Foresight
A prediction without an outcome is an opinion. The five below are dated, and in four of them the outcome is settled.
The screen arrived on the desk. The desk stayed as it was.
Computers reached the office. Heavy cathode-ray monitors took over the desks, posture deteriorated, and nobody was talking about it. Screen ergonomics was not a subject at the time, not in regulation, not among manufacturers.
Reichelt developed monitor arms and support systems, protected them by registered design, and built an industrial operation to manufacture them. Over the years, 60 per cent of Germany's 500 largest companies used his systems, along with much of the public administration: the federal postal service, the regional revenue offices and others.
Outcome. German screen-workplace regulation followed in 1996, fifteen years later. The adjustable monitor arm is standard equipment today. Reichelt changed the shape of the office for good.
1980s
Germany was arguing about the 36-hour week. He introduced the opposite.
The shorter working week was regarded as social progress. Reichelt considered it unprofitable and counterproductive for the demands of manufacturing. A shop floor with fluctuating order volumes and binding delivery dates cannot be forced into a rigid weekly frame.
In his own plant he introduced a working-time and pay system: annualised hours instead of weekly hours, and broad deployment of staff: fitters, turners, welders and assistants all worked on everything. A share in the production value achieved made performance tangible in people's own pockets.
And he made sure everyone on the floor knew the customer, the quantity and the promised date. The customer stood at the centre of production. A large order from a well-known name, delivered on time, became a shared achievement everyone could take pride in.
Outcome. Large German companies, the car makers above all, are now moving back from rigid weekly hours to flexible use of time. It took longer than he expected.
1980s
He predicted the fall of the Wall. From economic logic.
Reichelt argued that the Eastern Bloc could not keep pace with technical development in the West, that it would be ruined economically and militarily, and that the Berlin Wall would fall as a consequence.
That position ran entirely counter to the public and political opinion of the day.
Outcome. November 1989.
2001
He predicted a consumer right to know. Twenty-five years before the legislator.
From 2001 onwards, Reichelt argued in his talks that consumers would come to expect, and eventually demand, information about the quality of products and their components. For a long time he held that view alone.
He did not wait to be proved right. In 2008 the first portal went online, setting out the risks and benefits of cosmetic ingredients and products. In 2012 the world's first interactive quality seal followed: a QR code on the product disclosing every component and its properties. In 2020 André Pankratz rebuilt the entire platform, with twelve years of experience behind it and AI translation in every database entry. In 2023 came the lead generator, which turns the scan into a customer relationship.
Outcome. The EU Ecodesign Regulation (ESPR) requires precisely this, through the Digital Product Passport. What Reichelt had been building voluntarily since 2007 becomes mandatory from 2027 for every company worldwide that supplies products into the EU.
AI does not change the work. It changes the organisation.
The common expectation is that artificial intelligence replaces employees. Reichelt's observation from practice is different: fewer people are needed, but considerably more experienced ones.
The reason lies in how agents work. An agent is only as good as the instruction it is given. Only someone with real command of the subject can write it. The same holds in reverse: whether a result is usable, incomplete or wrong can be judged reliably only by someone who knows the material. Experience, booked for decades as an expense, becomes the decisive factor in both quality and output.
From this he developed the Agentic Leadership Architecture and put it into practice at Transpareo. No employees, no support apparatus, no volume sales force, no investor capital. A handful of highly experienced managers who also sit on the board and hold shares in the company.
In progress. McKinsey now describes the same movement as the ‘agentic organisation’. AI-native providers achieve several times the revenue per employee of conventional SaaS companies.
‘The only agents in this company are artificial ones.’