keep it locked away in your lab and, and trying to to get them connected to industry, trying to get those innovations out of the lab into the real

00:34:31:24 - 00:34:44:20

Christian Soschner

world, commercialized, helping to grow the country's economy, helping to create jobs, helping to actually have a beneficial impact on society. I think we all know that's where we constantly need to work and do my

00:34:44:20 - 00:34:45:19

Christian Soschner

work.

00:34:45:21 - 00:35:13:03

Angeli Moeller

And this is where leadership plays a huge role. So it's, one person can't do anything. by themselves. It needs leaders. will step out and say, okay, I'm fine with not being the best in everything. I'm fine with finding the best people. And I think this is one of the most important character traits to really look for the best in people and, and bring them together and, buck longside them, knowing that the leader is not probably the best person.

00:35:13:03 - 00:35:37:08

Angeli Moeller

It's not an ego game. Which leads me to the next question. women in tech. So you have a long career from academia up to big leadership roles in big Pharma. what was your experience as a as a woman in tech, in leadership? how was your journey for that? What were the hardships and what very good story, the good times.

00:35:37:10 - 00:35:37:16

Christian Soschner

I

00:35:37:16 - 00:36:09:22

Christian Soschner

would say that I often don't think about it. I get the question all the time. how is it, to be a person of color in tech? How is it to be a woman in tech? I would say that I think about it mostly when I'm in this type of discussion or on a panel at a conference, then, it often comes up and I wish reflecting on it with some PhD students that I was mentoring at one time and they were women.

00:36:09:24 - 00:36:30:23

Christian Soschner

And I said, oh, I'm not too sure how I feel when I get asked this question. They said, it's really helpful that, you guessed it, it's really helpful that we hear you on stage answering this question, that we hear you in podcasts answering this question, because we're looking to see what that route should look like for us. And so, first of all, thank you for asking the question.

00:36:31:00 - 00:36:58:01

Christian Soschner

I would say that for me personally, I have often worked in environments where there were very few women or even, at one point where I was the only woman. I was at one point where I had a role where I was the only woman at my level. And, there were no women at that level of leadership above me or no, women at the, in the teams below me.

00:36:58:01 - 00:37:27:01

Christian Soschner

Although that's something we changed over time. I think, first of all, it has been interesting to reflect with my peers on why no other women were hired, or perhaps why so very few women were hired. And to have that opportunity to reflect on, how women are viewed in the workplace. So do we see them having roles where they have budget accountability?

00:37:27:03 - 00:38:04:19

Christian Soschner

Do you, see them having, roles where, they're making significantly impactful decisions? and for me, one of the things I realized as I particularly as I became a leader, was that part, making it easier for a diverse group of colleagues to come into leadership roles was to also respect that many people have caregiving roles beside their career so that you they're looking after older parents or they're looking after children or they're having some other sort of caregiving role.

00:38:04:21 - 00:38:31:04

Christian Soschner

And now this obviously isn't exclusive to women, but it is something where a lot of women I meet make decisions in their careers based on the fact that they also have a caregiving role. And one of the things I find very interesting is when you have an organization that is ready to allow somebody to be a caregiver and to be a serious global executive, so to show that they can do both things at once.

00:38:31:06 - 00:38:52:24

Christian Soschner

It might not look the way a global executive in the 1950s worked, but that they're perfectly, capable of making sure the company reaches all of its KPIs, making sure all of the deliverables and outcomes are reached for the organization on bringing that creativity and yet still, giving them the flexibility to manage caregiver roles at the same time.

00:38:53:11 - 00:38:58:06

Angeli Moeller

How do you how do you balance your private life, with your business life?

00:38:58:09 - 00:39:14:01

Christian Soschner

Yeah. I, I would say it's something I've got better over time. you know, if if people who know me will be listening to this as well, I'm sure they will have laughed at that question, because I have a reputation for working all the time.

00:39:14:01 - 00:39:18:11

Christian Soschner

I would say when I was in academia, I would work all the time.

00:39:18:11 - 00:39:45:17

Christian Soschner

I even slept in the laboratory, coffee room sometimes when I wanted to run off at night experiments. And I just couldn't wait to see the results. We just wanted to try and troubleshoot something that wasn't going right, and I would just work all the time. I think, one of the things that happens to almost everybody as you get older, leadership position or not, is that you see the benefit of being really present in a moment.

00:39:45:19 - 00:40:22:24

Christian Soschner

So whether you're at home with your family, whether you're sitting 1 to 1 with an employee who really needs you, whether you're with an investor and you're having a really critical discussion, it's important to be wholly in the moment. And one of the the things that I've changed as I've grown older is that I focus less on the quantity of things I'm doing every day, and more the quality of the things I do each day to really be present in that moment, to make sure that whatever it is I'm doing has, my full attention.

00:40:22:24 - 00:40:32:08

Christian Soschner

And I'm just trying to pack in another 20 things that day. I don't know if it's the same for you. I feel that, an experience many people have as they grow

00:40:32:08 - 00:40:33:12

Christian Soschner

older.

00:40:33:14 - 00:41:04:01

Angeli Moeller

I totally agree, I totally agree, I think the the advantage of growing over time is, Developing the ability to choose the right tasks over minor tasks and be fine with that. So I think this is a really doubling down on when you have a conversation, you have a conversation. You don't write emails or answer a phone. When I think back to your 30 years ago, I think it was just, we can't do this.

00:41:04:01 - 00:41:13:18

Angeli Moeller

We can't do that, we can't do this. And, nobody wants to set what's fast and what's fast. And I think this is an advantage of age. Simply experience.

00:41:13:20 - 00:41:13:24

Christian Soschner

I

00:41:13:24 - 00:41:41:05

Christian Soschner

would say I have, seen leaders who are always on their phone, who are texting during meetings to, here and there. And my thinking is always, if it works for you, if it works for you, but you wait to. I know some people have very strong feelings about this, being very bad behavior. I don't do it because I feel I get more creativity from just being in the moment.

00:41:41:05 - 00:42:10:13

Christian Soschner

I'm breaking the stereotype of women being multi-taskers. I never be a multitasker. I like to be in the moment and thinking about the person in front of me. but you will be at meetings and you will be working with people who, texting are, you know, answering Microsoft Teams or Google Chat, the whole time. And I just always think if that is working for you, if that, helps you to get all of the outcomes that you need to achieve, then that's great.

00:42:10:15 - 00:42:31:05

Christian Soschner

for me, it's been such a luxury to allow myself to be in the moment and as you asked about work life balance, also to be in that moment, in my private times. And I'm quite into paddleboarding. this summer. So doing a lot of paddleboarding this summer. I was out on the lake yesterday and will be out later today.

00:42:31:05 - 00:42:46:20

Christian Soschner

And I think just giving myself that moment to be out on the lake, to be looking at nature, to just have, there was a creativity, unlocked is something I really treasured.

00:42:47:00 - 00:42:47:00

Christian Soschner

of.

00:42:47:01 - 00:43:02:12

Angeli Moeller

Partying is quite fun. It's, kind of creative. That's what you said earlier, I think, I mean, you're right. If if it works for another person, it's. I mean, they can do whatever they wants to do. The question then is, do you allow that in your environments to you? I think it's a question about my ideal sense.

00:43:02:12 - 00:43:27:07

Angeli Moeller

When I look at what I feel comfortable with, I am, I feel much more comfortable with people. who can focus at the tasks. That's, now, necessary to to, like, having a podcast. I mean, it would be fun if I start writing emails, while you were talking, you pick up your phone by that, by now, ask questions.

00:43:27:09 - 00:43:37:16

Angeli Moeller

I think companies also could benefit a little bit more from mindfulness and focus and, not trying to multitask all the time. Personal opinion.

00:43:37:18 - 00:43:38:11

Christian Soschner

Hey, it's

00:43:38:11 - 00:43:59:23

Christian Soschner

interesting. I. I really, you know, you get a lot of leadership training in a corporation, right? So I've been in corporate environments for a long time and they roll out a lot of leadership trainings. And, a lot of people are skeptical about these. They say, oh, it's a lot of corporate blah, blah. But I found them actually often to be very rewarding.

00:44:00:00 - 00:44:26:06

Christian Soschner

I don't do them constantly. but I do them occasionally, and I find them to be very high quality and rewarding. And one of the things that, of course, we get a lot of training on is managing diverse teams, how to allow the team to continue to be diverse. And so, how does that manifesto some people don't like to have that camera in a meeting.

00:44:26:08 - 00:44:52:13

Christian Soschner

Some people are perfectly happy to have that camera on and have some specially set up background at their office that they like to use. some people, as we say, so will be multitasking. So if I'm working, sometimes with developmental stage, you know, the head is always half in their code. maybe they really don't want to be bothered for a long period of time because they want to have that creative time with that code.

00:44:52:15 - 00:45:25:01

Christian Soschner

Then there may be other people who want regular check ins, who want to talk more often. and so one of the things that those trainings have helped me to be really mindful of is to focus on are we meeting our outcomes? Are we meeting our KPIs and to worry less about how the how the individuals are working, so long as they work in a way where they're respectful to each other and follow the basic principles of the company, then they should choose the paths to their contribution that works best for them.

00:45:25:03 - 00:45:40:10

Christian Soschner

And I think you said this yourself. If for them, the best thing to do is to be chatting away. and 100, that's at the same time. Then, then that's great. And I'll just try to adjust to, to that environment for

00:45:40:10 - 00:45:41:06

Christian Soschner

them.

00:45:41:08 - 00:46:11:08

Angeli Moeller

As long as they produce an output. To me, how they produce the output is their problem. I was more thinking about meetings and the meeting culture and, I think when I think back to last 30 years, sometimes some companies, it was, it meetings were not really plans that were very positive. So whenever someone felt it was time to meet, they called ten, 20 people, which was not really clear why 20 people are in the meeting.

00:46:11:08 - 00:46:34:21

Angeli Moeller

What's the outcome of the meeting? Should be. And I think it was ten years ago I discovered Jeff Bezos method, this, six page method I found for me, it absolutely makes sense because when you force people to prepare for a meeting to think things through, most of the time the impulse just goes away because, okay, it's not necessary to have a meeting.

