Hi there! 👋 I’m a third-year PhD candidate in the Organizational Behavior Unit at the Harvard Business School. 

📬 Feel free to subscribe to my monthly newsletter "Kaizen" below where I regularly share passionate stories for a meaningful life!

My research explores passion at work as a key driver of meaningful work—both for individuals and for society at large. My co-authors and I examine what people are passionate about, how they pursue these passions in their daily work, and the benefits and challenges that come with doing so. Ultimately, my work seeks to inform how leaders and organizations can help people maintain existing passions, develop new ones, and make a positive difference in the world.

Here are some research questions that I'm currently studying:
• On what dimensions do people strive to make a difference in the world?
• When is it useful to grit & when is it useful to quit? 
• How can we support people to pursue their passion without burning out?

Apart from doing research, I'm... 
• the co-host of the German podcast "𝐏𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐯 𝐊𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐫𝐭" on psychological research (together with Luise Hönig)
• a long-term organizer of the 𝐆𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧 𝐀𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐂𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 (Chief of Staff 2025, Head of US Outreach 2024, Co-Chair 2023, Head of Communications 2022)
• sharing my ideas, thoughts, and experiences on 𝐋𝐢𝐧𝐤𝐞𝐝𝐈𝐧 every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday.

Please feel free to reach out to chat about any of these topics!

At the moment, I’m unable to do coffee chats, but I’ve put together an FAQ where I answer my most frequently asked questions: https://shorturl.at/FiEY0. Also, please note that I typically respond to LinkedIn messages on Sundays. Thank you for your understanding 😊

There is hope for German business schools.

For years, German business schools occupied an awkward position on the global stage.

Respected, yes.
But rarely desired.

If you wanted an MBA, the default answer was clear. The United States. And if possible, Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton.

Germany, by contrast, was often the sensible backup plan, not the dream.

It almost feels strange to say this:

That is changing.

With the joint “Say JA to Germany” initiative, ESMT Berlin, Mannheim Business School, and WHU - Otto Beisheim School of Management are doing something unusual. They are speaking with one voice.

They are not copying the American model, but they are positioning Germany as a serious alternative at a moment when many people are rethinking the U.S. as the automatic choice. International students and faculty are paying closer attention to political stability, academic freedom, visa security, and quality of life. 

On those dimensions, Germany suddenly looks less boring. Or maybe still boring, but in a way that’s starting to look surprisingly attractive.

Stability, once taken for granted, has now become a competitive advantage.

I think this is great news, and I hope we see more of it soon.

What gives me particular hope is the level of coordination. No single German business school needs to rival Harvard on its own—and the goal should certainly not be to become “Harvard, but cheaper.”

Instead, this new initiative signals that Germany can offer a coherent, credible ecosystem for top-tier management education. Several other outstanding institutions belong in this picture as well, including Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, TUM School of Management, LMU Munich School of Management, and others.

The real opportunity is to lean into what makes Germany distinctive:

High quality education combined with a high quality life.


https://lnkd.in/ecHQ7dPY

Kai Krautter

Researching Passion for Work @ Harvard Business School

If you’re considering a PhD, currently doing a PhD, or mentoring PhD students, you should know about the latest results from this recent Nature survey.

Nature surveyed 3,785 doctoral candidates across 107 countries in mid-2025. The full dataset covers supervision, finances, mental health, mobility, and more. Here are some of the practical take-aways.

(1) Overall satisfaction has recovered from its pandemic low. About 75% of respondents say they are satisfied with their PhD.

(2) Money (42%) and publication pressure (41%) are the top worries for PhD students.

(3) Nearly half of respondents report experiencing discrimination or harassment during their PhD; only about 28% of those individuals feel able to speak up without risking retribution.

(4) Supervision time is limited for many students. Roughly half meet their supervisors for less than one hour per week.

(5) AI has become part of the workflow: 53% use AI tools at least weekly, but major concerns remain about quality, reproducibility, and the erosion of critical thinking.

(6) About one third of respondents study abroad, with funding and political concerns being the most commonly cited reasons for moving.


--- IF YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT DOING A PHD ---

(1) Check supervision before you commit. Talk to current and recent students about how often the supervisor meets with students and what those meetings are like.

(2) Be realistic about the money. Consider the stipend in the context of local living costs.

(3) Know why you are doing it. The survey reinforces a simple point: a PhD is long and uneven. Be clear about whether you want to do research for its own sake or as a route to a specific career.

(4) Ask about training and career support. Only about half of respondents are satisfied with the career guidance they get, especially those aiming for nonacademic paths.


