Peter Kreuz: “If you enclose people with fences, you create sheep.”
For twenty years, Peter Kreuz has been seeking out individuals and organizations across all continents who dare to think and act unconventionally. These are companies that attract top talent and loyal customers, driven by people passionate about making a meaningful impact through their work.
Through his presentations, Peter Kreuz inspires audiences to reconsider leadership and work practices. Rather than adhering to traditional success formulas, the goal is to uncover new ways of thinking and acting, embracing the future with personal accountability, agility, experimentation, and a smart approach to mistakes.
What can you expect? Insights into how your work can make a lasting impact. An unconventional guide for your personal and business future. The bravery to think and act outside the norm. And employees who transform into creative activists. Because within every individual and organization lies untapped potential waiting to be awakened.
Peter Kreuz Lecture topics
- Rebel Ideas: The call to think differently
Digital transformation, evolving customer demands, new business models, and emerging competitors mean change is rapid and disruptive. In an era of intense competition and unpredictable crises, even the most successful companies must continuously reassess every aspect of their operations.
But how do you find new opportunities where others see only limitations? How can traditional success patterns be challenged when the fear of failure is so strong? How do you foster a culture that demands and nurtures innovation? In essence, how do you drive sustainable, positive change in fast-paced, turbulent times?
Peter Kreuz addresses these questions in his thought-provoking and motivating keynote. His message empowers employees to guide their organizations into the future and maintain their status as industry pioneers. He illustrates his points with vivid examples of companies that have successfully led change and disrupted their sectors.
- Don’t waste a crisis!
In a rapidly changing world, it is essential to rethink: crises act as magnifiers and accelerators of inevitable change. The future agenda is not dictated by crises but by those willing to challenge old certainties and bring critical future issues into focus: What lies ahead? What will endure? What must urgently change?
- Why experiments are uncomfortable, but certainties are irrational.
- Why change has become the new normal.
- How to establish a smart learning and error culture.
- How to implement “thinking without guardrails.”
- How psychological safety fosters high-performing teams.
When technologies, markets, and business models evolve at unprecedented speed and the world becomes increasingly volatile and unpredictable, is there still a valid strategy? Yes, but it has fundamentally changed. Today’s strategy is experimentation.
- Leadership in the digital age: culture, mindset & new work
How can we cultivate a culture where openness to change and innovative thinking are as natural as the ability to develop and execute new ideas? Although there are no ready-made solutions, there are effective action patterns for new, agile collaboration forms. Key themes include self-directed work, personal responsibility, speed, experimentation, and a culture that embraces mistakes.
- Hidden champions, pioneers & rebels
Beneath the headlines about large corporations lies a quiet, unassuming force from which we can learn much about sustainable success and global competitiveness, far from management fads. These are the hidden champions, pioneers, and rebels at work—highly specialized SMEs dominating international markets with passion and dedication. The German-speaking countries of Germany, Austria, and Switzerland alone account for nearly 60 percent of the world’s hidden champions.
This lecture offers an inside look at these global market leaders and pioneers who often ignore corporate management trends and follow their own rules.
- Jazz Mindset: Leadership, teamwork and innovation in times of change
Jazz serves as a forward-thinking model for leadership amid digitalization, disruption, and profound change, as a jazz ensemble achieves peak creativity with minimal rules. This lecture is highly inspiring, enriched by jazz soundbites, and is most impactful when combined with live music, engaging conversation, and refreshments.
Peter Kreuz previously managed an American management consultancy and was a marketing professor at the University of Vienna. Since 2001, he has led his own company and co-founded REBELS AT WORK, a community of bold innovators who promote new thinking through intellect rather than force.
Peter Kreuz is also an author of books translated into multiple languages, appearing on bestseller lists such as Spiegel, Manager Magazin, and Handelsblatt.
Manager Magazin commented on Peter Kreuz: “Richly illustrated and cheeky, he advocates for thinking differently and bringing courage, enjoyment, and passion back into everyday business life.”