00:46:34:21 - 00:46:58:24

Angeli Moeller

I have to answer so I can can, continue working. And I think this reduces a lot of wasted time in companies and decreases also the quality. So this method, the Jeff Bezos developed, forced people to think things through the final round to find the purpose of the meeting, to find the outcome of a meeting, and then make sure that everybody in the meeting knows why they are there and why they are contributing benefits companies.

00:46:58:24 - 00:47:07:00

Angeli Moeller

I think, in my opinion, it should be a little bit with boundaries, diversity in behavior in companies. How do you see?

00:47:07:02 - 00:47:07:16

Christian Soschner

Well, I

00:47:07:16 - 00:47:29:10

Christian Soschner

you just listening to you talking about the the approach of Amazon. So I, I mentioned briefly that I it on something called the science and Technology Facilities Council which is fund scientific research within the UK. And here, we have two of our board members on the Innovation and Business Board who come from the US.

00:47:29:10 - 00:47:32:00

Christian Soschner

And and they always follow this approach in the

00:47:32:00 - 00:47:37:09

Christian Soschner

meetings. But we also have board members from Nvidia, from venture capital, from, from any,

00:47:37:09 - 00:47:55:18

Christian Soschner

different groups. And so each one comes from a different company. Each one comes with a very different company culture. And and then we, find ways to, to work together. And I like the opportunity to appreciate, the different ways of working.

00:47:55:20 - 00:48:17:13

Christian Soschner

I think it is important to, to always be honest, about your personal preferences. so I would say to anyone, at any stage in their career, be honest about what works for you. one thing I, I sounded like, you know, very Zen before, but there are some things I hate. The one thing I hate is being cc'd on an

00:48:17:13 - 00:48:19:05

Christian Soschner

irrelevant team.

00:48:19:07 - 00:48:24:19

Christian Soschner

Absolutely hate long email chains. Completely irrelevant. Someone keeps me

00:48:24:19 - 00:48:46:12

Christian Soschner

on CC. I mean, maybe it's a relevant conversation for them, but please don't keep me on CC. The worst is when they keep me on CC. sort of a warning. Like like I put a senior executive on CC, so you better watch out. I'm like, you don't need to rely on the presence of somebody more senior in the organization.

00:48:46:12 - 00:49:20:02

Christian Soschner

Even your argument is persuasive enough or it isn't. and the hierarchy in the organization should come in to that discussion, so that that's definitely, a pet peeve. And I have had occasions where somebody has really insisted that joining a meeting was absolutely critical. And then I joined that meeting. And the worst is when you were on holiday, you're traveling somewhere and you're sitting in the car and they insist it's a critical meeting and you drive, then it's absolutely not a useful meeting for anyone involved.

00:49:20:02 - 00:49:39:03

Christian Soschner

And of course, I think that's a a pet peeve for everyone. So I would definitely say whether you're working with a team and everybody's from a different company or even in your own company, just be really clear on what are the things you're not comfortable. Wait, what are the things that you actually like and the way you like, to communicate.

00:49:39:03 - 00:50:01:05

Christian Soschner

So now, Christy, and it actually doesn't surprise me that you like, the Amazon approach, you were so thorough in the preparation for this podcast that I see, that you're you're very thoughtful in the things you do that you like to be very mindful in the things you do. And I, I've seen that a lot in our interactions with each other.

00:50:01:07 - 00:50:05:18

Christian Soschner

and whenever you and I will now have the opportunity to interact with each other, I'll always say,

00:50:05:18 - 00:50:10:20

Christian Soschner

okay, this is the way Christine really likes to interact with someone now.

00:50:10:20 - 00:50:35:19

Angeli Moeller

Thank you. Thank you. you mentioned and Vidya. yes. No, I had in a in an interview, he said that, if basically how it's called, he has meetings with 60 people all the time. And his, his point is that he says he wants everybody in office direct reports to understand what he thinks about. So he invites basically everybody to one meeting.

00:50:35:21 - 00:50:42:12

Angeli Moeller

Do you see that work? what's what's your opinion on? I mean, is there exact opposite of the Jeff Bezos approach?

00:50:42:14 - 00:50:43:22

Christian Soschner

so I, I

00:50:43:22 - 00:51:09:16

Christian Soschner

certainly certain parts of that resonate with me. What I would do, at, rush, for instance, was I wouldn't just have meetings with my direct reports, but I would have meetings. I concluded my direct report, and there direct reports and exactly for this purpose, so that I could say, to everyone at the same time with no soul to which direction I thought we should be going in.

00:51:09:22 - 00:51:34:04

Christian Soschner

How I saw the situation. However, that sounds initially very one directional. The other part that was very important part of that equation was then also hearing from all of the leaders in the organization how they saw our progress towards our shared outcomes, what was their understanding of, outcomes. and so that two way discussion, was really critical.

00:51:34:06 - 00:51:53:00

Christian Soschner

There's a lot of discussion about when you should flatten hierarchies, when, hierarchies, important roles. and I think it is important to make sure that everyone on the organization is on the same page, even though they may have very different roles in contributing towards the company

00:51:53:00 - 00:51:54:05

Christian Soschner

outcome.

00:51:54:07 - 00:52:10:12

Angeli Moeller

When we look at, actually my approach and we have talked about not yet, but thanks and Wang, I mean, success, speaks for itself and also Jeff Bezos is very successful to have completely different approaches, like what is your approach?

00:52:10:14 - 00:52:10:22

Christian Soschner

so

00:52:10:22 - 00:52:34:10

Christian Soschner

first of all, I would say that as with everyone, it's evolved over time. It's, the approach I took with my first team 20 plus years ago, isn't the approach that I take consistently. So it's over time, it's changed, and it's got a lot more consistent. And of course, recently, when I started my own company, I started to build my, my new team and the company.

00:52:34:12 - 00:53:02:00

Christian Soschner

one thing, that I would say also color's my approach, so I'll mention it just so you know, that it colors. My approach is that I, take on always highly motivated, highly competent individuals. And the most important decisions you make up to you. You choose to work with. And so who you choose to hire, you choose to contract, who you choose to collaborate with.

00:53:02:02 - 00:53:32:15

Christian Soschner

And I'm very, very careful to choose extremely confident, competent, highly motivated individuals. And when you have extremely competent, highly motivated individuals, your leadership style reflects that. You're talking to a group of highly motivated, highly competent individuals. and so one thing that is, is a bit of a cliche, but I still find very important is to talk about the why.

00:53:32:17 - 00:54:06:14

Christian Soschner

And I make sure that everybody understood why we're doing something. So why are we doing something? what is the reason that is motivating our company to exist? What is the reason for that founding of the organization? and then into that, what what does success look like? I remember, somebody I worked with, many years ago, used to always ask me in meetings what is excellent, like, what is excellent look like, what does good look like?

00:54:06:14 - 00:54:12:01

Christian Soschner

I know these are cliche, methods, but I still find it very helpful and very important

00:54:12:01 - 00:54:17:14

Christian Soschner

as a leader to articulate what this excellent look like. So how can I

00:54:17:14 - 00:54:30:06

Christian Soschner

make it as concrete as possible? How can I even make it as measurable as possible so that we know when we're doing great? And then on the how very open, very open.

00:54:30:07 - 00:55:02:09

Christian Soschner

I, I'm not I'm intentionally not connecting, collaborating or hiring people that need me to explain the how to them. I'm looking for them to bring. And you and I talked about this there in dependent expertise, which is very different and coming from very different fields. And it's sometimes not what people might call expertise, but it's experience. Somebody has a lot of experience because they've worked in a particular space for several decades, and that experience makes them extremely valuable to the organization.

00:55:02:11 - 00:55:33:02

Christian Soschner

And so I want them to have, really those blank pieces of paper and really, then as a leader, it's about how do you make sure it all fits together. So if you've got 20 superstars, how do you make sure that that comes together, into the shared outcome? How do you create that collaborative environment? but what I, absolutely don't want to do, and I'm actually not good at, is sitting down and saying, this is how I think you should be going about that.

00:55:33:04 - 00:55:51:14

Christian Soschner

My, former chief of staff at Roche, my first chief of staff at Roche, we were just texting each other this morning and I was telling I was getting ready to do the podcast. she used to joke that she would never give me an intact, So she, was very active in supporting the interns in the organization.

00:55:51:14 - 00:56:01:20

Christian Soschner

You could say just terrible interns. Somebody who needs to come to you constantly to ask, what is the next thing that they should do best? Absolute wrong person to to pair up with you.

00:56:02:15 - 00:56:31:00

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. I think Steve Chops. check. Well, a musk Jeff Bezos would totally agree with you. And interestingly Hansen Jack Jensen Huang in I think it was an interview a month ago, he said that, he's a little bit different because usually the advice is, be careful with whom you hire. Gets the motivated, competent people on board and then cast them into APK players and check, which was very radical back in the 80s and 90s.

00:56:31:00 - 00:56:52:20

Angeli Moeller

He said, okay, fantasy players, because to just hold up the organization and this is proper people to it's I mentioned, we've people hire you have to teach constantly how to to think set what they need to do. Jensen Huang said he doesn't fire to see players. He pushes them to do better, and he prefers to break them and rebuilds them instead of firing.

00:56:53:00 - 00:57:02:24

Angeli Moeller

What's your opinion? then you have to assemble a team of EPs 28 players to achieve great things. How do you deal with the out of people and key players?

00:57:02:24 - 00:57:06:07

Christian Soschner

And I you know, I, I appreciate the honesty of your

00:57:06:07 - 00:57:48:14

Christian Soschner

question because we don't talk about it very often. But then being a leader isn't just hiring great people. It also managing times where, you might have to let somebody go, where you might have to manage, a performance issue. I think one of the things that I've learned over time and experience, is just to be increasingly careful with those has to take time to appreciate what it means if you have to change up the team up how disruptive and how difficult to that can be if that's you made the wrong decision on an individual or some circumstances, change the outcome.

00:57:48:14 - 00:58:07:24

Christian Soschner

Change the to the team, change to there was something that caused a shift in the culture and you have to make some changes. So, there was a time where I would have been very quick in making, hiring decision. Now, I work a lot with freelancers. that gives me, a lot more freedom as well.

00:58:07:24 - 00:58:40:09

Christian Soschner

So I like to, to put in that freedom. And I also, there would have been a time where I would have built up a team more quickly. I was speaking to a CEO, at a company that's a client, so I can't talk about them, but but I really respect, he was talking to me about the importance of having a stable and sustainable growth so that you're not going through a hiring and firing cycles, and that's something that it's been particularly in the past five years.

