Forum Radio: Jonathan Aeberhard

Jonathan Aeberhard (London) is Senior Vice President of Cheng Chung Design (CCD), leading the foundation of the CCD London studio. Founded in Shenzhen, the award-winning, publicly traded architecture and interior design studio has a focus on hotels and luxury residential developments worldwide. Formerly, Jonathan led GA Designs with his father, Werner Aeberhard, another long-standing and valued Forum members.

Here's Jonathan's take on Forum and why it works so well for him: 'If you're an entrepreneur or in a start-up or you're in a senior role, I found 95% of my consciousness was taken up with my to do list...you don't get a chance to step back and look at the broader landscape, and I think Forum has really helped me do that.'

Transcript

J Aeberhard podcast 

[Speaker 2]

Hello and welcome to Forum Radio, our ongoing series of interviews with Forum members from all around the world. So today it's really great to be talking to Jonathan Eberhard. Jonathan is a London member but spent many years living in Kuala Lumpur when he was CEO of GA Design.

This was the firm founded by his father Werner, another long-standing, much beloved Forum member. GA Design was sold at the end of last year and Jonathan has very recently taken up a post as Senior Vice President of Chengcheng Design in London. You can read a lovely article Jonathan wrote about working with his father in the summer 2024 issue of Inforum magazine but today we'll be talking about how Jonathan thinks about things and the future.

So thanks so much for being with us today Jonathan.

[Speaker 1]

Thank you for having me on.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah that's great and so given the strand of design that runs through your life, I wonder if someone from that world is your inspiration or maybe it's something completely different?

[Speaker 1]

Yes well you've already mentioned Werner so and many Forum members will know him. So he's a great character, obviously he's my dad and I was very privileged in my own way to grow up as the son of an entrepreneur as he was growing this business having worked in the hospitality industry. He set up GA and did hotel design effectively and we grew the business.

Lastly for the last 12 years I worked with him to grow that business to exit. So that was a real privilege and I think like many sons of entrepreneurs, first generation entrepreneurs, you see the drive, you see the ambition and I think above the curiosity that you need in the design world to push for new solutions. So it was great fun to work with him and to do that so obviously Werner is a key inspiration for me.

I think that's that's on the one hand. On the other hand I actually started my career straight out of uni. I did English language and literature which you'll be familiar with as a great degree.

It doesn't lead unless you want to be a journalist or a writer such as yourself and you have those chops I suppose of the talent, it doesn't lead specifically on to a set industry. So coming out of Oxford after my brilliant degree I was looking for something that could be relatively remunerative but also quite creative at the same time. So I ended up in advertising and I worked for a big agency called Ogilvy & Mather.

So in terms of inspiration David Ogilvy who was the quite famous founder of Ogilvy & Mather, I think to see his brand and his personality and how that was infused through this company in the 1980s I think they had something like 45 different locations around the world and 91 offices. So David Ogilvy really, I experienced the legacy of his business and his brand and his personality so he was a real inspiration from a business sense on how you can take a creative business, infuse it with these core values and grow it around the world. So Verna very inspirational for me in many ways but certainly around the entrepreneurial business aspects and then David Ogilvy I think gave me an insight and gave me the opportunity to travel and live abroad through his agency and seeing what he achieved and how he created this ethos that still lives today.

So two quite different inspirations for me.

[Speaker 2]

Yeah I love that and then I mean you know having gone from working with your father to now working for another company I imagine you took a bit of time to reflect and distill down what it was you wanted to do in the next step of your career. I'd be curious to know something about the decision-making process you took there and what it is you love about the role that you've got now.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah so it was a you know it was a big step moving to exit and it was great that we could do that. It had always been a plan with Verna and I to do that with GA so that was very much like closing a chapter and then I had some time out like you said I had a chance to reflect. I took an AI course a short course at Oxford which was very interesting slightly different but you know I think AI is infusing itself across every part of our life business, personal, social all of that that that was interesting and I you know for the first time I had a bit of time to be able to do that.

That was a three-month thing at Said Business School also at Oxford so that was really interesting just to do something really different but also to come out of some time you know saying that that's that's an achievement that's what I did in that time and then yeah I was looking at what to do next and you mentioned I lived in Southeast Asia we at GA we opened a studio in Shanghai. I'd spent a lot of time traveling in China working with clients in China so I knew about the industry out there and I was always drawn to and interested in this interplay between east and west because I think that's the foundational paradigm that we're in right now politically obviously there's the US of course but fundamentally I think the growth of China as a trading entity and as a cultural entity is really interesting so yeah I think I got the chance to think about well how could I use those 12 years of living in that part of the world I think my you know obviously you reflect on what is your own USP if you like I think having that sort of bridging understanding between what is happening out there that viewpoint on the world and I'm talking about design culture these kind of aspects that are important in the hospitality design industry and being able to be a bridge between those two kind of influences and so very fortunately I got in contact with this company called CCD Chengcheng Design they were really interested to speak to me and it flew me out to their HQ in Shenzhen and sat down with the board and the founder and we talked about their ambitions and amazingly which is really quite remarkable there was a complete synchronicity between where they were having been established for 30 years you know very big in China just started to venture abroad with a Singapore studio Tokyo studio and they were looking at London and Dubai as a next step and then here was here was I coming and saying look you know I'm interested in maybe I could help you so it was complete match you know um so that was just a real amazing amazing coincidence I guess and that's led to my my current role.

