Dipl.-Ing. Lars Behrendt

Granny&Smith

We're not just participating in the innovation landscape—we're reshaping it. When market leaders need to ensure their next breakthrough succeeds, they know where to turn.

Our INNOWEEK® methodology has become the benchmark that global industry leaders trust when failure isn't an option.

Where traditional innovation remains unpredictable, we've engineered certainty. Our integrated teams of strategists, designers, and technologists consistently deliver what others consider impossible: guaranteed innovation outcomes in weeks. This is why DAX and Fortune 500 companies choose us as their innovation partner.

Mission Innovation: Inspiring people to be innovative in order to shape the world of tomorrow – that’s my mission.

Keynote Speaker

"Get Real Innovation" is about how to build a truly innovative company and why it's so incredibly hard.

Innovation is the main driver of business success today. What do the most innovative companies like Google, Amazon, Tesla and many startups have in common? What methods do they use? How can you be successful, too? And what, in practice, has proven to be a mistake?

Using real, short, concise & practical examples based on more than 15 years of practical experience in innovation development, Lars helps his readers discuss these questions and find answers.

Bestselling Author

Greenrock

Venture Partner

Family Office

OAB AG

Member of The Supervisory Board

INSTARIDE

INSTARIDE - Synchronizing mobility demands with the help of AI.
The revolutionary social driving startup - still in stealth mode.

Investor

HOW IT STARTED

https://open.spotify.com/show/3A3eHbXPN8A8t8Ga9dK3pE?si=kMT5StTGTrqAQOUO3qQH6g

Podcaster

Stiftungshaus Oldenburg

Board Member

Innovation Authority

Advisory Board Member

//CEO@GRANNY&SMITH, DE-RISKING INNOLAB FOR THE MOST INNOVATIVE COMPANIES

//THE DAY EVERYTHING CHANGED

It happened during a corporate innovation workshop years ago. As I watched yet another brilliant idea suffocate under the weight of process, I saw the spark fade from the team's eyes. In that moment, I made a promise to myself that would reshape my entire career.

THE PATTERN I COULDN'T UNSEE

Across boardrooms and brainstorming sessions, I witnessed the same story unfold. Brilliant minds with transformative visions hitting the same invisible wall. Their ideas deserved better.

THE UNEXPECTED DISCOVERY

What began as frustration evolved into curiosity. Could innovation success actually be engineered rather than hoped for? I devoted myself to finding out.

Years of experimentation led to an approach so counterintuitive yet effective that it changed everything. By building innovations like a portfolio of startups, we turned the notorious 90% failure rate completely upside down.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

A prominent German corporation took a chance on this method when traditional approaches had failed them repeatedly. Within weeks, we accomplished what they hadn't achieved in years. Word spread quickly.

Today, seven of Germany's nine most innovative companies have become our partners. From global enterprises to nimble startups, leaders come when they need certainty, not just possibility.

BEYOND THE METHOD

After over 15 years and countless successful market launches, I still feel that same rush when I see an innovation finally connect with its audience. There's simply nothing like watching something powerful emerge from what was once just an idea on a whiteboard.

My engineering background gave me the tools, but it was immersing myself in the human elements of innovation that revealed the true path forward. When leaders invite me to guide their most important initiatives, they're not just getting a process – they're gaining a partner who's navigated this terrain countless times before.

I only commit to journeys I truly believe in, because I've learned that extraordinary innovation requires both methodology and genuine connection to purpose.

MORE INFORMATION:
◾ For enterprises, entrepreneurs and investors -> https://www.grannyandsmith.com/ 
◾ For event organizers & bookings -> https://www.grannyandsmith.com/larsbehrendt

We are here to help you develop, test, and grow new business ideas in a few weeks instead of months. We specialize in innovation development, constantly keeping up with the latest trends, methods, and ways of working.

We have been developing innovation for our customers for more than 15 years now. Our teams, consisting of designers, engineers, software developers, and business model experts, have tried a lot and gained much experience. Today we know what works and what does not - so you don't have to make all those experiences again.

Our INNOWEEK® method is the result of more than 15 years of continuous development and project experience with well-known DAX groups and Fortune 500 companies and helps you to develop, test, and grow new business ideas in a few weeks instead of months.