00:58:40:09 - 00:59:03:08

Christian Soschner

I started to gain a really deep, profound appreciation for, we know, particularly in Europe, what it means to go through these types of cycles and how exhausting for an organization that could be. So if you're in a position where, for whatever reason, somebody is not fit for the team anymore, somebody is not fit for the organization anymore.

00:59:03:10 - 00:59:25:15

Christian Soschner

Of course you have to tackle it. You have to do it on behalf of the rest of the team. You have to do it because it's your obligation towards the health of the company. You have to do it sensitively and as humanely as you possibly can. But I think that taking a breath and sometimes say, I don't need to immediately grow this team as big as possible, I don't.

00:59:25:18 - 00:59:42:06

Christian Soschner

I can be more, sustainable in my approach. I can build an organization that is more shock resistant. Should there be fluctuations in the market? I think that's something that has become, very, profound to my leadership in the last five years, just through

00:59:42:06 - 00:59:43:11

Christian Soschner

experience.

00:59:43:13 - 01:00:08:01

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. So make me a reference to especially when it comes to firing. I learned two approaches, the 90s and early 2000, in the mobile industry. One was, you can deal with a lot of crisis on the markets with simply stopping hiring. so the, the theory behind it is an attempt to 20% of employees fluctuate every year.

01:00:08:01 - 01:00:37:05

Angeli Moeller

So basically to leave the company and then you stop hiring, the problem solves itself. And then that's the other approach, which was very interesting because the company wanted to be very employee friendly. So they hired a lot of employees when the mobile industry was soaring and to the problem, it was about 24, 25, 2006. That's the mobile industry was not doing very well in Europe, so they refused to stop hiring.

01:00:37:05 - 01:01:02:16

Angeli Moeller

So they continued hiring. And at one point the company tipped because, I mean, revenues were declining, costs were going up, and they had to make tough decisions. And the tough decision meant letting go of 60% of the employees. And the way they did it was very interesting because they didn't just call it. I mean, it's okay if I had to go home, that's in the next month, we're going to announce who will be fired.

01:01:02:18 - 01:01:23:02

Angeli Moeller

This paralyzed entire organization for almost a year because people for one monstrous character didn't know what to do. And then when they got the message, I mean, half of the, employees were gone and up the market seemed to be done. It was just, it didn't go back very bad. So the company then, merged with another big company.

01:01:23:02 - 01:01:45:09

Angeli Moeller

And this was the end of the story of that. I agree to what you say, that, hiring responsibly, I think is, is a good starting point and make it very smooth. And you have to let that go, people. Sometimes you don't paralyze the organization. Which leads back. let's go back to pharma and artificial intelligence. It was very interesting to hear your stories, in your opinion, about leadership.

01:01:45:11 - 01:02:03:17

Angeli Moeller

When we look at artificial intelligence in pharma to my technical parts, you basically grew up with the development. What were the major milestones in pharm of individual contract development and medical devices? what were the different mark moments of artificial intelligence in pharma, in your opinion?

01:02:03:19 - 01:02:04:05

Christian Soschner

That's

01:02:04:05 - 01:02:08:13

Christian Soschner

interesting. I think,

01:02:08:15 - 01:02:38:06

Christian Soschner

Looking back, it's definitely at the point where small, biotech companies started to have platforms where machine learning was a larger part. That was the drug discovery platform. so if I in 20 end of 2018, beginning of 2019, I co-founded together with some extremely, innovative CEOs, an organization called the Alliance for Critical Intelligence and Healthcare.

01:02:38:06 - 01:03:01:21

Christian Soschner

So that organization we then launched at JP Morgan at the Biotech Showcase, and it is made up of companies that at the time were really championing the use of machine learning and healthcare, and particularly in drug discovery. So most of them were drug discovery companies. And at the beginning, it was met with a lot of skepticism by the pharmaceutical industry.

01:03:01:21 - 01:03:25:06

Christian Soschner

So the membership was really even today, it's still a lot of biotech companies. It's a lot of smaller companies. and, what made a difference was when those companies started to bring things into clinical development, because I said it at the very beginning of this, podcast, in the end, does the medicine work? That that should be what's important.

01:03:25:06 - 01:03:50:07

Christian Soschner

That should always be what's most important. And as they start to show in clinical studies that these molecules where the drug discovery pathway had been much faster or much cheaper because of machine learning, was still highly effective, in the clinical study with a good safety profile. Then that was the point, I think, where people started to really set up and pay attention.

01:03:50:08 - 01:03:54:02

Christian Soschner

I still think we're still at the early years of that.

01:03:54:02 - 01:04:06:18

Christian Soschner

It's been, a big shift in terms of you can now be a lot more confident as an investor because you can look at things that you've always looked at. You can look at what is that

01:04:06:18 - 01:04:11:16

Christian Soschner

clinical trial result, what is the path to the market? something that you can really understand.

01:04:11:16 - 01:04:31:21

Christian Soschner

Does the medicine actually work? And then on the other side, does the diagnostic tool actually work from there? On the diagnostic tool side, I would say that, the FDA coming out with their software as a medical device guidelines in 2018, which, looked at, how can you use machine learning in the development cycle of software as a medical device?

01:04:31:21 - 01:05:02:05

Christian Soschner

I think that was also a, really transformative as well. You saw this point where, at least for me, it felt like nobody wanted to talk about it. Nobody really wanted to accept that there might be a different way, change possible to, okay, we can't ignore it. We're going to have to put together some guidelines so that companies can actually bring, solutions that, have machine learning as part of that core to the market, into hospitals.

01:05:02:05 - 01:05:05:24

Christian Soschner

And, and so that was that another key PivotTable, key

01:05:05:24 - 01:05:07:03

Christian Soschner

moment.

01:05:07:05 - 01:05:18:05

Angeli Moeller

Now it's clear that things are evolving. What's the current state of artificial intelligence adoption, the farm industry you mentioned we are still early. So how do you see the current stage state.

01:05:18:05 - 01:05:40:15

Christian Soschner

AI you've got to to some of you make a difference between biotech and farmer? I think biotech are really seizing the opportunity. They have more market pressures and and now keep in mind this is my opinion. their market pressures make them a lot more open to using tools that will allow them to develop drugs more cheaply, more quickly.

01:05:40:15 - 01:05:40:19

Christian Soschner

They

01:05:40:19 - 01:06:08:23

Christian Soschner

Just. Okay, this works great. Let's do it. do you see that high innovation in the smaller companies, in terms of using artificial intelligence? I think, with some of the larger, companies, the transition to using not just machine learning, but machine learning and other physics based tools has been more lethargic. You've seen sometimes the creation of innovation hubs, which are separate to the core business.

01:06:08:23 - 01:06:46:07

Christian Soschner

So they sort of overlay, you're doing AI, but over here in the main business, we're not I think that's definitely, being a trend. I think often it comes down again to the hires. So where do you have hires? Who? are still focusing on? Does the medicine work? Does the medicine not work? Not getting carried away with whether or not it uses artificial intelligence and machine learning, but at the same time, who are not afraid to bring in new technologies into the core business, who are ready to work out ways to mitigate the risk of bringing in any new technology.

01:06:46:07 - 01:07:20:06

Christian Soschner

But start to bring that into the core business and the core way of doing things. So, yeah, I think there's this there's a lot more that can be done in drug discovery. Also, with combining physics based modeling and machine learning. but the area I'm actually really excited about right now is pharma manufacturing. So in pharma manufacturing, I think that's an area where we have a tremendous opportunity for optimization, also for, having really robust supply chains.

01:07:20:08 - 01:07:33:07

Christian Soschner

And I think machine learning and other computational technologies have a big role to play in yield optimization and quality assurance. and both the diagnostic work and on the pharmaceutical manufacturing

01:07:33:07 - 01:07:34:03

Christian Soschner

side.

01:07:34:05 - 01:07:47:18

Angeli Moeller

So we are still around, in your opinion. So pharma is not fully, on this artificial intelligence robotics trend yet. So there is still some room in the industry today. I understand you always.

01:07:47:20 - 01:08:18:05

Christian Soschner

point to examples. So I think, it's come a long way in the last five years. And I think you can always put together case studies if, you want to, where you can show every single pharmaceutical company has, taken machine learning and used it in a set of specific use cases and specific studies. And I would say the two pharmaceutical companies I worked for were really, pushing innovation, really making investments into these technologies.

01:08:18:07 - 01:08:42:13

Christian Soschner

But in terms of it being embedded in the core business instead of just being it's over here and it's a use case. It's an innovation too. It's just the way we do things now. We just do it this way. It's faster, it's more effective, it's cheaper, happens to use new technologies, but it's just the way we do business now that I think is, is not not there yet.

01:08:42:13 - 01:09:10:12

Christian Soschner

And I think there's a lot more potential to make these new technologies part of the core business. I mean, of course, in another industry, you wouldn't even call them new technologies anymore. It's almost revealing that I use that terminology. But I'm from the pharmaceutical industry. but I, I, I, I see that there is just so much scope to make it, part of the core business to, even how do you engage with your customers?

01:09:10:12 - 01:09:32:03

Christian Soschner

How do you get the information up to key opinion leaders and hospital partners? How do you, make sure that all of your internal employees can communicate and find all of the information that they need very quickly? again, you know, my passion right now for manufacturing, how do you get that process to be as high quality, as high yield as possible?

01:09:32:05 - 01:09:51:13

Christian Soschner

I think there is just a lot more to do, which on one hand is like, really? We've been at this a while and look at entire industries that look at what they're doing. but at the same time, I think then, okay, let's, you know, let's, let's put our noses to the grindstone. Let's keep working at this.

01:09:51:13 - 01:10:02:22

Christian Soschner

Let's show through tangible examples how this can go from being an innovation project or an innovation hub, to just being something that's actually part of your core way of working.

01:10:03:24 - 01:10:26:07

Angeli Moeller

And my perception is a little bit distorted from a social media paper. I always thought artificial intelligence nowadays is everywhere. It's generally adopted. So everybody's talking about that. Everybody's using, some sort of generative AI. Nvidia stock price saw it, I think it was eight x in the last 12 months so far, to be honest. I'm it's up.

