Mr. Pascal Kienast was invited on Tuesday, November 10th, 2020 to participate in Business School of Lausanne’s Business Innovation Week (Fall 2020).
Mr. Kienast is an Alumnus of BSL, a graduate of the EMBA program in Sustainable Business. He has a robust background in technology, with a thorough focus on energy. He is also a successful entrepreneur who, at the moment, owns two companies in the field: K-Wave Consulting, focused on providing energy solutions for enterprises and services, and CLEMAP, focused on innovative energy analytics.
Nowadays, the utilities and energy analytics markets are segmented into solutions and services. The growth of this segment can be related to the rise in demand for renewable energy. With his expertise in this field, Mr. Kienast is taking advantage of the green revolution by developing, finding and implementing energy solutions to customers.
What is Mr. Kienast teaching us?
The first aspect Mr. Kienast shared, which he deemed critical to making a successful business, was the importance of determination. Having showed a high level of resilience and resolution in both his professional and private life, he used determination as a driving force in everything he’s achieved, from business ventures to his sportive endeavors. He claims determination drives fearlessness and subsequently faith in reaching one’s goals. His belief is that determination can help one overcome any obstacle in life, especially in the circumstances of starting up a business.
Mr. Kienast has excellent skills when it comes to creating and maintaining social relationships. His perfect understanding of the importance of customers is what made both of his companies a success. In his opinion, customers are the ones who will drive sales, but also will make investors believe in a company. Both the aforementioned elements are tightly knitted in any entrepreneurial process. Relationships therefore become the most valuable marketing tool for a young entrepreneur; one of the best tips one can receive in an entrepreneurship lesson.
While entrepreneurs tend to focus intensely on the risk they are taking in any new venture, often associating it most strongly with subsequent profits, Mr. Kienast disagrees with this statement and suggests that profits are most intensely impacted by innovation.
In his vision, the famous saying ‘two heads are better than one’ gains almost apostolic relevance. Mr. Kienast treats all his partnerships and connections with sanctity. He highlights the importance of choosing the right person, with matching abilities, for each corner of an enterprise. He is no fan of ‘do-it-yourself’ projects and neither are we at BSL. Seeing a business’s success thoroughly linked to the people making up that business; more minds mean more opinions, which can lead to resolution of complex problems, collaborative design, and consequently delivering a higher value to customers.
In a bohemian perspective, Mr. Kienast calls himself a dreamer and says that every innovative entrepreneur is, at core, a dreamer.
Another concept that Mr. Kienast finds essential in business development is flexibility, or ‘staying loyal to a dream while remaining anchored in reality’. Flexibility is the ability to react quickly to unforeseen changes. For him, it represents the power of modifying a vision to accommodate customer needs rather than facing failure.
The essence of his speech, however, lays in the importance of dreaming big. ‘Big goals change the game’ he says, adding that the beauty in big dreams is that everyone has them. Acting on one’s big dream is therefore the single most important step in creating success. Therefore, it makes me think, as a student encapsulating the idea, that we need to be brave enough not only to have a dream, but to be resilient in our ideas and consolidations of this dream.
I felt profoundly inspired by Mr. Kienast’s words. At first, as young people in a volatile, often confusing world, we tend to pay little attention to our dreams. We sometimes fall into the trap of dismissing our aspirations in favor of practicality. My key takeaway from Mr. Kienast’s speech is that big dreams are important and I most certainly will pay more attention to them in the future. It felt refreshing, reassuring, and above all encouraging.
As Mr. Kienast’s motivational speech inspired all of us, I am certain that we shall chase our dreams more profoundly and diligently. With new hope arising in our minds, to everyone with an eye on us, I dare say: Watch out! We’re coming.
The core value that both Mr. Kienast and BSL teaches students is therefore to do rather than to learn. Further Business Innovation Weeks are what will enable participants to start dreaming even bigger and doing more. Success afterwards is guaranteed.
Student Council President
Business School of Lausanne