--- IF YOU ARE SUPERVISING OR MENTORING PHD STUDENTS ---

(1) Make regular contact a priority. Students who meet with supervisors for three or more hours per week report much higher satisfaction. Even brief, consistent check-ins help.

(2) Be explicit about expectations and milestones. Clear early agreements about responsibilities, authorship, and timelines reduce friction later.

(3) Support professional and personal development. Students want concrete coaching on research and publishing, but also guidance on identity development and future career paths.


Overall, the survey shows that most PhD students are satisfied and find their work meaningful. That’s encouraging!! 

What concerns me most, however, is that financial worries outweigh even the pressure to publish. I’m fortunate to be funded well enough not to worry about making ends meet. It’s hard to imagine navigating the already demanding realities of a PhD while also carrying that additional burden.

Passion shouldn’t be a substitute for security.

Read the full articles here:
 https://lnkd.in/dq72r3cX

The entire country of Germany needs charisma training.

I spent the last month in Germany again, moving through the country from Berlin to Heidelberg, Cologne to Munich, Düsseldorf to Frankfurt.

And everywhere I went, I noticed the same thing.

People are doing genuinely impressive things. At least in the bubbles I spent time in, people were motivated, thoughtful, and deeply invested in changing something for the better.

That surprised me a little, because it clashes with the image Germany often projects of resignation or constant complaint.

Then I realized where the disconnect comes from.

The moment people were asked to present something on stage, to pitch what they are passionate about, or to motivate or inspire others, I was shocked by how bad many Germans are at selling themselves (and, with that, their ideas, projects, and products).

The image that stuck with me most comes from the German Sustainability Award in December. I attended as a participant. If you stripped away the delivery and focused purely on content, the executives presenting their progress over the past years were talking about fascinating and important work.

But sitting through those presentations was painful. They were so dull it was almost absurd. I found myself getting restless, and several times I had to leave the room because it was uncomfortably boring.

Now, you can blame a lot of that on me. I have a low tolerance for boredom, and I may have been socialized by U.S. entertainment culture for too long. Those are fair points.

But still, I am convinced that there are things Germany could learn from the U.S., without becoming fake or theatrical.

+++ Charisma does not mean being loud or inauthentic. +++ 

It means making people feel something.
It means helping them understand why they should care.

If you want to improve your charisma, here is where I would start:

1) Learn how to structure a talk so it has rhythm and momentum.
2) Think about your audience more than anything else.
3) Practice PowerPoint karaoke with your friends.
4) Take comedy improv classes in your free time.
5) Learn more about storytelling.
6) Normalize small talk with strangers and treat it as practice.
7) Practice presenting without slides at all.
8) Sing regularly and do karaoke with friends.
9) And most importantly, start presenting whenever you can. 

I am leaving Germany again in a few days. What I am taking away from this visit is that Germany does not lack ideas, intelligence, or commitment. What it currently lacks is the ability to bring those things to life and inspire the people around them. 

The good news is that this feels like a fixable problem, and one very much worth fixing.

Over the past three days, I spoke more English in Berlin than I usually do in Boston.

I grew up on the other side of Germany, in Saarland, so I have only been to Berlin a handful of times in my life. Even so, Berlin is where most tourists go when they visit Germany, and for good reason. After spending a few days here again, I was reminded of how much the city offers: politics, history, culture, entertainment.

At the same time, I don’t think there is any other city in Germany that is less representative of the country as a whole than Berlin.

Berlin is crazy, while much of the rest of Germany is fairly conservative.
Berlin is huge, while most other German cities are comparatively small.
Berlin is international, while large parts of Germany are still relatively homogeneous.

Berlin also seems to be one of the few places in Germany where you can live comfortably without speaking German. I’ve been to restaurants where the staff didn’t speak German at all, schools where many faculty members teach exclusively in English, and events where English was the default language.

To me, Berlin feels less like a German city and more like a European city that just happens to be located in Germany.

FINALLY. Great news!
The EU made a huge announcement yesterday that will change the European start-up environment.

Ursula von der Leyen officially announced EU Inc., a new company structure that can operate across all 27 EU member states under a single corporate framework.

What makes this especially interesting is how it came about. EU Inc. started as a grassroots effort in 2024, when more than 15,000 founders and investors signed a petition arguing that building companies in Europe was harder than it needed to be.

At its core, EU Inc. introduces a European company form that allows founders to incorporate online in roughly 48 hours, without mandatory notaries and without having to create separate legal entities in each country.