01:10:26:07 - 01:10:44:13

Angeli Moeller

You are at the peak of the public. And you mentioned that there is still some room to grow. The industry still embeds really this technology, these technologies into the core business statistics. We are not there yet, which probably are true for other industries, means testing opportunity of the market for investors. Yet.

01:10:44:15 - 01:10:44:21

Christian Soschner

Oh,

01:10:44:21 - 01:11:04:04

Christian Soschner

absolutely, I think so. And it's it's an interesting time because it's not just about machine learning, but for any company that doesn't find a way to make the right tool part of its core business, if there's something out there that would improve your core business,

01:11:04:04 - 01:11:11:12

Christian Soschner

and for whatever reason, you don't manage to incorporate into your core business, then you've lost the opportunity

01:11:11:12 - 01:11:14:11

Christian Soschner

because one of your competitors will manage to do it.

01:11:14:11 - 01:11:36:19

Christian Soschner

One of your competitors will say, here's something that makes my business much better, whatever it might be new computing technology, a new molecular breakthrough and you chemical breakthrough. And they say, I will make it part of my core business. I will, take this new opportunity. And you missed the boat and you're messing around with some on the side innovation project.

01:11:36:19 - 01:11:46:13

Christian Soschner

Well, not doing this. Yeah. Then, you know, they're winners and losers, in the industry. And you see that play out, over time.

01:11:47:09 - 01:12:15:00

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. It's like 90 plus 90s, 90s, mid 90s from 1995 to 2000, 1999 when the internet was new. And when I was focusing on this research project, I mean, we had our basic ideas laid out on the table. We just over estimate it's the speed of, a realistic development on the market and how quickly companies can adopt these new technologies.

01:12:15:02 - 01:12:41:17

Angeli Moeller

So are these, autonomous driving, for example, or this logistical, environment that we see today? They already they are in principles and at in 1996, 1997, 1998, just took, 2 or 3 decades to move forward. And I think we are still not, fully finished, still, when I look now at artificial intelligence in medicine and in pharma, what's your realistic perspective on this topic in your opinion?

01:12:41:18 - 01:12:54:05

Angeli Moeller

But will I do interactive development and bringing products to patients and but it's a little bit, too premature to talk about

01:12:54:05 - 01:13:26:17

Christian Soschner

Well, I think one part, to keep in mind is when it's machine learning and when it's not so, so, so poorly understand double reasons. Anything that involved a computer was labeled high or is slightly high for for a long time, anything involved a computer it's AI. but, drug discovery involves a lot of physics based modeling, and the physics based modeling is really, really critical in looking at how you have these drug target interactions and optimizing these drug target interactions.

01:13:26:19 - 01:13:46:22

Christian Soschner

So I think, for me, when I'm looking at different companies, one part is to look at how they're addressing this in their pitch deck. Do I see some awareness of this fact? Do I just see a lot of, things about AI all over the place on every single slide? I think the other part is just data.

01:13:47:02 - 01:14:28:22

Christian Soschner

This, It was it was tricky. I was talking to to somebody a few weeks ago, and they were talking about the adoption of machine learning and talk, discovering where it's lacking and where it's not. And during the conversation, what was a little challenging for me is that there still doesn't seem to be this widespread awareness that you need data to do any machine learning, and that you need vast quantities of data to do effective machine learning, and that the quality of that data is then tied to the quality of the success, fall, prediction, or outcome of the model.

01:14:28:24 - 01:14:57:17

Christian Soschner

And where I have you sometimes see horror stories where you have the investment into to the data scientist that, the software, the algorithms, but not the investment into the data. I mean, you can see very quickly how that's going to play out. They have a fantastic new model. I could go on to GitHub. Okay. Lab find thousands of fantastic models and fantastic model libraries and just pick any of them off the shelf and use them.

01:14:57:19 - 01:15:25:17

Christian Soschner

Okay. So what do you have any data to actually train them on? Do you have the right data to train them on? Do you have enough data to train the models? And I think, it it's still going to your question. What is the actual reality? I think there's unfortunately still these big gaps in biological data, in healthcare data, those gaps in the data, the real bottleneck.

01:15:25:17 - 01:15:26:04

Christian Soschner

I mean,

01:15:26:04 - 01:15:33:15

Christian Soschner

it's not that I don't have the algorithm or I don't have the compute power. It's actually you don't have the data, you can't do anything. and so I

01:15:33:15 - 01:15:55:21

Christian Soschner

think that's a key reality in the drug discovery, component, I think in, in, later stages of the pharmaceutical industry. So in clinical development, in manufacturing and, commercialize Zation, I just think in, some areas for production has been slower.

01:15:55:23 - 01:16:18:21

Christian Soschner

but I, I see it picking. Okay. Thank you. No, it's not it's not like the story I told you in 2016 where somebody just turned round to me and said, I don't believe in artificial intelligence. Yes, that's that doesn't happen anywhere anymore. And, whether they know it or not, everybody is, of course, using artificial intelligence every day because it's embedded in all of the applications that they're using.

01:16:18:21 - 01:16:37:10

Christian Soschner

And, and so it's gradually seeping its way into every aspect of life. And that makes the adoption into industry, into all industries faster. People get used to it, mix up, bust becomes more acceptable, and it finds their way to each part of black.

01:16:37:12 - 01:16:37:16

Angeli Moeller

It's

01:16:37:16 - 01:16:37:22

Christian Soschner

fine.

01:16:37:22 - 01:17:04:04

Angeli Moeller

Instead, two point steps. I would like to ask some questions and dig deeper that I think, highly important and the first part is data. the I mean, in the investment community, I think the dream is quite simple. You catch the companies because companies early and then you invest a little bit of money and you get a 1000 x or 2000 x, ten years down the road.

01:17:04:06 - 01:17:28:13

Angeli Moeller

And there is always this notion that at one point in time, artificial intelligence will replace investors. And then I looked through the data lens on the Nvidia story and found, okay, I mean, if that's really the point and if it's so easy to find these companies, then why didn't anybody buy an idea in 1993 or in 2003 or in 2013?

01:17:28:15 - 01:17:58:14

Angeli Moeller

And the answer is from the artificial intelligence landscape. It's quite easy. Yeah, because artificial intelligence was not there. And then we thought, wait a minute. In 2013, the overall perception, the data behind Nvidia was it's a cyclical business. It's not soaring chips. It's a commodity. So why should the stock price go up? Then I thought, okay, when artificial intelligence accessed these kind of data but didn't come to the same conclusion like, hey, I can say, okay, there is no, there's no upside in that.

01:17:58:19 - 01:18:24:08

Angeli Moeller

And yet Nvidia sought. So I tried to trend to use this thinking, then to look at the farmer side and say, okay. And we look at innovation in general. Can artificial intelligence really be helpful in replacing humans? Because I think the big success stories, what we thought of a situation where humans make a decision like Jensen Huang, BFR, the Cuda platform where almost no data is available.

01:18:24:08 - 01:18:39:02

Angeli Moeller

It's just intuition and gut feeling. do you think that artificial intelligence can evolve to a point where it can work without data and, become an intuitive system instead? The possible future?

01:18:39:04 - 01:18:39:24

Christian Soschner

So I

01:18:39:24 - 01:18:59:15

Christian Soschner

think, first of all, all forms of artificial intelligence rely on data. That's how they learn, right? That's how all forms of intelligence work. So whether it's human intelligence, artificial intelligence, all of them need data. So everything you, Christiane, I've seen your whole life,

01:18:59:15 - 01:19:05:12

Christian Soschner

everything you've read your whole life that is informing your intelligence. That's how intelligence works.

01:19:05:14 - 01:19:06:06

Christian Soschner

I think

01:19:06:06 - 01:19:35:04

Christian Soschner

that what is, maybe one thing that stood out while we were talking, for me, was also looking at anecdotes. So you will always be able to point to this company, this individual, and say, was it predictable? Because if we look at statistics, statistics are saying what the majority of outcomes will be. It's not saying what all of the outcomes will be.

01:19:35:06 - 01:19:58:24

Christian Soschner

It is always saying to our, let's take it right down. What what will happen to 99.9% of companies? But it's not saying to you what will happen to every single company, what will happen to 99.9% of chip manufacturers? Not what will happen to every chip manufacturer. So I think that's one thing to remember is machine learning is based on statistics.

01:19:58:24 - 01:20:31:19

Christian Soschner

This is how statistics tells us what is the likelihood of an outcome. And then that prediction is only good as the day that it was fed with, what I would say is I see, new technologies, all new technologies, complementing, human intelligence. So I think that artificial intelligence has the ability to complement human intelligence. There are some things I can do very well, and we can use it to make our lives easier.

01:20:31:21 - 01:20:55:01

Christian Soschner

I'll give you an example. I hate doing graphic design. I use generative AI for graphic design all the time now. I think it's just like, but I also still contract a real graphic designer to do the final overview and outlay and, if it's really important for the branding or for a clients, then I actually have some very good humans who I contract.

01:20:55:03 - 01:21:16:23

Christian Soschner

so it's, it's a, it's very complimentary. You have the skill set, and then you, you have, what the machine can do that complements the human skill set. And I, I never go into these, you know, sci fi horror stories that will all be replaced by artificial intelligence one day. I think jobs will look different.

01:21:17:00 - 01:21:37:12

Christian Soschner

And how you predict investments will look different. But we've seen once in the investment community for a very long time now, and if now they can enhance the work that they're doing with the use of machine learning. Of course, they've already been doing it for quite a while now. It's helping, many of them, make quite effective predictions, helping.

01:21:37:12 - 01:21:46:05

Christian Soschner

And many of them also make absolutely terrible predictions, because if you have biased status, you get biased outcomes with artificial intelligence in the same way you do with human

01:21:46:05 - 01:21:47:20

Christian Soschner

intelligence.

01:21:47:22 - 01:22:17:08

Angeli Moeller

That is an interesting point. I mean, if I'm investing, and mapping different models, I didn't care about any model that is really outstanding. Like, typical human investors that created above average returns. This is quite interesting. And so the the question that revolves in my mind is, what is this intelligence and intuition. So is there still some space for humans at the end of the day to make intuitive decisions, unlimited data.

01:22:17:10 - 01:22:31:01

Angeli Moeller

And from what I heard from you is, that basically artificial intelligence needs large amount of polished data, sports data to predict outcomes, probably faster and better than humans. But without data, it's impossible.

01:22:31:03 - 01:22:31:10

Christian Soschner

Yeah.