Amazon

Continuous Improvement Manager

Area Manager

Site Manager

Junior Site Manager

Syddansk Universitet - University of Southern Denmark

Junior Research Assistant

Kverneland Group Kerteminde A/S

Master Thesis Project

ForeFlight

Data Consultant

Odense University Hospital

Semester Project

Follow for daily posts about Lean, CI & Innovation | Continuous Improvement Manager @ Amazon

Hi!👋 Ivan here

I'm an industrial engineer with 7+ years of experience in Operations Management and Continuous Improvement.

I serve two main groups of people:

	• Business owners and executives who want to turn their broken processes into brilliant ones (and save so much damn money) through Kaizen and Innovation

	• Founders and consulting firm owners within CI, Lean or Innovation who want to promote their businesses and make LinkedIn a legit revenue channel

(DM me for the details) 


I started writing on LinkedIn in October 2023. 

Since then, I have been sharing actionable, educational, and entertaining content to support LinkedIn community members in their continuous improvement journey. This helped me grow my audience from 9,000 to 100,000 followers in a year.

Join my newsletter here: https://lnkd.in/ddQncJM5

Ivan Carillo

Brutal truth: most Kaizen implementations fail within 6 months.

Here's why (and how to fix it):

Common failure pattern..

↓ Launch with great enthusiasm 
↓ Form improvement teams 
↓ Run some workshops 
↓ See initial results 
↓ Get distracted by other priorities 
 ↳ Kaizen activities fade away

The missing ingredient? 
Systems thinking.

Successful Kaizen requires these systems working together:

1/ Total Quality Management

+Customer focus throughout organization
+Process-oriented improvement mindset

2/ Just-In-Time Production

+Elimination of waste in all forms
+Flow-based operations

3/ Total Productive Maintenance

+Equipment reliability and efficiency
+Operator involvement in maintenance

4/ Policy Deployment

+Clear targets cascading from top to bottom
+Aligned improvement efforts

5/ Suggestion Systems

+Employee engagement in daily improvement
+Recognition of participation

6/ Small Group Activities

+Quality circles and improvement teams
+Collaborative problem-solving
 
Most companies try to implement Kaizen 
…without these foundations. 

Remember:

Success requires patience.

+Start with one system
+Build it thoroughly
+Connect it to others gradually

…and never stop improving!

Founder of Gemba Walk AI • I help executives cut waste and fix the broken processes costing them millions

Most companies create fantastic value stream maps.

Then file them away. (I've seen it dozens of times) 

Video credit to Krish Sengottaiyan. Give him a follow

Teams spend weeks mapping their current state. 

They identify waste. 
They draft the future state

Then ...nothing changes.

You know why?

No one is responsible for the customer experience.

Traditional organizations are function-based.

→ Finance reports to CFO 
→ Operations reports to COO 
→ Sales reports to CRO

Each leader knows their department.
But nobody understands how value flows end-to-end.

No single leader owns value stream performance.

"Everyone" is responsible = No one is responsible

VSM needs an owner with authority. 
One leader who can make decisions across silos.

CEO could, but they operate too high to manage CI.

So it's key to assign executive-level VSM ownership. 

Before you map your next value stream, answer this:

Who owns the complete customer journey?

If you can't name them...
save yourself the effort.

P.S. Does anyone in your organization have E2E accountability for value delivery?

In 2000, Europe and the US built the global industrial knowledge.

By 2025, we buy it from others.

Over the last 20 years, we've spent resources and time on

-outsourcing manufacturing
-celebrating our service economies
-trading factories for fulfillment centers

Meanwhile, we forgot how to make things.

But someone else mastered it.

Here's what nobody talks about:

Every factory we closed, 
our knowledge walked out the door.

We chose 

-offshoring over workforce development
-shareholder returns over long-term capacity
-financial engineering over high-quality manufacturing

Now we're living with those choices.

It's time to reacquire knowledge through reindustrialisation.

PS. Manufacturing teams struggle to capture critical floor insights.

That's why we are building gembawalk.ai

Gemba Walk AI digitalizes your observation process,
so you can ensure your CI efforts deliver measurable results. 

Join the waitlist now to get early access + exclusive price: 

gembawalk.ai

We're operating with two conflicting mindsets, and it's costing us. I've mapped out where Traditional Thinking and Kaizen Thinking diverge. We need to pick one.


Traditional Thinking optimizes individual departments. 
Kaizen Thinking optimizes the whole value stream.

That's the fundamental split, everything else flows from there.

