Porsche will always be Porsche

July 13th, 2018 by

“The future has many names: For the weak, it means the unattainable. For the fearful, it means the unknown. For the courageous, it means opportunity”. This quote from French author Victor Hugo is used frequently. But rarely has it been as fitting as today, when we are talking about the future of mobility. For many decades, mobility has revolved around the car – as a means of transportation, as a status symbol, and as a fascinating machine delivering driving pleasure. But traditional mobility as we understand and practice it every day is now at a turning point. We live in a multi-mobile age.

With modern information and communication technology developing at a lightning-fast pace, we are not just available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, wherever we are in the world. We can be everywhere at the same time. With video conferences replacing business trips, online chats with your friends replacing meet-ups at the bar, homeworking replacing your desk at the office and laptops replacing Saturday shopping trips into town, it only makes sense to ask whether driving your own car will one day be replaced by virtual mobility. We are living in an era of industrial upheaval. The force and dynamics of events and developments are breathtaking. Society, the world, politics and the economy are changing at the speed of light. The automotive world will change more over the next ten years than it has during the course of the last 100 years.

“Everything must be re-evaluated”

For Porsche, this means that we are growing in regions we could not have imagined just a few years ago. The digital transformation determines the way in which we think. Young, differently-minded people who are entirely unlike us are changing our mindset. What do our customers expect from cars both now and in the future, and from mobility in general? The answer is that everything must be re-evaluated. It may not be necessary to reinvent the wheel, but everything else, yes. And if you are going to change things, you have to dare to innovate to allow flexibility. Change your mindset’s perspective. Allow free structures, free minds and lateral thinkers. Creativity always requires a certain amount of freedom from rules, a less restrictive bureaucracy. This allows us to be faster, more focused, more flexible and especially more streamlined. For a company like Porsche, it is also important to always think from the point of view of the customer. We need to match our customers’ desires as closely as possible. For all future cars and services there is only one standard: the customer.

But where does all this lead? What is our aim? In view of the speed and unpredictability of current developments, it seems almost impossible to predict the future. It is nevertheless necessary to keep trying to lift the fog and look to the future. As entrepreneurs we must make the right strategic decisions today to best prepare ourselves for what awaits us tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.

“The courage to make changes”

As we face the global competition in the field of innovation, Porsche must be on the offensive. More than anything else, this will take courage – the courage to make changes and the courage to pave our own way to the future. In extremely volatile times like these, it is crucial to project a clear, unmistakable identity. But how can a brand stay authentic and unique when it must constantly adapt to an environment that is evolving at a rapid pace? How is renewal possible without a loss of identity?

Doctor Wolfgang Porsche:”Porsche must be on the offensive

I’m reminded of”Meisterkreis” — an institution of men and women, institutions and businesses which come together to promote a culture of excellence at Germany. This institution has lately released a publication, which comprises an intriguing piece about Porsche. It’s all about a thought experiment known as the Theseus paradox: The mythical Greek figure Theseus regularly attracts his boat to your dockyard for fixes. Each moment, some of the previous boards need to be replaced with fresh ones. This procedure continues until, following numerous years, the boat no longer have some one of its original pieces. Whoever owns this dockyard subsequently utilizes the older lost parts to create a totally new ship. Currently you will find just two virtually equal boats which just differ in age of their own parts.

The notion has led philosophers to consult the intriguing question: That is the true boat: The”older” boat generated entirely from new components? Or the”brand new” boat made entirely out of older components? There’s not any one clear solution for the thought experiment, otherwise it wouldn’t be paradoxical.

The parable of this ship Theseus provides two tips. Primarily, renewal can be done with out a loss in identity, Second, the whole is much more than the total amount of these individual pieces. There’s a heart that remains cohesive if every thing around it’s radically fresh.

“That’s your actual 9 11?”

When we implemented this particular question to Porsche it’d be: What’s your real 9 11? Can it be the initial 9 11 out of 1963? Or can it be that the one millionth 9 11 that rolled off the manufacturing line in Zuffenhausen at mid-2017? Once most of us know, through time we have always re-developed the 9 11 and always supplied it using brand new, advanced technologies. Maybe not 1 component in the modern 9 11 is equal to people in its own 1960s counter part. But regardless of this, the most crucial heart of our sport car superstar has stayed exactly the exact same for over 50 decades.

The individuality of a 9-11 isn’t merely defined by its own technical details in precisely the exact same style, the individuality of a boat isn’t characterized by means of a plank. What things is that anything remains true for the own nature. And that I really don’t know of any car which, despite all of the improvements in technology and also the soul of this moment, has stayed so true to its own nature because the 9 11.

“Our individuality stays”

And the exact very same idea relates to our our company: We’re bombarded with accelerated shift. The requirements that clients are putting our sport cars and freedom generally are shifting. It’s essential for all of us to anticipate and meet those conditions from the newest, renewable services and products which you can expect. However, will this prevent us from being , from being Porsche? No, since the gist of our new is made us what we all are now and what we all shall soon be tomorrow. Our indivisible, plainly recognizable individuality remains even if all changes.

We shouldn’t, however, succumb to this greed for ever-higher listing amounts. Size –size to the interest of size — is just perhaps not just a sustainable company objective. This will ruin the magical of Porsche. Our distinctive feature is exclusivity, diversity, and individuality. Why don’t we all remember the initial Porsche drivers — that the”James Dean” type s: they certainly were rough round the borders and rebellious, and they failed to define themselves as a portion of their majority, or even as followers. This could be the nature, the center value that people shouldn’t leave. Porsche keeps its own fascination, perhaps not because of the men and women working with our company as racing drivers, supervisors or managers, for example technicians, engineers, skilled workers, earnings professionals, employees or earnings advisers. As my dad, Ferry Porsche, ended the very first Porsche sports car using his small team 70 decades back, millions of individuals have added into and maintained the”Porsche legend” living with their everyday work.

“Maintaining the Basis of Porsche and transporting it in to the future”

Now our company uses over 30,000 highly competent and highly motivated employees that will work together on the grounds of an original company culture to model the current and the near future of Porsche. Provided that we’ve this exceptional civilization — this esteem for another, personal responsibility within our activities and also freedom in the manner in which we think — we’re preserving the gist of Porsche and implementing it in the long term.

Successful innovation means challenging every thing without sacrificing the recognized arrangement, the fundamental faculties, the individuality, on the way. When there’s 1 thing in Porsche we have to become extremely proficient in, and then it really is that. Whether conventional or electric drives, whether driving pleasure onto the racetrack or automated driving from the town, if a sportscar manufacturer or a innovative supplier — Porsche will continually be Porsche.

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