01:22:31:10 - 01:22:51:19

Christian Soschner

And I think it's interesting looking at good data, because there are lots of methods that we work on for dealing with gaps in data, in healthcare right now. And for the past few years, that looking at what are the gaps in data about women's healthcare, where most, studies were done on men. So how do you deal with gaps if you're trying to translate those findings to women?

01:22:51:21 - 01:23:10:01

Christian Soschner

in the end, you know, there are ways in which you can say, okay, this happened to a man in that clinical study. So this will probably be what happens to a woman. But still, we need to actually generate some real data so we can figure it out. And the same as you might say, this is what happens to somebody with this genetic profile.

01:23:10:03 - 01:23:39:20

Christian Soschner

So I'm guessing that somebody with that genetic profile, this will happen. I make a prediction. But still the best thing is to go generate some data for that ethnic group. So that genetic profile. See, you know how the medication well really works like that. I think that when we look at intuition. So I, you mentioned, I mentioned earlier in our discussion that I worked as a research scientist in, in neurodegeneration and looked at modeling the healthy, chemical sign ups and how thoughts are formed.

01:23:39:22 - 01:24:08:03

Christian Soschner

I think in the end here, you can think of yourself as just human intelligence, artificial intelligence, two forms of intelligence. You're still the product of all of that data that you've been trained on your entire life. That's who you are. I actually, if everything I have seen and experienced in my entire life and also, of course, the biological component of how my brain is structured, the way I perceive that information.

01:24:08:03 - 01:24:42:11

Christian Soschner

And so, yes, as, an intelligent entity, there will be some things that some patterns that I recognize more quickly. And where you have these outstanding investors who have found a way to recognize patterns very, very effectively and therefore make those right calls, those right decisions. And I think that, particularly in these low data scenarios, that's still going to be such a key game changer in, in the investment community and the medical world and in the technological

01:24:42:11 - 01:24:43:20

Christian Soschner

world.

01:24:43:22 - 01:25:16:20

Angeli Moeller

Now, which leads back to the select your people carefully at the end of the day, because the data they produce train your own, human biological intelligence model. When we think about data production, how can we produce state? I mean, Apple is working on, for example, Apple Watch and, they're working us on, Vision Pro and, is this is just a way for that to produce, data that's, can be all state around from the pharma industry to produce better drugs.

01:25:16:22 - 01:25:17:01

Christian Soschner

I

01:25:17:01 - 01:25:41:01

Christian Soschner

think there's two things. One is, to really produce the right data, and you're much more likely to produce the right data if you already know, how are you going to use the data? So just producing data and hoping it will be useful later can work out. But if you actually know how you're going to use the data to achieve a specific outcome, then you're much more likely to be successful.

01:25:41:03 - 01:26:02:11

Christian Soschner

So I think that's one thing it's thinking about. And it's called real world data. In the in the in the medical industry. So how are you going to use that real world data from wearable devices, to be effective in designing a clinical trial? and thinking about that in advance. it's, it's going to significantly increase your likelihood of success.

01:26:02:13 - 01:26:27:11

Christian Soschner

And then the other part is, if you look at accessibility of data, so data exists. Okay. Did you have access to that data. Can you access it. And one of the the things that can be very interesting for an investor to look at then is what sort of proprietary data does an organization has. It's the data is really making a difference to the success.

01:26:27:13 - 01:26:45:05

Christian Soschner

of their algorithms, the success of their predictions. Are they just using data that everybody else has, or do they have data that only they have? It's very high quality. It's very useful, but only they buy it. And then you can see that competitive advantage by. Yeah. So that that's another interesting thing to look

01:26:45:05 - 01:26:46:17

Christian Soschner

at.

01:26:46:19 - 01:27:07:18

Angeli Moeller

I mean so for question on my personal question, I'm a man I don't like go to the doctors. It's just, very time consuming here in Austria. So yes, it's five hours in the waiting room for 50 minutes checkup, which is not good for me, but, sometimes good for the doctors because there's not so many people in there in the waiting room for the healthcare system.

01:27:07:18 - 01:27:38:10

Angeli Moeller

Overall, it's not the best. Then when everybody does their annual checkup and then you diagnostic start and start to wait until the last minute. My personal dream is to have a digital personal assistants that monitors my health 24, seven and ten links in the right, specialist at the right point in time. When something goes off at is this, in your opinion, is feasible future in the near-term, or is it something that will never happen in our lifetime?

01:27:38:12 - 01:27:38:18

Christian Soschner

I

01:27:38:18 - 01:27:42:06

Christian Soschner

mean, it's very feasible and it's there for some people. It's a question.

01:27:42:08 - 01:27:42:22

Angeli Moeller

Of.

01:27:42:24 - 01:27:45:13

Christian Soschner

Prestige. And so it's do you have the money

01:27:45:13 - 01:28:01:19

Christian Soschner

to pay for that kind of healthcare treatment to have, those sorts of devices? So, absolutely. And particularly, when you're in, China, when you're in the US, you see these sorts of technologies increasingly becoming part of daily life.

01:28:01:21 - 01:28:24:11

Christian Soschner

It's just who has the money to pay for it. And, and that's, that's the differentiator when you see who has it, who doesn't have it, can you afford to have smart devices that track your sleep, that track your, cardio, rhythms that, then transmit them? Can you afford to pay a subscription to a network of doctors?

01:28:24:11 - 01:28:41:21

Christian Soschner

These subscriptions exist across, Europe. I certainly know, and that many, set up in the US and China, where then you will have key opinion leaders, doctors, specialists. You guys like to get notified if there are any discrepancies in your data, who will be able to provide a specialist consultation. It

01:28:41:21 - 01:28:47:02

Christian Soschner

just costs money. The question is when do these sorts of health care

01:28:47:02 - 01:28:49:23

Christian Soschner

care options become available for everyone?

01:28:49:23 - 01:28:53:13

Christian Soschner

When do you have that equity, folks? quality of health

01:28:53:13 - 01:28:54:20

Christian Soschner

care.

01:28:54:22 - 01:29:07:02

Angeli Moeller

What's your prediction? Is this a point in time? Is there something that we can reach, to make such diagnostic possibility available to everybody?

01:29:07:04 - 01:29:07:08

Christian Soschner

I

01:29:07:08 - 01:29:36:22

Christian Soschner

think the economics have to work. So things happen when the economics work and and, and I think you and I think all of your listeners, know that. So let's maybe look at the national health, care system, the NHS in the UK state by tax payers as it becomes more economical to provide digital solutions because it reduces the overall cost of the NHS spend for the British government, then more of these solutions will be introduced.

01:29:36:22 - 01:30:13:09

Christian Soschner

There's obviously though and this is where visionary leadership comes in and the individual comes in, you need to have somebody who has that vision and who's willing to put in that upfront capital, because to go from a legacy system to a digitally enabled system, you do recoup the savings. And we've seen that time and time again, but you need somebody who was ready to make that upfront investment because they have that vision and it's, but then the model can work because it's cheaper for the taxpayers, cheaper for the government sustainably to provide the sorts of options you have, more preventative care.

01:30:13:09 - 01:30:37:13

Christian Soschner

We all know that that's less expensive than trying to treat chronic diseases over time that you didn't touch value at. and the same in Germany, where I am now. So how can you reduce overall health care costs? How can you reduce soaring insurance costs? You can start to have this earlier detection. You can see, okay, I see that very few people are going to their regular screenings, their regular checkups.

01:30:37:19 - 01:30:59:06

Christian Soschner

So what are the things that I could provide in that person's home and a solution to reduce the burden, to make it easier to have the flags? one is to have the data tracking, but the other thing is to have those behavioral nudges, that really good applications give assent and start to change the way we, we act and think.

01:30:59:08 - 01:31:21:24

Christian Soschner

so I think it, as the economics play out, then it's it's inevitable. And you see this in many countries already. so I was in China just last year and, just looking at everything that is accessible to somebody living in Shanghai, for instance, not everyone checkpoints in the bigger cities, they have exactly what I think you're

01:31:21:24 - 01:31:23:05

Christian Soschner

describing.

01:31:23:07 - 01:31:48:03

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. It's amazing how advanced, the Southeast Asian countries are. So if it's, Korea, China, Japan, this is all in Singapore directing 120 countries against teams, you know, 120 countries. And how how how do you see the balance when it comes to innovation? I mean, I say European, I always like to think Europe is the most advanced region.

01:31:48:05 - 01:31:55:18

Angeli Moeller

Then I started traveling to Asia ten years ago, and it was almost like a trip to the future. How do you see it?

01:31:55:20 - 01:31:57:21

Christian Soschner

But so, I as you said, I

01:31:57:21 - 01:32:26:06

Christian Soschner

led teams which were in over 120 countries. I have not, gone, unfortunately, to see all of these people and, all of these countries. So some as a lot of traveling involved, but also a lot of virtual, work involved, I would say for anyone, whether you're, European, Asian American, from anywhere else, African, it's important to have an awareness for your biases.

01:32:26:06 - 01:32:49:12

Christian Soschner

So to not get, for instance, a Eurocentric, viewpoint. I don't know if you've been an international meetings, and sometimes it can be amusing, when you listen to people who have got a viewpoint where they really think, you know, there's the innovation, isn't there space? There's nothing to learn from any of the other regions of our planet, and they really think that they know everything.

01:32:49:14 - 01:33:12:09

Christian Soschner

but I would tell you, that's a danger, that everyone in business has to watch out for. Be aware of when you might have tunnel vision, because of your particular background. when I look at innovation and, particularly the machine learning space, I'm going to be a bit boring here because it often comes into what would that data availability, data privacy regulations, how can you access data?

01:33:12:09 - 01:33:43:13

Christian Soschner

How easy is it? and that has a big effect on where you see the growth of certain industries, where they are able to collect endless data on all of their end users without having to worry about end user privacy considerations. And and so certainly they have much stronger algorithms. And anybody else are any of their competitors. So I think, that's something that leads to different bubbles of innovation that we've seen in machine learning based, industries.

01:33:43:15 - 01:34:21:16

Christian Soschner

over time, I think the, interesting part as well is also looking at where you have a sustainable growth. Some investors, you know, maybe are looking for something that will be big, grow big quickly, maybe won't exist in ten years. But it went through a boom. and I think, for me, I'll say on honestly, I'm always very interested in why you have a sustainable growth trajectory where you have also a country, policy set, but also a CEO, a leader, a founder who's interested in that sustainable trajectory.