[Speaker 2]

I love that so it's like all the roads have led to this point so um I mean do you speak you speak Chinese or do you speak?

[Speaker 1]

No not not really that that's something I'm that's something I'm working on I've got Julie on the go I've had some lessons in the past so I'm I kind of have some basic um understanding but not no competency at all no.

[Speaker 2]

But you've obviously got an admiration for and a respect for the for the for the Asian kind of culture and um and I'm interested in it because I think you know we talked a little bit off air about um you know this kind of growth of an expansion of China and what what it's doing but in a comfortable way you know not not in this kind of way to be daunted by.

[Speaker 1]

Yeah I mean I think I'm not I'm not I'm not a politician and I'm not involved in that arena so that put that to one side for the moment I from my travels out there there are lots of private companies there are lots of individuals um that are incredibly bright it's such a large it's such a large country you was stating the obvious but they're you know 60 cities in China with a larger population than London you know you can go to what they call a tier three or tier four city and find really quite you know upper middle class type quality of life and the aspirations are the same I I believe in the power of a global outlook I believe in uh the power of capitalism to leverage ambition and create positive movement for change and all of these things so I think those kind of values are very much similar and uh they're very sort of I find Chinese culture out there with with the enlightened you know professional class that many of them speak excellent English or have studied abroad or spent time abroad and they're just so open-minded and curious and they're just this trip I mean it's like a microcosm um being invited out and you know they're saying like you know we want to learn from you we want to and I'm like I mean you're the bigger entity you're listed you got a thousand plus people you're doing great work but you're saying you want to learn from me you know it's amazing they're so open-minded and they want to know what we've done in the west you know in your relative sphere what's worked how they can infuse that so Joe who's the founder at CCD said to me look we want CCD to be a global design brand that stands for excellence around the world it's not a Chinese company we want it to be this global design so a bit like if you stay in a Hilton hotel Hilton originally was American but I don't think if you're staying in a Hilton in London or Amsterdam or somewhere you don't go I'm in an American right you just go I'm in a great Hilton hotel you know so I thought I thought that was really refreshing and um obviously there's a there's a large group of talented people um in that network and I have the great opportunity to work with all that backup to sort of lead and found the studio in London it's going to be very exciting

[Speaker 2]

so you've explained a little bit about sort of where you are now and where do you think you'll be in five years time or where do you hope to be what do you think you need to get there

[Speaker 1]

well you know I think I hope in five years time we'll have a very successful CCD London studio it'll be staffed by British or other European talent we'll be leveraging the absolute best of the architecture and design industry in London and in Europe working on projects around the EMEA region and I also think based on what I've seen on my visits out to Shenzhen and Hong Kong we'll be leveraging AI you know we'll be using AI to make our work our documentation quicker faster and more profitable for clients and more efficient I also hope in five years time I'll be able to speak a little bit of Mandarin better than I can at the moment so that's the plan anyway um yeah and to get there well I suppose you know like any in essence it's a startup in London so we need supportive open-minded clients um you know more contextually I think we need stable growth in the UK it was fascinating to see you know you take this company CCD in Shenzhen looking at how they can invest their capital for growth London was on a competition with Dubai which where should they invest you know what are the opportunities for them because it was an either-or discussion right so the UK PLC being stable having policies for growth having dynamic attitudes towards small business and investment is really important it was a bit of a struggle but I got there you know so that's and I think aligned with that culturally in the UK we need to remove a stigma around wealth creators and wealthy families and individuals you know we need these people are generating income for us as a country and if we create an environment that stigmatizes this kind of investment it will go elsewhere and it will go rapidly elsewhere um yeah on top of all of that I think I would I would like a healthy dash of luck as well just to just to make the cocktail really soon just to move it on mixing my metaphors terribly

[Speaker 2]

but there we go yeah but then no I'm interested as well in the AI course that you talked about and then you just mentioned just there you know using AI um for documentation so there's been lots of different forum conversations about it and um on the whole I would say the attitude is becoming increasingly positive where you know there was a sort of fear of AI a couple of years ago people are beginning to see how it can be helpful and instrumental can you tell us a little bit about that use of it you said within documentation I'm interested in that yeah so

[Speaker 1]

I think in so again you know just to clarify so what is our product we design architectural interior designs for luxury hotels around the world so at CCD famous projects will be like the Mandarin Oriental in Beijing was all all of the interior was designed by CCD or the Shangri-La Nanshan in Shenzhen these kind of projects so there's a creative element a conceptual element a narrative storytelling element but then there's also the document there's architectural drawing CAD documentation there's quite a technical aspect to it so I think the tail's been wagging the dog in this AI discussion when it relates to creative services sectors um to a certain degree because I firmly believe you need the human element in the creative process right and that's the AI should be there to support that not to replace it and in our industry where the AI could be incredibly powerful is looking at how you speed up the more kind of um structural documentation or other technical processes that support the creative process so for example in the hotels that we would typically design we would design bespoke furniture for the entire project and that could be you know 400 to 1000 key hotels so huge vast number of um individual items of furniture you need to specify all the materials in there so looking at how you could use AI to help speed up that process make it less labor intensive less manual and more automated will just benefit everyone because you're making a process that's low value high time consumption into something that's much faster and more efficient that's just one example where I think we'd be looking at um AI.

