The career of etventure’s founder and managing director Philipp Depiereux is also being followed with great interest in his hometown of Düren, North Rhine-Westphalia. Depiereux met with the Düren editor of the Aachener Zeitung for an interview. Subsequently, yesterday’s edition featured a portrait of etventure, describing it as a “nucleus for innovative ideas.”

The name “Depiereux” is still very well-known in Düren. But while previous generations were involved in traditional engineering, Philipp Depiereux is now “one of Germany’s leading figures” in the area of digitization, Thorsten Pracht writes in his article. According to Pracht, etventure’s enormous growth reflects just how important this mega-topic is. “The team has 200 permanent employees and it doubled in size in the space of one year during 2015. In the same time period, turnover increased tenfold and 2016 is already on the verge of reaching last year’s record level.”

At the same time, etventure is active in a very broad range of sectors, as Philipp Depiereux says in the article: “What makes etventure different is that we generally join the company without any knowledge of the industry and we aren’t interested in the approaches taken in the past.” Whereas traditional companies often start the thought process with the product, etventure opts for a radically user-focused digitization process and the rapid development of new, digital business models.

To achieve this, the article continues, digital transformation is driven forward in a kind of nucleus or test environment outside of the company’s established structures. “In other words, we take the topic of innovation outside of the company and let the people there work in peace, because first and foremost, it is important that the core business continues to operate,” explains Depiereux.

This approach thoroughly sets etventure apart from traditional consultancies. The digital and innovation consultancy focusses on rapid development and the testing of new approaches, instead of “long conferences and PowerPoint presentations” containing strategy proposals that are often not implemented anyway, according to the article’s author Thorsten Pracht. A key success factor in all this is the CEO’s support. “We aren’t missionaries who are out to try and convert skeptics,” says Philipp Depiereux. “In the first step, only the CEO needs to understand our approach. Because digitization can only be a success if the company is the key driving force behind it.”

The whole article from the Aachener Zeitung is available online here (in German; paid content).