01:34:21:16 - 01:34:51:09

Christian Soschner

He's looking to build something at last. And I find that very interesting. to do, and different, different I would say it's so me I wouldn't be able to say one country because as leaders change as the president or the prime minister, the policy, the political party changes in different countries, you see different shifts in policy, and then they encourage or support, different models, whether it's, I think boom or this may be more sustainable growth

01:34:51:09 - 01:34:53:02

Christian Soschner

trajectory.

01:34:53:04 - 01:35:18:07

Angeli Moeller

Yeah, yeah. It's true. That's true. The technological difference is, sometimes speaking it's, bias is it's something it's interesting even in the close to 50. And they grew up in the 80s, 89 with the pictures from China where people were mostly on bicycles. And now it's completely different. So China 89 doesn't exist anymore basically. And it's, it's, it's stay.

01:35:18:09 - 01:35:47:08

Angeli Moeller

But when someone didn't travel any time to China, to see my live life, the picture of, Europe is so innovative and China is far behind and it's can be really fun. When we look at the statement from from my personal perspective, I would love to have my health state. accessible for companies across the globe. But there are also different, I would say different ways of life to treat state and to deal with data.

01:35:47:11 - 01:35:56:03

Angeli Moeller

What are the ethical considerations that we have to take in healthcare these days when it comes to data generation and making sure that the data is safe for our patients?

01:35:56:05 - 01:35:56:12

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I

01:35:56:12 - 01:36:19:08

Christian Soschner

I I'm going to say one thing about geography. And then I'm going to come back to the the data question. I think the other thing that makes serving and working with the global community so exciting is you can't also really say China or Europe, because in different parts of China you have such different situations with the healthcare system, with the economics, with the technology access.

01:36:19:10 - 01:36:42:08

Christian Soschner

And of course, you and I know same is true in different parts of Europe. If I go and travel to different parts of Germany, different parts of Austria, you see, very different setups and very different socio economic circum stances. And then to being able to, talk in terms of archetypes, market archetypes is important and makes sense for a business.

01:36:42:10 - 01:37:17:17

Christian Soschner

But, one of the things that personalized solutions have allowed us to do is really look at how do I, create solutions that can be tailored to every member of the community and recognize these huge diversity we have, even within the same country. So, I just wanted to mention that with, accessing data. So this is one, where I would say I probably have what many would call a European viewpoint on this.

01:37:17:17 - 01:37:57:24

Christian Soschner

So, if you look at the, I act, for instance, EU, I asked, even if you look at the, President Biden's act last year on artificial intelligence, safety, for me, I think the regulation is very important. I think sensible regulation that allows economic growth. But at the same time, protects the the general population is really important when it comes to any type of machine learning, but also when it comes to, healthcare in particular.

01:37:58:01 - 01:38:21:12

Christian Soschner

Now it's an unpopular opinion. I work with people all the time who say, no, I absolutely hate all of these regulations and guardrails, but I've always worked in a heavily regulated industry, so I look, you know, there's no part of me that goes right. I think if you read through the documents and again, if you're used to working in a regulated industry, you see that they're all quite manageable.

01:38:21:14 - 01:38:47:10

Christian Soschner

So I'll give you an example from the EU. I act, in that one of the examples they have, they talk about hiring. So software, hiring people and how to manage, biases in something. So it doesn't immediately exclude all applicants who have dark colored skin just because the algorithm was built with an inherent bias. So it might sort people based on did they go to a particular university?

01:38:47:12 - 01:39:19:10

Christian Soschner

That's not a racist sorting mechanism, but then that university might not have an intake of people of color. So you have a secondary, screening criteria there. You have a bias just because of the way you built your algorithm that you wouldn't have intended, but it suddenly comes out and it has just very simple rules about, you know, making it possible to look at how you tested the software, just, publishing how you tested the software and having some basic good practices about testing for these sorts of biases.

01:39:19:12 - 01:39:47:20

Christian Soschner

And I think, when I look at these responses, you should be doing that anyway. Why on earth would you not do that anyway? And if there's a helpful little set of checklist that help you make sure that you're not accidentally doing something that would hurt your business tremendously, I mean, if you get caught for accidentally having racist hiring practices, you can massively hurt your business just through having made a foolish mistake.

01:39:47:22 - 01:40:16:00

Christian Soschner

So why would you not want a simple checklist, a simple set of rules that is going to stop you from shooting yourself in the foot as you go into this new and exciting technology where you might in your company not have had a lot of experience before. So I think that's one, thing that I think when I look through these regulations, I think on healthcare access, I do think in the end it is critical that the data become available.

01:40:16:00 - 01:40:49:04

Christian Soschner

So I sat on the management board of a charity called Rax, which is for patients with ultra rare diseases, and it helped patients to make that data accessible to researchers because obviously, very few of patients with ultra read disease, very little data are available to develop new medicines. And it was so important to discovering new medicines for what is mostly, a patient population made up of children, extremely vulnerable children suffering from debilitating, debilitating rare diseases with very few treatment options.

01:40:49:06 - 01:41:20:04

Christian Soschner

The only solution is to make that data available, to make it safely available. So I think, it is important to reduce the cost and reduce the burden of data access. And I think that's a great way to stimulate research into new cures, research into new medications, new diagnostics, to lower the burden for that innovation. And at the same time, I think there are technical best practices that allow you to protect patient data.

01:41:20:04 - 01:41:41:22

Christian Soschner

So we have our bunching data, which we also expect to be protected. There is lots of data that we expect to have predicted, and I think that all really well-established mechanisms for protecting that data, it's just important that if you're an organization that is handling patient data, you take the time to make sure you've got the right expense to make sure you know how to do

01:41:41:22 - 01:41:42:24

Christian Soschner

it.

01:41:43:01 - 01:42:09:24

Angeli Moeller

Now, that's a big challenges, I guess, for governments and in the future, because, I mean, innovation is scalable. so when I look at the team setbacks, to me, in the last 20 years, I'm into with practically a sample from all over the world to Asia, Australia, Africa, United States, Latin America. And when I look now at artificial intelligence, after our conversation, artificial intelligence needs data and it's access to data.

01:42:09:24 - 01:42:32:15

Angeli Moeller

So discovery teams need access to data to train their models. And we also need to make sure that the data is not biased. So when we, defeat biased data into these models, we get biased decisions. And then the next part is security. I mean, we look at Europe, Europe, completely forgot about the digital revolution. So we have no Apple, we have no Google.

01:42:32:20 - 01:42:54:10

Angeli Moeller

They have no Microsoft team in Europe. China does, but they did it all. Our data is now basically managed by the United States. how can we make sure in Europe that we don't miss the artificial intelligence train? Because it means at the end of the day, when we do not have a footprint in this area, we will get the solution from other regions.

01:42:54:10 - 01:43:15:01

Angeli Moeller

And these regions will then feed their models with their cultural background, picture ideas, how they should be. And we get this outcome. How important is that that we do something here in Europe with, with that instance down vaccinate everything, so that we experienced the same direction like we did in the digital revolution. And we can buy the solutions from other regions.

01:43:15:03 - 01:43:15:14

Christian Soschner

Yeah. And I

01:43:15:14 - 01:43:48:03

Christian Soschner

think for me, it's it's not as black and white as regulation. It is bad and stops investment on capitalist capitalism is bad. And and stop, you know, and hurts the general population. I think for me it's about choosing the right regulation at the right time to stimulate economic growth, and at the same time to to make sure that you protect the culture and the quality of life that you're proud of in your in your continent, in your country.

01:43:48:03 - 01:44:06:04

Christian Soschner

And let's take for an example, the European Union, there certain values that are shared by the European Union. So how do you make sure that you preserve them even as new technologies arise? At the same time, how do you make sure that it can become an economic powerhouse, that it can, as you say, not be dependent on innovation coming from elsewhere?

01:44:06:06 - 01:44:25:09

Christian Soschner

how can it make sure that the tax, and money that is generated by these innovations, that the new investment that is generated by these innovations is actually landing in the EU? I would say there's a lot of innovation in the EU. The question is, when you get the scale up, is the revenue from the scale up actually doing that in the European Union?

01:44:25:09 - 01:44:47:21

Christian Soschner

That's, that's the question. Well, I think we both know I know that's not always happening right now. what I would say is it, in terms of having a global team work on shared resources, that's actually at the moment, not possible in most cases. So you would have the data in a particular jurisdiction in a particular geography.

01:44:47:23 - 01:45:08:17

Christian Soschner

And the team that work with it would need to be, in that geography. And I think that so, that, that's particularly with healthcare data, there are examples of other data types where you can work more effectively as a global team, but with healthcare data, you usually need to work behind the firewall. The geography.

01:45:08:17 - 01:45:26:18

Angeli Moeller

Which is made up from something invented. Think about how it helps, but then I'll do it. But then it's biased automatically. I mean, basically when it's simply a restriction on you get access to healthcare data from the jurisdiction, then you automatically have, the population of this jurisdiction in the data, but not anyone else.

01:45:26:20 - 01:45:50:07

Christian Soschner

and then there are methods, technical methods. So federated learning would be, a really, popular method there where you would train it in different environments. So once I worked on a project where we trained our models on data in France, and then we trained it on data in the US, and then, of course, to enter the market in China, it had to be we validated on relevant patient populations for that indication.

01:45:50:07 - 01:45:55:12

Christian Soschner

In China. And so you have your data doesn't move but your model moves okay.

01:45:55:15 - 01:45:56:18

Angeli Moeller

Okay.

01:45:56:20 - 01:45:59:19

Christian Soschner

It's it's it's the concept by federated learning.

01:45:59:21 - 01:46:00:00

Angeli Moeller

Is

01:46:00:00 - 01:46:00:09

Christian Soschner

instead.

01:46:00:09 - 01:46:04:23

Angeli Moeller

Except ever done for us by the government. So that's how you can do that.

01:46:04:23 - 01:46:06:00

Christian Soschner

Clearly

01:46:06:00 - 01:46:22:12

Christian Soschner

that's absolutely acceptable. So the data doesn't move. But the model may have said and and that's the way it's actually important to do that because you want to show that. So you're developing software as a medical device. You want to know that it's effective against the population. that you're, you're going to go and treat.

