Karsten Baumgartl
Technology Executive - Product, AI & Enterprise Transformation
I combine entrepreneurial product ownership with nearly a decade of management consulting, bringing the perspective of building businesses from zero, scaling organizations, and restructuring complex enterprises across markets and cultures.
Recurring revenue in one year
Delivery per teammate
Years across product, technology, consulting and transformation
From venture building to sustainable scale
Selected Executive Impact
Turning ownership into measurable change
Across product businesses, venture building and AI transformation, the pattern is consistent: improve the system, raise decision quality and leave stronger operating capability behind.
Business Ownership
Scaled a product business for sustainable growth
Owned the product business as an integrated commercial and product system rather than a feature portfolio.
2.2x recurring revenue in one year
Venture Building
Built a new digital business from zero
Created a digital unit for a major chemicals company, moving from an initial proposition into a functioning business capability.
Zero → operating digital business
Business Model Expansion
Added services to a product-only busines
Built the service portfolio of a venture originally focused solely on product sales, creating a second engine for customer value and growth.
The services business subsequently grew beyond product-sales revenue
AI Transformation
Moved AI beyond isolated experiments
Turned two AI proofs of concept into a broader executive conversation about how AI should operate across the organization.
PoCs → long-term AI operating-model mandate
Organizational Leverage
Improved the system instead of adding pressure
Linked team conditions and collaboration quality to delivery performance, then changed the operating environment around the teams.
300%+ delivery per teammate
Zero-to-One Product
Turned ambiguity into products people could use
Built new digital propositions with clients by moving from unresolved business problems through validation into tangible products and capabilities.
Repeated zero-to-one product creation
Professional Context
Experience shaped from more than one side of transformation
Entrepreneurship, product leadership, venture building, Big Four transformation and AI advisory have each changed how I approach the next operating problem.
2010-2012
Entrepreneurship
insane4frame
Founding Partner / Creative Director
Built and led a digital agency focused on interactive products, creative technology and client delivery.
2012-2018
Product Leadership
troi.
Head of Product / SaaS Platform
Owned product strategy, platform evolution and distributed product and engineering teams in an international B2B SaaS business.
2018-2020
Venture Building
etventure
Manager / Digital Product & Venture Building
Built new digital products and businesses with enterprise clients, moving from ambiguous opportunity through validation into operating capability.
2020-2023
Big Four Transformation
EY
Manager / Digital Product & Transformation
Advised large enterprises on digital strategy, product transformation and organizational change in complex stakeholder environments.
2023-2026
AI & EXECUTIVE ADVISORY
Slalom Consulting
Senior Principal / Business Advisory & AI Strategy
Led executive advisory across AI strategy, adoption, operating models and enterprise transformation, connecting experimentation with durable organizational capability.
Operating Principles
How I lead transformation
The environments change. The principles I use to make consequential decisions do not.
01
Clarity Before Activity
Define the decision, intended outcome and constraints before committing people, technology or capital to motion.
02
Evidence Before Scale
Test assumptions against real customers, operational signals and measurable outcomes before increasing commitment or complexity.
03
Build Capabilities, Not Projects
Design products, operating models and teams that can be owned, improved and scaled after the transformation program ends.
04
Human Judgement Where It Matters
Use AI and data to increase leverage while keeping accountability, context and consequential decisions with people.
Current Work
Open Source Consulting
I am building Open Source Consulting as an experiment in AI-native professional services: practical frameworks, experiments and executive thinking on how organizations create value in the Cognitive Revolution.
OpenAI Select Partner
Working within the OpenAI Partner Network to explore how leading models can create measurable enterprise value.
Human Premium Enterprise
A human-centered model for organizations where AI makes routine cognitive output cheaper and judgement, trust and accountability more valuable.
The Cognitive Revolution
A strategic lens for what changes when cognition becomes cheaper, faster and more distributed across people and machines.
AI Value Assessment
A practical approach to test where AI can create measurable value before organizations commit to larger transformation investments.
Selected Thinking
Ideas I am testing in public
A selection of frameworks, experiments and executive arguments that show how I approach AI, product strategy, operating models and enterprise transformation.
AI Value Hypothesis: Use AI to Start the Idea… Then Try to Kill It
AI can help us explore ideas before certainty exists. The harder discipline is using the same cognitive leverage to challenge those ideas before enthusiasm becomes investment.
AI Decision Rights: Your Operating Model May Not Survive Agentic Scale
AI can multiply execution and cognitive output without multiplying leadership capacity. The resulting decision bottleneck makes explicit decision rights a core requirement of the agentic operating model.
What Happens When AI Eliminates the Bottleneck That Protects Your Margins?
AI business model disruption may not arrive by making companies less efficient. It may arrive when AI helps eliminate the bottleneck that protects their margins—and exposes which capabilities remain valuable afterward.
Open Source Executive Briefing CW30: The AI Capacity Dividend
AI creates a capacity dividend: recovered time, attention, and decision velocity. The executive question is whether organizations consume it as more output or reinvest it in operating-model redesign.
Executive Engagement
Ways I contribute beyond a formal mandate
I selectively contribute in settings where judgement, product and AI strategy, or operating model experience can materially improve the conversation or decision.
Keynotes & Panels
On AI transformation, product strategy, operating models and what leadership changes when cognitive work becomes cheaper.
Executive Sessions
Focused working sessions for leadership teams navigating AI adoption, product strategy, operating-model change or a consequential transformation decision.
Selected Advisory
Board-level and executive sparring on strategy, product and transformation questions where an independent perspective can improve decision quality.
Open to the right conversation
A useful conversation is enough to begin
I am open to conversations about executive leadership opportunities, speaking, strategic partnerships and selected advisory where my experience can materially improve the outcome.
Prefer to write here?
A few lines of context are enough. I'll take it from there.
