Peter Kreuz

I’m infected with a virus and I’m thriving on it. I first came into contact with it in the late 1990s while working on my dissertation on strategic innovators. I was infected by people I met like Richard Branson of Virgin, Anita Roddick of The Body Shop, Nicolas Hayek of Swatch, and Götz Werner of dm-drugstore. This virus is called rebelliousness.

The encounters with these industry revolutionaries have changed my life forever and opened many doors for my wife Anja and myself. We started to surround ourselves with people just like them. People who are defying the status quo and seeing and doing things differently.

The ivory tower of academia didn’t allow me to make the difference I wanted to make and to live the self-determined life I wanted to live. That’s why I abandoned this path and gave up the benefits and amenities of the public service. For me, autonomy means the freedom to live a life that doesn’t have to meet the expectations of others.

Today I travel the world to support Rebels at Work and to track down the winning strategies of creators, thinkers, innovators, and, most of all, doers who do things others say can’t be done.

Complacency and indifference. Entitlement. Inflated egos. Talented people who make excuses and act like victims. Know-it-alls. Mediocrity. People who take themselves too seriously. Top-down decision structures that create long lags between sense and respond. Corporate cultures that resemble a Dilbert cartoon.

The first cup of coffee in the morning. Looking behind the scenes. Sports, sports, sports, especially crossing the Alps with my mountain bike, half marathons, and sailing. Traveling off the beaten track. Autonomy. Architecture by Frank Gehry. Big airports with their bustling activity. Rebels. The Rolling Stones – and “Sympathy for the Devil.”