01:46:22:12 - 01:46:29:06

Christian Soschner

And we know that different populations have different makeups and, and that different medicines and different diagnostics are effective in different

01:46:29:06 - 01:46:30:10

Christian Soschner

ways.

01:46:30:12 - 01:46:47:14

Angeli Moeller

Yeah. Challenging, challenging. But what advice would you give European governments, when they want to support biotechs, and track development? What should, in your opinion, what should they do in the next ten years to foster a thriving biotech landscape here in Europe?

01:46:47:16 - 01:46:48:02

Christian Soschner

I think one

01:46:48:02 - 01:47:32:12

Christian Soschner

of the things, so I mentioned really at the beginning of our podcast is the European Institute for bioinformatics, which makes, freely available both data resources and models and informatics resources and even tools that don't need you to be a professional programmer. so I think having resources like the European Institute for bioinformatics that has a proven track record of having grown a very healthy biotech ecosystem, and if we have, their headquarter in, Kingston, Cambridge, you see a big biotech industry that's grown up all around a very successful biotech companies that are all leveraging, the resources that they make available.

01:47:32:14 - 01:47:56:22

Christian Soschner

I think another, thing that is very effective is to reduce the cost of compute. So we know that compute costs and then there's just energy costs, escalating across Europe. And so how do you reduce the cost of compute? again, you know, you have that, European health data cloud. We have, and you live in Germany here.

01:47:56:22 - 01:48:18:14

Christian Soschner

We have had the big computing facility. But I'll talk a little bit more about the UK. we have the Quantum Computing Center, which has, just been built, and right now they're fitting it up with all the quantum computers. I was just there visiting, a few weeks ago, and I lead by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.

01:48:18:16 - 01:48:41:15

Christian Soschner

they're working group on, innovation and business. So it's really, commercializing these assets on having spin out companies from universities come and use those resources to reduce their operating costs, but also then having mid-sized companies and even large companies that are willing to move jobs or keep jobs in the UK come and use those resources and as an incentive to grow.

01:48:41:17 - 01:49:17:00

Christian Soschner

so where there are emerging technologies, it's really how are you looking at ways to reduce the overheads and use operating costs? The companies that are coming and and leveraging those technologies because are some things I mean, take quantum computing so massive overhead, very few people can afford to go out and access quantum computing resources. So how do you have a national resource and then create, grants and programs that make it non bureaucratic and very easy for small and medium sized and even large corporations to come and use those

01:49:17:00 - 01:49:18:10

Christian Soschner

facilities.

01:49:18:12 - 01:49:44:16

Angeli Moeller

So let's repeat the buzzwords. Low energy cost I think is very important, which we don't see in Europe since 2022. And this really turns down innovation because I think on your, various, energy intents. So we need to, competitive energy prices and they should be sustainable at the same time. the production of, of energy.

01:49:44:16 - 01:49:51:00

Angeli Moeller

And the second one is very ocracy. So I think this is also important to make it less very operatic.

01:49:51:02 - 01:49:51:11

Christian Soschner

But you know,

01:50:41:19 - 01:51:02:15

Christian Soschner

yeah. That's I mean yeah another thing, but so things, things really, happening. You know, we've been talking about this problem for a while, so it's good to see it moving. It's good to see that things are paying us that, things in, in German bureaucracy have been digitized. I think we all still know there's a long way to go.

01:51:02:17 - 01:51:35:19

Christian Soschner

but it does show you, the change it can make. And so one part is to make those investments. but when we talk about sustainability, I'll give you an example. We talked about energy costs, and we know why energy costs are so high right now. We know the trade off decisions governments are having to make. What is very interesting for me right now is looking into companies that are looking into developing new technologies that fundamentally reduce the cost of compute power, so that the actual technology is different.

01:51:35:19 - 01:51:58:08

Christian Soschner

So you're looking at completely different frameworks, completely different designs. I was at Computing Center recently where they had reduced the energy usage by 20% just by having a different framework. So they hadn't changed the hardware, they had just changed the way the jobs were distributed across the hardware, and they had immediately reduced their energy cost by 20%.

01:51:58:10 - 01:52:28:07

Christian Soschner

So I think looking at how to just make computing less costly, less energy intensive is a really interesting and exciting space. and, you know, every challenge, escalating energy costs leads to some companies floundering and saying, oh my God, I can't survive the worst thing ever. A government has to step in and subsidize this. And you see other companies that are saying this is an opportunity.

01:52:28:09 - 01:52:42:16

Christian Soschner

Now there is an unmet need on the market. There is something that is hurting everyone. How do I get really innovative and start to go out to that, find a solution? I think that's an area right now. with that, as I said, with low energy computing, it's really exciting.

01:52:42:18 - 01:52:43:05

Angeli Moeller

Selection

01:52:43:05 - 01:52:43:15

Christian Soschner

pressure.

01:52:43:15 - 01:52:47:05

Angeli Moeller

It's not the bad thing sometimes that's true.

01:52:47:07 - 01:52:51:14

Christian Soschner

Good or bad, it's a reality. And then you get to see how it plays out.

01:52:51:16 - 01:53:14:14

Angeli Moeller

We have to adapt. you mentioned that you left Big Pharma to found a new company. So when I get, leave a big company 20 years, almost 20 years ago, the reaction from my family was, why are you doing that? Are you crazy? But what was your motivation to found your own consultancy company?

01:53:14:16 - 01:53:14:22

Christian Soschner

It's

01:53:14:22 - 01:53:33:16

Christian Soschner

interesting. It is funny. and I'm sure your listeners again have had this experience, but, a lot of people come up and like, you know, how they feel about it. so first of all, I was there's a lot of entrepreneurial ism in my family. So it was more I was a bit the

01:53:33:16 - 01:53:36:00

Christian Soschner

odd one out who said, time?

01:53:36:02 - 01:53:39:02

Christian Soschner

just being an employee, I'll be it's a global executive in

01:53:39:02 - 01:53:41:17

Christian Soschner

a huge company, but I'm still good with that.

01:53:41:18 - 01:54:05:17

Christian Soschner

I don't mind having a boss if it's the right percent. and so I was more the odd one out, and, and it's more common in my family to, to be somebody who starts your own business, and runs your own business. And that's over multiple generations. So it's been a common trend. So I, I didn't have in mind that this was what I was going to do, but, the company I did work for, rush.

01:54:05:23 - 01:54:28:19

Christian Soschner

It's a really great company, very supportive company. And they allowed me to do advisory and consulting work beside my brush control. So I had, then a contract with, UK Research and Innovation, and I had, scientific advisor contract for the biotech company called Multi-Omics Health, which do fantastic research into metabolomic diseases. And I've been working with them for a few years now.

01:54:28:21 - 01:54:52:13

Christian Soschner

So I already had, then this, track record of having done, this consultancy for a while. and I, was seeing that to be really effective in the pharmaceutical industry, as well, but, in the roles that I had, there was,

01:54:52:15 - 01:55:07:24

Christian Soschner

It was really clear what I needed to do was really clear. Okay. If you if you want this team to be really successful, you've been in these sorts of roles seven years now. If you want to continue going down this route of success, this is exactly what it would look like. It was pretty clear what it would look like.

01:55:07:24 - 01:55:39:23

Christian Soschner

I knew what would need to be done for for the next step. And I just love. You know what? It feels a little bit to obvious. It's a road. You're on. It. You know exactly what you need to do. Some of it is just keep doing the same stuff and you're just on that road. And I thought I have, you know, made good investment start properly.

01:55:39:23 - 01:56:01:11

Christian Soschner

Like many of your lessons. Again, I started investing, in the stock market myself in my 20s. and for a month, steady portion of my salary. But it aside, you start to build up my own personal investment portfolio. And so I just felt like, you know, I'm in a good place. I'm in a place where I have, two great clients already.

01:56:01:11 - 01:56:24:13

Christian Soschner

I'm in a place where I feel very comfortable in terms of taking on more risk, more adventure. And I see that there's really something useful I can do. I see that there are people who are reaching out to me in my network, reaching out to me across the industry, who, are actually getting some use out of what I can do for them.

01:56:24:15 - 01:56:51:08

Christian Soschner

And so that was the initial trigger, for really going into this. But as I, then spent more time in it and more thought in it, I think then it became something much bigger than just actually as an individual coming into this and that. It became then clearer where the opportunities were in the global market. It became also where the opportunities for expanding into something much larger with multiple partners, SAT.

01:56:51:10 - 01:57:16:21

Christian Soschner

And so that's really the journey that I'm just beginning now in the early stages of it's going from just being unclear as one individual going out and doing work to saying, okay, there are so many requests for more support. There are so many opportunities that are just sitting there. How do we now start to grow then? That takes us back to our earlier leadership discussion growth sustainably so that it's the right people.

01:57:16:21 - 01:57:40:09

Christian Soschner

And one of the things I'm spending time doing now is also just talking to people, to to see who, it has a similar passion for growing businesses who would be somebody to partner up with, who is equally interested in making a difference, through technical expertise, through technical consulting. but also who has a passion for growing a business?

01:57:40:11 - 01:57:47:00

Christian Soschner

just, you know, another scientist, another engineer, but somebody who really is interested in the commercial side as well.

01:57:47:02 - 01:57:53:01

Angeli Moeller

What's your mission with 6.6 Macro Office? I think the name of your firm.

01:57:53:03 - 01:58:18:14

Christian Soschner

But I think the mission is exactly the same as my personal, mission has been for a long time. So if you we talked a bit about my career over this discussion, it started off with me working in the lab, doing genetic engineering, doing stem cell experiments, then moved into me doing machine learning work and research. using different forms of machine learning.

01:58:18:16 - 01:58:44:04

Christian Soschner

And, and then it has this long industry, aspect to it. Now, the quantum computing. For me, what is deeply frustrating is when you have the opportunity to improve your product, you have the opportunity to improve your outcome. You have the opportunity to have a more successful business. And for whatever reason, you're not using all the tools available to you.

01:58:44:07 - 01:58:56:06

Christian Soschner

There's something there that could make what you do cheaper, better, faster, and you're just not using it for whatever reason. And what I, I it frustrates me. You probably can see it,

01:58:56:06 - 01:59:07:21

Christian Soschner

I get tenure. That's really frustrating to see that happening. And so where I can step in and step in now, together with my whole company and really unlock whatever that bottleneck is.

