In the “wooden hut” people like to think outside the box

There’s a sentence that can really annoy Gerhard Hinterkörner: “It’s definitely not going to work.” He had heard it often enough when he set out to establish a new segment in the local food trade with “Aunt Fanny”. The success of his fresh dough products was all the more convincing. “If everyone says it’s complete nonsense, then you’re usually right. Pessimists are never right,” says Hinterkörner looking back.

He sold his shares in “Aunt Fanny” five years ago. But the Schwertberger is as economically active as ever: with company investments, as an investor – and as a host of discussion groups in which people enjoy unconventional and passionate discussions about the future of our economic activities.

The setting for these rounds is Hinterkörner’s “wooden hut”. This wooden block extension to a single-family house is located in the middle of Schwertberg. But this room has very little to do with a rustic barn. Open and airy instead of narrow and stuffy, Hinterkörner’s debating club brings to the table topics that are important to our society: fair distribution of wealth, innovative strength, digitalization, but also the preservation of our nature for future generations. The Mühlviertler is convinced that this requires a completely new “mind setting”: “The times when it was only about power and money are over. Today’s young people are excellently educated. Like this generation, some of them from my peers Being talked down to is a nightmare for me. The young people just take different approaches because they first ask whether what they are doing brings added value to society.”

Hinterkörner now likes to ask exactly these questions himself. Among other things, on social media or in guest comments. He regularly reaches several thousand people, but it has a different quality to address such considerations – like in the wooden hut – in a smaller circle: “If it’s about us moving from talking to doing, it works much better in a personal setting Environment.”

Because optimism and a can-do mentality consistently prevail in the wooden hut discussions, Hinterkörner, for example, sees artificial intelligence by no means as a threat, but rather as an opportunity: “It gets rid of those activities that actually annoy us and steal time.”

Hinterkörner now likes to describe his everyday professional life as a “business concierge”. This also includes what happens in the wooden hut: “In a good hotel, the concierge is someone who fulfills the seemingly impossible wishes of his guests. That’s how I see my service too. I build bridges and bring people together to advance ideas.”