"Who I was"
20+ years in chemical manufacturing (BASF, Bayer, Pfizer), VP track, twice declined promotion, roles in Belgium and abroad. The birth of Jürgen the Intrapreneur.
“The turn"
Leaving BASF in late 2023 was not an easy thing to do. I left a lot behind. And what awaited me was nor a clear, nor a straight path either. The roads have been muddy, rocky, steep down hill and upward again. My first attempts in consulting as Itrans4M2, a ban on LinkedIn that is now almost 2 years, I made pivotting almost an art in the meantime.
I believed getting myself to leave was the hard part. If only. In have thought regularly about one sentence in the song “The river” from my all time hero Bruce Springsteen: “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true or is it something worse ?”
Let’s say if life wants to make you succesful, it first breaks you down to the core. And in moments where you think you have hit rock bottom, you shortly after realize the next fall is even deeper.
But there is this enormously strong feeling that returning to the past is even worse.
As the character Samwise Gamgee says in the movie “The two Towers” the Lord of the Rings: “In the great stories, the heroes had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't, because they were holding on to the belief that there's good in the world worth fighting for”. And like Sam I belief there is something to fight for.
"What I built since"
Via small steps the Intrapreneur became an Entrepreneur. The first step was co-founding www.Aloxy.io at the time still active in a corporate environment and I solved a problem that I experienced as an operations with IoT.
www.CHENEXT.com was the first entreprise I co-founded as an entrepreneur and that would reposition the employee in the process industry back towards the center after I had seen that employee been pushed awy from that center for over 20 years.
Followed by www.digitalintrapreneursfactory.com, to make sure that I would be the last intrapreneur of a generation, I found a way to teach other the gather the courage to move in another direction than management wants. Time to get back the courage into the corporate world.
And then www.TwilightFab.com from a sound belief that manufacturing has a place in Europe and that we can compete with Asia and the Americas. Legacy is not a liability, it is a perfect starting point towards almost autonomous manufacturing.
At the core of all of this: continuous personal skill stacking of the digital technologies through training, education and entrepreneurial endeavours.
"Who I am outside work"
I am born Belgian and “Limburger” !
Maaseik is my home turf !
My passion is triathlon and drumming (both I started at an age over 40) !
My family and my sport are the foundation of my life !
Travelling and Learning keep me humble !
And one day, I want to cross that finish line, ring that bell and shout “I am an Ironman” ! For now I have to settle with I am half an Ironman ;-)