THE SOUND OF SILENCEPeriodical 17

I have become addicted to the title of a song. Not just a song. A “Hall of Fame” song from the time before I was born. The lyrics however, hit a point, they are quite up to date. “Hello darkness my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again, Because a vision softly creeping, Left its seeds while I was sleeping.”
Simon & Garfunkel told the story about the daily struggle between overcoming the usual and the resisting the new. We all want to reinvent ourselves and pray to the masters of disruption – but have hard times in treading really new paths. Even before we start, we consider all available facts…and before we have drawn a vision, we have factored in all problems.
It’s time to recall that men only hit what they aim at. I therefore strongly recommend to go with the American Philosopher Thoreau: “Even though men should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high.”
To overcome the usual, you need to have belief and courage. To take the risk to go down with an idea – having the own house of cards tumbling. In today’s business assessment one easily forgets that the winners of today’s revolution went through a calm before they conquered the storm – and some will go the other way. But they all aimed at something very high.
What could be more telling than a true anecdote? Especially from where you think you know all. But you don’t: In 2006, Tesla made it. When the first product series was almost final, obviously, the first owners should be an elected circle: the board of management.
The excitement was huge, bringing the first chapter to a happy end. And indeed, the car resembled more a giant computer, something which might have come out of Back to the Future.
After the cars had been distributed, one of the board members finally dared to raise a question: What… what happens if the car suddenly stops moving somewhere?
You can imagine this sound of silence…Since there were definitely no garages available to fix, also Tesla’s head of R&D grew nervous seeing the penetrating look of the founder. But instead of blaming and show stopping, Elon Musk came up with a pragmatic solution: cell phones in the glove compartment. The idea of the flying doctor was born!
Welcome to this 17th issue of our periodical. Our authors are masters in their attempt to listen and shape the sound of silence.