Here's where they conflict:

→ How we handle complexity

Traditional: Accept it as normal
Kaizen: Cut it aggressively

→ What we measure

Traditional: Efficiency and utilization rates
Kaizen: Flow speed and customer value delivered

→ How we produce

Traditional: Large batches pushed through the system
Kaizen: Small batches pulled by actual demand

→ Who influences the decision-making process

Traditional: Management hierarchy
Kaizen: People closest to the work

→ When we catch problems

Traditional: Final quality control inspection
Kaizen: Build quality into each step

→What we reward

Traditional: Fixing problems fast
Kaizen: Preventing problems from occurring

→ Our approach

Traditional: Long-term plans, then execute
Kaizen: Adapt continuously based on what we learn

What this means?

You have to decide which side you are on.

We can't cherry-pick from both lists. They contradict each other. 

Rewarding problem-solving while also rewarding problem prevention confuses everyone. 


P.S. Pick Kaizen if you want continuous improvement driven by frontline teams.

Here's what I notice in my own work: every time I keep "just one backup plan," I split my energy. I tell myself it's smart. Responsible. But really, I'm giving myself permission to procrastinate or even quit when things get hard.

I spent most of 2025 keeping my options open, but it wasn't such a brilliant choice. I realised this only when I came across this quote, written in Beyond Entrepreneurship.

Now, I'm all-in.

Three things stick with me from this:

1/ Keeping options open is itself a choice (and usually the wrong one)

When I maintain escape routes, I unconsciously save energy for the retreat. I don't fully commit to the difficult conversations, the uncomfortable outreach, or the work that feels risky.

I fully understand people who have family responsibilities. But when your only option is forward, you find reserves of strength you didn't know existed.

2/ Partial commitment is zero commitment

If you don't go all-in at the critical moment, your odds of achieving the dream don't stay low. They go to zero.

I see this with new content creators. They test the waters. They "see how it goes." But they do not intend to give up anything they have in their lives. Then they wonder why it doesn't work. It doesn't work because they never bet on it working.

3/ Near-impossible dreams require moments of no retreat

In 1519, Cortés landed in Mexico with his 600 men. Behind him: the ocean and 11 ships that could carry them back home. Ahead: the Aztec Empire. Millions strong, battle-tested, defending their homeland. Cortés burned the ships. His men had two choices: conquer or surrender. You know how it ended. 

Remember: comfort is a liar

Conventional wisdom isn't always right.
 
If you have a different approach, keep running.
 
Let me tell you a story:
 
In 1983, 150 world-class professionals
converged in Australia for an event.
 
It's a gruelling 543.7-mile endurance race.
 
From Sydney to Melbourne. 
This takes days to run.
 
Runners from all over the world came to participate.
They are, on average, 30 years old. 
 
All, except one. 
Albert Ernest Clifford “Cliff” Young.
 
Cliff is an Australian 61-year-old farmer and sheepherder
wearing overalls and galoshes over his work boots.
 
Spectators couldn’t believe their eyes.
 
“This has to be a joke!” some mused.
 
A few curious reporters ask about his intentions.
And Cliff replies:
 
“See, I grew up on a farm where
we couldn’t afford horses or tractors.
 
The whole time I was growing up,
whenever the storms would roll in,
I’d have to go out and round up the sheep.
 
We had 2,000 sheep on 2,000 acres.
 
Sometimes, I would have to run
those sheep for two or three days.
 
It took a long time, but I’d always catch them.
I believe I can run this race.”
 
Of course, they don't believe him.
 
And go back to focusing
their attention on someone else.
 
When the gun goes off,
the other runners leave behind Cliff.
 
And everyone forgets about that eclectic farmer.
 
When night falls, the ultramarathoners camp 
on the sides of the road, along with 
their support teams.
 
All, except one.
 
Five days, 15 hours, and
4 minutes after the starting gunshot,
Cliff Young crossed the finish line in Melbourne.
 
The nearest runner was 9 hours and 56 minutes behind.
 
Cliff's ability to go without sleep,
honed all those years on the farm,
turned out to be his secret weapon.

***
TL;TR

Don't quit until you reach the finish line.

The reward is only for those who get there.

Just keep running.

For me, December is all about giving back. I've been heads-down on my own growth most of the year. Time to shift that energy outward. Here's what I'm doing this month:


We spend most of our time with our eyes glued to the road ahead and forget that we are here to serve others. We don't do it maliciously. We are simply part of a society that increasingly values the interests of the individual at the expense of the well-being of our communities. Too often we forget that we feel good when we do good.

December is my time to look up from my own work, really listen to people and try to help them. 

