John Glennane traveled from Dublin to The Hague to sit down with Jens Heitland, and the two spent two days talking about what actually holds a business together. John is the CEO of Capventis, a technology and design consultancy, and the co-founder of a project called Glue that reimagines how business and technology should relate to each other.
In this conversation, John and Jens work through why so many organizations end up governed by technology they never fully understand, what John calls the four biases that quietly block improvement, and the seven elements of design he uses to take a business apart and rebuild it with intention. They also talk about education, apprenticeship, the role of AI as an accelerant rather than a shortcut, and the difference between a job and a vocation.
John is the author of Improve: A Good Idea, written with support from James McCabe.
Timecode:
00:00 Welcome Back Netherlands
00:10 Miss O'Neill Lessons
01:26 Choosing Engineering Path
02:44 Education Learning By Doing
06:27 Kids Curiosity And Questions
07:52 Screens And School Tech
10:56 Point Solutions Explained
16:13 Compaq Integration And Ventis
18:58 Business Before Technology
20:38 Evolving Capventis Team
26:40 What Makes Ideas Work
28:01 Why Companies Get Stuck
33:50 Four Biases And Kaizen
41:00 Improvement By Design
43:32 Capability To Mastery
50:01 True Design Seven Elements
50:54 Things And Entities
52:05 Mapping Business Things
52:50 Relationships Matter Most
53:59 Process And Change
55:16 Collections And Knowledge
56:40 Structure The Quintessence
59:14 Space And Time Dimensions
01:00:08 Deconstruct And Reconstruct
01:06:32 AI As Accelerator
01:09:18 Brilliant Basics Adoption
01:14:03 Reinventing Technology Glue
01:23:56 Vocation And Work
01:29:11 Why Write Improve
01:32:31 Who The Book Is For
01:33:52 Closing Thanks And Future
Guest links:
John Glennane: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-glennane-bb7496/
Business: https://www.capventis.com/
Jens Links:https://www.jensheitland.com/links