CCD are already pretty advanced in this I have to say they're the large library in Shenzhen full of all the materials you'd specify all of those materials are tagged with their RFID tags when you're working there you can create a mood board with all the different samples it'll scan the tags and it'll automatically allocate everything that you've selected into a digital system so already they're working with digital components but aligning the AI on top of that I think will be very very powerful hopefully that's too much information.

[Speaker 2]

No no it's really interesting because I think all of us are you know going to be looking at using AI in in a slightly different way and so it's intriguing to find out you know how you would do that um you've obviously you've been a member of Forum actually for a while although you've followed in your father's wake did anything has anything surprised you about your time with Forum as a member?

[Speaker 1]

Yeah I mean it's I think the um the breadth of the members backgrounds you know where they coming from I think I talk about the adjacency of people so personally I've found Forum is not for me to join to be rubbing shoulders with my industry folk because I have other channels to do that right so it's not it's not for that there are different channels for that but you know being able to hear Alan Hilberg talk about VUCA you know the instability in the world and how that's affecting you know Outlook or Parag Khanna to talk about his viewpoint on you know global markets and growth etc is is really valuable and I don't know you know to the listeners here if you're full-time you know if you're an entrepreneur if you're in a startup or if you're in a senior role I mean I found anyhow that certainly 95% of my consciousness was taken up with my to-do list and everything I was having to do and you don't get a chance to step back and look at the broader landscape and I think Forum's really helped me do that and it's helped me meet these people in adjacent sectors or industries where you know very often to be honest like for me in our sector it's not the immediate contact isn't a client I don't go to Forum thinking oh that direct Forum member could be a hospitality hotel project you know client yeah but what I'm finding is I would go to the Forum member and there would be one or two steps off from that member would be someone that would be really useful for me and I think that's what it gives you it gives you this chance to branch out from your relatively deep but narrow sector contacts into adjacencies that enable you to broaden broaden your Outlook and broaden your business and it's fun it's important to say that you know

[Speaker 2]

well fun is a big part of it I mean you talked about you know with Werner and the privilege of growing up with him and I imagine a big part of that was the fun that he and your mum must have you know brought that kind of curiosity and playfulness

[Speaker 1]

um yes yeah I mean that was a big part of it I mean we would I can tell you um not many people when they were 13 went which is what happened to me went to Ethiopia with my dad for summer holidays so when other people were doing whatever they were doing off we'd go because he thought that would be interesting experience for me to go and look at our project we were doing in Addis Ababa which was the Sheraton if anyone's been there so there we were on a site visit age 13 together it's just fantastic you know so I think um in this hotel design industry you know there's this curiosity to travel the world and meet people and make these connections and a bit like with Forum, Forum's global right it's expanded like that and underneath it all like you know if you're having a great time meeting interesting people and doing fun things everything else will flow

[Speaker 2]

yeah yeah I think so you know thank you thank you I mean do you think I hope it's true that Forum has helped you kind of personally or professionally can you can you identify that at all yeah I mean

[Speaker 1]

there's been you know we've formed some quite deep relationships actually with some individuals in the group and you know I think those relationships have been very helpful there's been times where you've needed advice or sat down with people and you know explained situations or developments and then taken on board really valuable advice so I think that that's been really fantastic to have that sort of trusted circle that you can go to because things aren't always smooth you know there's ups and there's downs along the journey as well so I think you know I think it I think Forum is a great um sort of third space in that regard and I you know the whole discussion around for example return to office and work from home you know I think that's kind of similar in a way it's really important for mental health for individuals to have people that aren't your nearest and dearest necessarily you know that you're not related they're not brothers and sisters and stuff but you've got these relations that you can go to that you can talk with and connect with and discuss and share and then you don't have to see them every week and you don't have to send birthday cards and stuff but you get together you have a great time and those relationships that come out along the journey certain people in that group have been incredibly helpful both to my dad and to myself so yeah thank you that's so well put so nice to

[Speaker 2]

hear thank you Jonathan and that's it's all we've really got time for today sadly I'd like to have gone on more but um thanks to everyone for listening to Forum radio remember you can connect directly with all members including Jonathan wherever they are through the Forum website on forum.club go to the members directory and filter by either professional or personal interest and keep an eye on the news feed for member news as well as events happening in the so thank you once again Jonathan it was really lovely to see it and until next week goodbye