Here is my way of giving back to my audience:

1/ Opening a guest slot on my profile 

In 2024, I did this during the Christmas holidays, and I intend to extend the window to the entire month this year. I'm featuring the best content I've seen from rising creators who deserve more eyes on their work. If you're creating something valuable but struggling to get traction, this is for you.

2/ Building a free resource for Kaizen practitioners

I am working on a document about Kaizen that you can download for free. Just something genuinely useful that I wish existed when I was figuring this stuff out.

3/ Making myself available

I find it difficult to offer free consultations at my current capacity, but I can give you some guidance. If you need help with something I know about, send me a DM. I'll respond to every single one.

Too often we forget we're supposed to be making things better for other people. 

December's my reset on that.

I'm capturing the most powerful quotes from Randy Pausch's Last Lecture to use as anchors for my own journey. I want to share some of them with you too:

ON ATTITUDE AND RESPONSE

"We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand."

This is about accepting the circumstances we face in life and focusing on how we respond to them. 

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."

Failed attempts aren't wasted. They're education. The lessons from what doesn't work often prove more valuable than immediate success.

ON OBSTACLES AND PERSISTENCE

"The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something."

Obstacles exist to filter out those who aren't committed. Every barrier you overcome proves your dedication.

"When you're screwing up and nobody's saying anything to you anymore, that means they gave up. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care."

Harsh feedback is a gift. Welcome criticism from those who still believe in you.

ON GETTING HELP AND BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS

"Have something to bring to the table, because that will make you more welcome."

Offer value in every interaction. When Pausch wanted to fly on NASA's zero gravity plane, he offered VR headsets for all the students and journalists to experience.

ON SELF-AWARENESS AND GROWTH

"The best gift an educator can give is to get somebody to become self-reflective."

True learning happens when you start examining your own behavior and choices.

***
Read my personal letters about 

+growth
+entrepreneurship
+and designing life on your terms. 

Raw insights, hard lessons, zero corporate BS.

Find them here: ivancarillo.substack.com

In my seven years of experience in operations, there is one thing that has ALWAYS came up: leaders who rely too much on their experience and too little on available data.

Innovation cycles are getting shorter and shorter. It means that manufacturers have less time to respond to market shifts and less margin for error.

The old way? 

Leaders spot a problem and make their best guess about the cause. Sometimes they're right. Often they're wrong, and by the time they figure that out, they've wasted weeks chasing the wrong countermeasures.

What should we strive for?

Learning, agile companies that continuously monitor their value streams by capturing relevant data. They then analyze this data and take measures to fix issues faster. 

But here's what makes this actually work: leaders have to trust data enough to act on it. 

Industry 4.0 promised the right information to the right place, at the right time, in the right quality, to the right person, and in the right quantity. For many companies, this is still a dream.

Most companies invested millions in connected equipment, but they still rely on the experience of individuals. Industry 4.0 era didn't lead to data-based learning and decision-making.

AI-powered Kaizen is the new opportunity to survive in the market.

My AI SaaS, gembawalk.ai, aims to make every gemba walk part of a learning system, where collective insights drive faster, better decisions than any single expert could achieve.

Waitlist gets first access + exclusive pricing.

Join here: gembawalk.ai

Your executives make million-dollar decisions about processes they haven't seen in months. Then they wonder why their "brilliant ideas" fail. Would you walk 20 metres to find the answers you've been looking for?

Well, most leaders don't go to the gemba often enough.
Others go, but they aren't fully present.

And that's why their processes suck.

Gemba means "the actual place" in Japanese. It's where..

+value is created
+problems actually happen
+solutions are born

Value isn't in meetings about meetings.

Your next step?

1/ Put on safety shoes
2/ Leave your office
3/ Go where the real work happens

Ask three questions:

+What problems do you see?
+What would make your job easier?
+What would you change if you could?

Then listen. Really listen.

The Gemba never lies.
Your data might.

P.S. When was the last time you spent an hour where value is created?

***
My first SaaS, gembawalk.ai, aims to make every gemba walk part of a learning system, where collective insights drive faster, better decisions than any single expert could achieve.

Waitlist gets first access + exclusive pricing.

👉 Join the waitlist: gembawalk.ai

taplio

The Battle

Dipl.-Ing. Lars Behrendt

Ivan Carillo

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreIvan Carillo's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Dipl.-Ing. Lars Behrendt

Ivan Carillo

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ivan Carillo's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreIvan Carillo's LinkedIn Performance