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From international recognition to local resistance: a reflection on culture, progress, and belonging.
It happens in one sentence.
A well-meaning acquaintance, once working for the German employment agency, looks at my list of certifications — Digital Transformation Manager, Chief Digital Officer, AI Change Management, Design Thinking with AI — and says with pity in her voice:
“But Rob, these are niche topics. Nobody needs that.”
And I smile politely.
But inside, I’m furious.
Not because of her tone — but because of what it represents.
Two worlds, one gap
In international meetups — with the Jules White community, the global AI circles, and design thinking cohorts from the U.S., India, and the Netherlands — people understand immediately.
They ask the right questions:
“How do you scale this in organizations?”
“How do you make AI explainable?”
“How can human-centered frameworks replace rigid transformation models?”
It’s not a debate. It’s a conversation.
There’s curiosity, humility, and respect.
Then, back in Germany, you mention “Agentic AI” or “human-centered transformation,”
and people look at you as if you’ve started speaking Martian.
If it’s not in the drop-down menu of the bureaucracy, it doesn’t exist.
If it’s not listed in a funding framework, it’s not relevant.
That’s the difference between ecosystem thinking and form thinking.
Between an innovation culture and an administrative culture.
The hidden meaning of ‘niche’
“Niche” doesn’t mean small.
It means ahead of the curve.
But when someone says, “That’s a niche topic,” what they often mean is:
“I don’t understand it — and that makes me uncomfortable.”
It’s not about the value of your knowledge.
It’s about their inability to classify it.
And because the system is built around classifications,
everything outside its boxes becomes invisible.
That’s why people like me — people who connect design, AI, agility, and human psychology —
don’t fit in the machine.
We build what comes after the machine.
Recognition vs. relevance
Internationally, my skills are part of the mainstream discussion.
In Germany, they’re treated like eccentric hobbies.
It’s a strange feeling — to be valued globally but doubted locally.
To be seen as a thought leader in one space and “overqualified” in another.
But this dissonance reveals something bigger:
Germany still equates familiarity with reliability.
If it’s new, it’s suspicious.
If it’s proven elsewhere, it’s still “not German enough.”
Meanwhile, the world moves on —
open-source agents, hybrid transformation frameworks, data-driven empathy.
While the political discourse here still starts with:
“We must finally become digital.”
(Six years after I started learning how to lead digital change.)
The deeper lesson
When the world values you, and your own country doesn’t understand you,
you learn a lot about perspective.
It’s not arrogance — it’s alignment.
It means your thinking resonates with the future,
not with the comfort of the past.
The truth is simple:
The future doesn’t care about comfort zones.
It rewards those who act while others still argue if it’s necessary.
So yes — maybe what I do is niche.
But so were electricity, the internet, and design thinking once.
And like them, this “niche” will eventually become normal.
Just not here first.