One company can operate across the entire EU.

How cool is that?

Europe’s biggest challenge has never been a lack of talent. The real problem has been bureaucracy and paperwork.

EU Inc. will hopefully make starting and scaling a company in Europe faster and cheaper. A founder in Athens, Lisbon, or Copenhagen can build for a 450-million-person market from day one.

If done well, we will remember this change for decades. It could finally spark the founder culture Europe needs and wants, without requiring a move to Silicon Valley.

Starting a company is rarely just a financial decision. For many founders, it is an expression of passion and a commitment to an idea they care deeply about. 

When the system constantly pushes back, that energy gets drained long before the idea has a chance to grow.

EU Inc. will not create passion by itself, but it does not need to. By removing unnecessary obstacles, it gives founders more space to act on the motivation they already have.

That alone makes this a huge step in the right direction.

When I use ChatGPT for my research, my biggest frustration is how much it overgeneralizes scientific findings. A recent paper examined this concern empirically. 

The authors looked at what happens when large language models like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, or Claude are asked to summarize scientific papers, something I do all the time.

At first glance, these tools seem great at it. The summaries sound clear, confident, and very structured. And that is exactly the problem.

What often happens is that the models stretch the meaning of the original findings. Results that only apply to a specific sample, time period, or condition suddenly turn into broad claims. And purely descriptive findings are presented as practical advice, even when the original authors were careful to avoid making recommendations.

What struck me most was how common this was. Across nearly 5,000 summaries, many popular models overgeneralized in a large share of cases. In some situations, telling the model to be “extra accurate” actually made the problem worse rather than better.

Now, you might think that this sounds very human. After all, we love turning correlations into causation and treating a significant result in one sample as a universal truth.

The authors thought about that too. They compared AI-generated summaries to summaries written by human experts. Humans are obviously not perfect and they overgeneralize as well. But the AI summaries were much more likely to push conclusions beyond what the original studies actually showed.

What worries me even more is that overgeneralization from machines feels more dangerous than overgeneralization from humans. With people, we expect bias and mistakes; but with machines, we tend to believe they are objective.

And these systems are very good at sounding reasonable. They sound like a confident expert who knows what they are talking about.

My takeaway from this paper is not “never use AI for science.” But it is a good reminder that science is often narrow, cautious, and full of limits. Damn it, I spend most of my day every day trying to deal with the limitations of my own research.

So the next time you use AI to summarize a paper, maybe slow down a bit when you read the results. Ask yourself how confident you can really be in the conclusions. 

And maybe do something crazy: open the original paper and see what it actually says.

https://lnkd.in/eG3_Mdv5

This year marks my sixth year at Harvard Business School, back in the United States.

Since 2021, I have kept returning to this country, and especially to this city, which I have completely fallen in love with. What began as a temporary chapter in my life has turned into my home.

The U.S. pulled me in with its beautiful landscapes, its people, and a level of optimism and ambition that still feels contagious.

And Boston is my absolute dream city to live in. It is highly livable, and if you disagree, you should come and visit us before or after your trip to NYC 😉

None of this was ever part of a plan, by the way. As a child and teenager, I never dreamed of living in the U.S., never actively worked toward it, and never even considered it. And yet, once I found myself here, I could not imagine living anywhere else for a long time.

But regrettably, the country has changed and continues to change in ways that truly break my heart. Much of what initially drew me in is still present, especially in a bubble like Boston. At the same time, the broader tensions shaping daily life in this country have become impossible to ignore over the past year.

That does not mean the love is entirely gone. I am genuinely excited to be back, and I still believe there is much about this country that makes it worthy of living here. But love cannot live on nostalgia alone.

Right now, that feeling remains unresolved. For the moment, I am throwing myself back into my work, because I believe that working hard can still make a difference in the world, no matter where we are or what tools, resources, and skills we have. Small contributions from many people add up more than we often realize, and that gives me hope that things can change again.

I care deeply about this country, grateful for what it has given me, and apprehensive about where it is headed.

I believe LinkedIn will become the No. 1 mainstream social media platform in 2026.

For a long time, most social media platforms had a clear core audience. TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram were mostly for younger people. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter were for the generation above them.

You went to TikTok for dance videos, Snapchat for streaks, Instagram for vacation photos, Facebook for birthday reminders, LinkedIn for professional updates, and Twitter for political and scientific discussions.

That separation is disappearing fast.

Twitter is dying, and no real alternative (whether Mastodon, Bluesky or Threads) has taken its place. But people are craving a platform where they can share their thoughts with others.

