Fear and trembling

The minutes of an internal meeting of Hasso Plattner have survived in which he stated that he was surrounded by incompetent employees and that the few who were not incompetent in his eyes were doing the wrong things.

Hasso Plattner fears the failure of his SAP. This is a concrete fear that makes him tremble. What scares him, on the other hand, are his "neighbors" in Silicon Valley:

In his opinion, the many start-ups and corporations such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc. move much faster, more successfully, more agile than his "European" SAP in Walldorf.

It is a diffuse, subjective anxiety that arises from an American point of view. The result is unrest and stress. Hasso Plattner drives SAP employees ahead of him as if there were no tomorrow, and today the task is to save SAP from going under.

At an opening ceremony for an SAP research center in Potsdam, he even criticized the building architecture in Walldorf, comparing it to the supposedly open lifestyle and work style in Silicon Valley:

He suggested that nothing productive or innovative could come out of Walldorf if there were only two SAP employees sitting opposite each other in every small, cramped office - you'd have to knock down all the walls.

It is understandable that many feel insecure and, driven by fear, dread the coming revolution. But Walldorf still stands, just as it was built - and is as successful as ever!

"Fear and trembling" as described by the Danish philosopher Sören Kierkegaard (1813 to 1855) in his book of the same name, published under the pseudonym Johannes de Silentio, can be explained in religious terms, but is probably not appropriate for the state of SAP:

There is nothing to fear!

SAP is and will remain the world market leader for standard business software.

No other software suite is as comprehensive, complete and tested as SAP Business Suite 7. European holistic knowledge and action will remain superior to any singular specialization for a very long time to come.

Maybe Apple has the nicer user interface compared to Fiori, maybe Google or Amazon has the more efficient and cheaper cloud computing, but in the sum of all characteristics - business, organizational, technical - SAP is and remains unbeaten.

What is Hasso Plattner afraid of? What is he specifically afraid of?

Naturally, you can be afraid of mobile and cloud computing because others can do it better. But there is no need to be afraid as long as you remain true to your own core competence:

SAP, on the other hand, has to lose a "cloud competition" because Microsoft, IBM, Amazon and Google have the better economies of scale. It is a mass business where an ERP provider can only burn its fingers.

Close cooperation with German Telekom could save SAP a lot of headaches and allow the Group to move forward into the future without fear.

In "The concept of fear"Under the pseudonym Vigilius Haufniensis, Sören Kierkegaard discusses the human condition as a "perilous" synthesis of soul and body or of the eternal and the temporal. Fear appears as a symptom of the crisis-like genesis of human freedom.

"Don't be afraid and stay true to your core competency - this is also a very good way to achieve digital transformation"

is what you want to call out to SAP employees. It is important to use freedom without fear.

A fear-mongering Hasso Plattner is perhaps understandable, but certainly not necessary: An ERP world without SAP is unthinkable!