If No One Gets It, No One Uses It

At Tech Show Frankfurt, Sarah Yvonne Elsser and Alexander Pessler, Co-Founders of Tech Well Told, focused on how sovereign innovation is understood once it moves beyond technical teams.

The session opened with a simple exercise. Many attendees identified themselves as working with sovereign technologies. Fewer remained when asked whether they could explain, in one sentence, why a non-technical colleague should choose a sovereign solution.

“So you see that is the gap we are working in.”

The difference lies between capability and explanation, where systems exist but their relevance is not always clear to those expected to use or adopt them.

Sovereignty as Control

The speakers returned to how sovereignty is defined in practice. They stressed that ‘sovereignty is not a label on a product’.

“Sovereignty is control, control when it matters, control over data, over infrastructure, operations, legal frameworks and of course decisions.”

The definition moves attention toward conditions where control becomes visible, particularly when ownership changes, legal frameworks shift, or infrastructure is disrupted.

Value Before Function

The discussion transitioned toward how technology is communicated.

“The problem with technology is that people don’t only want to understand what it is, but why they should use it.”

Examples such as SAP Leonardo were used to illustrate how feature-led explanations can leave audiences without a clear sense of relevance.

“No one buys a product which has 11 features instead of ten when they don’t understand what they’re for.”

Understanding forms around context, where decisions are shaped by daily work, risk exposure and organisational priorities rather than technical specification alone.

Clarity Over Completeness

A second pattern emerged around how much information is presented.

“Your audience does not need all the information. They need the right one.”

The emphasis sits on sequencing, where communication begins with the decision being made rather than the full set of available details.

The speakers described this as giving “one answer to one question,” with different audiences requiring different entry points into the same technology.

The discussion then returned to how sovereignty becomes visible.

“Sovereignty is what happens when something happens.”

The distinction appears in moments of disruption, where dependency, legal change or infrastructure failure begin to affect how systems operate.

Evolution Rather Than Overload

The final part of the session moved through how adoption unfolds over time.

Examples such as Gaia-X and Estonia’s public sector digitisation were used to contrast large-scale ambition with more sequential development, where systems are introduced in stages and build on one another.

The difference appears in how the next step is understood.

“The real barrier is not people who resist change. But people who resist being overwhelmed.”

Adoption, in this context, sits alongside clarity and pacing, where expectations, priorities and entry points shape whether systems move into use.

Across the session, sovereign innovation appears less constrained by technology than by how it is communicated, where understanding, relevance and sequencing influence whether systems move from availability into adoption.