Post by Johannes Kanthak

Yesterday I had 45+ NYU students in front of me at the HHL Traction Lab. I thought we would mostly talk about software. Instead, we ended up discussing something much deeper: why work inside companies still feels unnecessarily complicated. Too many tools. Too many disconnected systems. Too much information scattered everywhere. The most interesting part came afterwards: the questions. How do you differentiate from existing competitors? Why go open source? How do you build a sustainable business around it? What actually changes for companies after implementation? And where do expensive AI models become a real challenge? The American mindset around building and challenging ideas felt very different to me. More direct. More curious. More focused on whether something actually works in the real world. I genuinely enjoyed that approach. Good questions challenge ideas. Great questions sharpen them. Thank you to the NYU Stern School of Business students and the HHL DIGITAL SPACE - The Entrepreneurship Hub for the thoughtful discussions and fresh perspectives. Grateful to be the part of it HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management Dr. Nino Tomini Joshua Barthel #HHL #NYU #TractionLab #Entrepreneurship #StartupJourney #Innovation