01:59:08:02 - 01:59:33:16

Christian Soschner

And actually, a lot of it is educational programs, as well as other things, as well as sort of practical advice. I use cases, but a lot of it is also educational programs. So we can unlock that. So I don't care if it's machine learning, I don't care if it's a different tool, but if we can unlock it to allow your product to have a better impact, to allow your business to grow, they just find that tremendously satisfying.

01:59:33:18 - 01:59:54:19

Christian Soschner

And why did I move away from academia? Because you can you can, you know, bring new technologies to market through working on them in research and then funding them over to a company. But I think I just saw so many things that were not sustainable. Where was great technology, a great solution. And that's why I do keep one foot connected to the academic community.

01:59:54:21 - 02:00:17:18

Christian Soschner

But it just wasn't having that real world impact at scale. Sustainably that it could have. It was just losing its way on the way to market. And I think that's why I really I work with people who who have a clear, understanding that having a commercially successful, product is how you have a really societal impact as

02:00:17:18 - 02:00:18:12

Christian Soschner

well.

02:00:18:14 - 02:00:30:03

Angeli Moeller

And it's not by itself to translating a technology grant groundbreaking technology into the useful business. It's not only the product to really scale it up, you need to try it in a business.

02:00:30:05 - 02:00:31:01

Christian Soschner

And, I

02:00:31:01 - 02:01:00:10

Christian Soschner

was, talking to to a client recently, and they just wanted me to come and talk about customer centricity. So they just wanted me to come and talk to a team about customer centricity. That team was made up of really fantastic, programmers, software developers and scientists. and it was just how do you come and and they wanted me, particularly because of my scientific background and academic background, to just come in and say, yeah, gotta start with the customer.

02:01:00:15 - 02:01:07:13

Christian Soschner

Thank thanks. If any of those relevant to your end user, to your customer, let's start there.

02:01:07:15 - 02:01:10:19

Angeli Moeller

What do you think about this approach?

02:01:10:21 - 02:01:33:21

Christian Soschner

It's definitely, I mean, I can't say enough about it. I, I love great science. I think there's a place for basic research. That's a very important place. I spent years of my life on basic research. So. So any of your listeners who are not familiar with the term of basic research, it would be an example would be when I worked for four years on just creating a model that's consuming chemical science.

02:01:33:23 - 02:01:53:24

Christian Soschner

You can do millions of different things when you fully understand how the human brain works. So when you have a working good model of the human brain, but it's not saying I'm doing it so I can do this. Me it's saying I'm doing it now becomes a basic resource that furthers human understanding of the well as basic research.

02:01:53:24 - 02:02:16:12

Christian Soschner

And, I, I, I think that's important and I think it has its place, but I'm so passionate about starting with the customer. And that's been something that's just grown for me. I would say a lot of influence. from, from the, the big pharma companies I worked for, but also I worked for Thomson Reuters as, a consultant there.

02:02:16:12 - 02:02:48:00

Christian Soschner

And, and it's just, it's you really don't deeply understand what your customer wants or needs. You're just gonna end up with some nice bit of science lying, gathering dust, unused, unappreciated, no benefit versus piety, consumerism is what drives exciting innovations. You know, what would it take to get Christian to go to the doctor? Every single? Yeah. Do you have a dean on understanding of that psyche?

02:02:48:01 - 02:03:08:21

Christian Soschner

If you're the customer, I do. I really understand what that would look like. Am I even asking the right question? And, you know, this is the question that are is the question what would be a faster way to have frequent diagnoses? And then maybe you never go to the doctor, but you have something tone which is convenient and quick and part of something you would do anyway, like brushing your teeth.

02:03:08:23 - 02:03:30:19

Christian Soschner

And so it's really do you deeply understand what is the problem you're trying to solve? And it goes of course, into the psychology. Do you understand all of the psychology that took place here in terms of what the customer needs? sometimes you hear, product managers or product owners saying what they really need, going beyond what they perhaps they tell you they need.

02:03:30:21 - 02:03:31:16

Angeli Moeller

Yeah, yeah. This

02:03:31:16 - 02:03:49:24

Angeli Moeller

is great, right? It's really amazing listening to you. Time flies. So we are over two hours. You know, our conversation. you start any topic before we wrap up, is there any topic that we should give more space in our conversation that we didn't talk about? And who would like to address?

02:03:50:01 - 02:03:51:06

Christian Soschner

Yeah, I, I

02:03:51:06 - 02:04:11:20

Christian Soschner

appreciate the question. I think, so one of the reasons is, and you and I talked about this, Christy and my motivation for coming on the podcast to, today. And so one part is I'm really, as I grow, Sequoia grow. So my company is called Sequoia Growth. I'm looking for also partners who, bring something to the table.

02:04:11:20 - 02:04:49:18

Christian Soschner

So, either a good chunk of experience or a particular specialization that they're bringing to the table, and they're also sharing what you've heard from me today, this passion for growing a sustainable business. So I'm looking for collaborators on that front, and partnerships on that front. And then I think just, so I have quite a large client load at the moment, but also it's always important to just be saying if you're in a position where your company could benefit from the type of consulting we do, from the type of specialist office, that we have and, please do reach out.

02:04:49:20 - 02:05:10:19

Christian Soschner

it will be obvious, from what we put out with this podcast, how you can reach out to to us and LinkedIn is always a great way. and we're here and, and we're looking to really select those projects and clients that, that where we're confident we can make an impact and, and really grow sustainable innovation to improve your

02:05:10:19 - 02:05:12:06

Christian Soschner

business.

02:05:12:08 - 02:05:19:15

Angeli Moeller

that's great. That's a great mission. That's a great mission. how would the collaboration with clients look at coming to work with you?

02:05:19:17 - 02:05:21:11

Christian Soschner

so we have

02:05:21:11 - 02:05:46:20

Christian Soschner

mainly two types. So what we often have is that somebody want something highly specialized. So people don't come to Sequoia growth for something that you can get anywhere. and also I would say we, we don't accept, things where we think we're not going to really make a difference here. So we've said no to to a few contracts already.

02:05:46:20 - 02:06:20:11

Christian Soschner

what we do is we first of all, look, and we'll work with you on what is the thing that you're actually trying to solve. So maybe there's an NDA in place, but I won't want a contract of any other type, and it's just what is the problem that you're actually trying to solve? Because we don't want to get into a bigger commitment with each other when we're not convinced that will actually be able to make a difference to your problem, when you're not convinced of that as well, and when we're not, very confident that you fully understand your problem statement.

02:06:20:11 - 02:06:39:19

Christian Soschner

So we want to get to a point and that we do without a contract. So yes, we do with an NDA, but without a commercial agreement. We we do this problem shaping. Do we really understand the problem? And when we reach a point where we say, yes, this is something where we could really make a difference, where you, as the client say, this is actually going to help to grow my business.

02:06:39:19 - 02:06:46:23

Christian Soschner

I see the multiple fold return that I'm going to get, from this engagement. Then we come in and we put together the

02:06:46:23 - 02:07:06:17

Christian Soschner

team. Now, one of the things, we talked earlier in this podcast about sustainable growth of a team is it may often be better to bring in freelancers. And why is that? I have a very, large network of people who've worked in the industry for a long time.

02:07:06:19 - 02:07:33:17

Christian Soschner

And they are not looking to become an employee again, at a stage in their career where they maybe have a huge executive role or that leading a big research institute, or they're a professor at, a very well-established university. And so then it can become, how do you hand-pick and compose exactly the right team to be able to solve what is relevant, to that company?

02:07:33:17 - 02:07:49:21

Christian Soschner

So I think it's not, well, you might work with some groups and it's who are the employees you have in-house. It's rather a question of exactly who are the talented individuals that exist in the world. You can come in and help to solve this problem, and that's the way we

02:07:49:21 - 02:07:50:14

Christian Soschner

work.

02:07:50:16 - 02:08:13:03

Angeli Moeller

I like that approach. It's definitely helpful approach, especially when it comes to problems that companies can't solve for themselves. Then. Then he takes on expertise and on lean source and only builds what you really need very often, on a daily basis in the company. And sometimes problems disappear when they are solved once. And you don't need that in your department in the company.

02:08:13:05 - 02:08:13:24

Angeli Moeller

Sorry.

02:08:14:01 - 02:08:32:01

Christian Soschner

I'd also say it might be in the discussion the problem solving bit without any commercial agreement. You figure out the solution on your own. We're just happy, you know. It helps our reputation not going to help our reputation. And if we're taking money for doing something, then afterwards you're left with a bit of a sour taste because you thought, I could have done that myself.

02:08:32:01 - 02:08:46:18

Christian Soschner

That was pretty obvious. So we want to to leave all of our clients with a good taste in their mouth about how the whole experience was, and I think all of your listeners will relate to this. Everything is about reputation and building that sustainable reputation.

02:08:46:20 - 02:09:05:15

Angeli Moeller

That's true, that's true. Angele, thank you very much for this amazing conversation. I loved every single minute of it and I could go on for another two hours. But I also think that you have other priorities than being on my podcast. let's catch up in a year. So to see how artificial intelligence and your company evolved.

02:09:05:17 - 02:09:08:21

Christian Soschner

That would be wonderful. Thank you so much for having me on.

02:09:08:23 - 02:09:14:08

Angeli Moeller

And really have a great day and have a successful weekend. All the best for your new company.

02:09:14:10 - 02:09:15:07

Christian Soschner

Well thank you.

02:09:15:12 - 02:09:18:07

Angeli Moeller

See you. Bye bye.

02:09:18:08 - 02:09:46:07

Christian Soschner

that wraps up today's episode we found in my lab, where we explored two real impact of artificial intelligence in healthcare the importance of integrate technology into core business strategies, and why understanding your problem is the key to finding the right solutions. We learned that success is not just about having the latest technology, but about using it effectively to create real world impact.

02:09:46:09 - 02:10:15:14

Christian Soschner

And this journey from academia to leading a consultancy shows us the power of combining deep technical knowledge with a clear vision for sustainable growth. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to like, comment and share it with your network. Your support helps the team attract more brilliant minds like Anjali to share their insights and experiences. Remember, innovation isn't just about the tools you have.

02:10:15:15 - 02:10:31:13

Christian Soschner

It's about how you use them to make a difference. Keep learning. Stay curious and let's continue to push the boundaries of what's possible together. Thanks for tuning in and see you in the next episode.