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