Tackling Challenges in the Automotive Industry

Last month Christian Bubenheim, Senior Vice President Marketing & Product at AutoScout24, took part in a thought-provoking roundtable discussion hosted at BMW Startup Garage in Munich. The focus of the event was mobility, digitalization and leadership in the automotive industry.

What do future mobility concepts look like? How does that affect the players of the automotive industry, from car manufacturer to technology provider to service and online companies? Fifteen high profile industry managers from big international groups and small startups alike shared their visions of tomorrow and talked about ways how to tackle the challenges.

Of course innovation and transformation are big buzz words in this context. But how can they be implemented successfully within an organization? What leadership model and organizational set-up are necessary to foster agility, openness and entrepreneurship?

To realize effectively innovation@scale, we at Scout24 have set up an organization with lean and agile market segments – each working on its own profit and loss responsibility. But that’s only one side – on the other there has to be a modern leadership model going hand in hand with the organizational set-up. A leader doesn’t have to know everything, but should be open to learn it all. He or she should not control but rather coach and empower the team members. For us, it’s a never-ending cycle of listening, responding, experimenting and learning that helps Scout24 become digitally lean and disruptive. This is also what Jason Radisson, General Manager of self-driving car tech startup NAUTO and participant of the roundtable, recommends when being interviewed by us about how “big players in the auto industry learn from the innovation culture of startups.” With this leadership model and lean organizational setup we strive to connect the best of both worlds, combining the speed and agility of a technology startup and the stability and infrastructure of a large enterprise.

Got hooked? Read about the other managers’ statements on this topic in the roundtable brochure.