So over the past 1-2 years, LinkedIn has started to fill that gap.

Political and scientific discussions that once lived on Twitter are moving to LinkedIn. 
Personal updates that people used to share on Instagram are increasingly posted on LinkedIn as well. 
And LinkedIn helps us stay connected not only with colleagues, but also with friends, a role Facebook once dominated.

Unfortunately, LinkedIn also clearly wants to become more like TikTok. The platform keeps pushing video content and promising more reach for it. I worry that this is not the right direction.

Instead — and perhaps surprisingly —  I actually see the future of LinkedIn in text-only posts. The typical LinkedIn selfies will survive, of course. But even there, the focus is usually less on the image and more on the ideas and thoughts in the text.

Ironically, the platform that was long mocked for lacking real content may become the main place for it.

It took me a while to realize this, until I came across a quote that really made it click for me:

--- What if you treated LinkedIn less like a place to list (or brag) about your achievements, and more like your own column in a global magazine about work, purpose, and life? ---

That is a mission I believe in. And in 2026, I will do my best to write the best content I can here.

Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays
9am EST, 3pm CET

(+ my Newsletter Kaizen at the end of each month, of course)

I spent a lot of time talking to startup founders in 2025. Many impressed me, but one stood out more than all the others. He was the one who dropped his first product with paying customers and started again from scratch.

Building your own startup is incredibly hard. You need a lot of passion to do it. Not because it’s so much fun all the time, but because it’s exhausting and frustrating. Or to paraphrase Steve Jobs, you need passion because otherwise, you'll simply give up.

But passion has a dark side too. It can turn into tunnel vision. Escalation of commitment. We see this again and again in our research. You focus on what you care about, and because you care so much, it becomes incredibly hard to let go.

That’s why I was so impressed by a friend of mine, Patrick Tu, who realized, at some point, that the product his startup was working on wasn’t going anywhere. It didn’t fit the market anymore. Continuing would have meant pushing harder, not smarter.

That’s what I call dispassion.

Not the absence of passion, but a different kind of strength. Caring deeply about what you’re doing (passion), while still maintaining the distance to see clearly and think wisely (dispassion).

And as if that weren’t impressive enough, he’s kept pivoting and building… with the exact same founding team! New market. New product. When he told me, I almost lost my mind.

That’s a skill I want to practice in 2026.

To clearly separate people from the product.
To accept that if a product fails, that doesn’t mean the people failed.
And to have the courage to keep going and start again.

Passion takes courage.

I increasingly see people having long conversations with ChatGPT and treating them as “work.” It may FEEL productive, but most of the time it isn’t.

ChatGPT is a great conversation partner. It listens, it responds immediately, and it rarely pushes back. You can ask almost anything and you will get a long, well-phrased answer in return. You can keep the exchange going for a long time, and by the end you have a dense transcript that gives the impression that something substantial has happened.

I see many people, myself included more often than I would like, stop at this point. The conversation itself becomes the endpoint. Because the responses sound smart and relevant, it is easy to believe that you have made meaningful progress. 

But stopping there is a lazy approach.

I would even go as far as to call this a new kind of performance fallacy in everyday work. The interaction performs productivity on your behalf. It gives you something visible, something that looks like output, something you can forward or attach to an email. What it does not guarantee, however, is that you actually understand the issue or have formed a view of your own.

The presence of text does not mean understanding is there, and reasonable wording does not mean the underlying thinking has been done. Using ChatGPT often feels productive because it is convenient, not because it necessarily advances the work.

The moment it becomes uncomfortable is when you try to extract actual insight from the conversation. That is when you have to summarize what you learned, decide what matters to you, and let go of the rest. That step requires effort, and it cannot really be outsourced, at least not yet.

But unfortunately that’s what I see happening less and less. Instead, people have found a more "convenient" way of working: they circulate ChatGPT transcripts as if those conversations were the product of their work. Pages of back and forth, many prompts with repeated refinements. The volume looks impressive, but volume is not contribution.

So please do not send me long ChatGPT conversations as if that is your output. I can have those conversations myself.

Instead:

If you use ChatGPT, it helps to ask a simple question: what part of this task am I AVOIDING by doing this?

If the answer is that you are avoiding thinking the issue through on your own, the tool is probably working against you. If the answer is that you are using it to improve phrasing or generate new ideas (or something like that), then it is likely doing what it should.

Chatting with ChatGPT can be useful, but only if you take the extra step afterward. Right now, many of us stop too early.

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