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Ideagen Radio
Ideagen Radio
2025 Global Impact Summit: Konstantinos Michanetzis
Leadership is more than a title; it’s a system that turns pressure into progress. We sit down in Athens with naval officer‑turned‑founder 2025 Global Impact Summit: Konstantinos Michanetzis to unpack how disciplined service, hard data, and startup speed can reshape everything from careers to crisis response. The story begins with a bold move: building Greece’s first structured career transition program for officers. By adapting best practices from the U.S., U.K., and France, Konstantinos helps highly trained veterans step into the private sector, where ethics and execution are rare and valuable. The result is a genuine talent pipeline that industry now pursues—proof that the right bridge benefits service members, business, and national readiness.
From there, we dive into AI in defense, where Konstantinos leads a national sector effort to align the military, universities, and private companies. The focus isn’t hype; it’s operational reality. What can AI do today? What risks sit on the horizon? How do we adjust strategy to capture the upside and limit the downside? That pragmatic lens comes alive in a striking project: a distributed fleet of drones designed to suppress wildfires. Instead of hauling impossible loads, these units sit close to risk, launch fast, navigate with geo-fencing and thermal vision, and deploy an AI‑guided fluid that multiplies effectiveness. They handle four hard problems at once: rapid initial attack, ember spot fires, night operations, and access to tight terrain where aircraft cannot fly and trucks arrive too late. Tested with the Hellenic Navy and supported by network infrastructure partners, the system aims to shrink response times when minutes matter most.
We also trace the origin of a venture studio born from Greece’s financial crisis and powered by MIT‑style acceleration. The thesis is direct: pair deep‑industry problem owners with the full innovation stack—product, engineering, go‑to‑market, and capital. That approach now scales across the continent through the European Defense Venture Studio, the first of its kind in Europe, bringing defense expertise and startup rigor under one roof. Konstantinos closes with grounded advice for future leaders: start at the bottom, master each rung, and earn the trust to lead. If you’re curious about how veteran talent, defense AI, and venture building intersect to solve real problems, this conversation offers a blueprint worth saving.
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Welcome to Idea Gen TV live from ACS Athens here in Athens, Greece. Today I'm honored to have with me Kostandinos Mechanizis. Kostandino?
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to meet you.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you everyone. So great to be here in Athens, especially here at ACS for this incredible summit today. Costantino, I'd like to ask you, you've done so much, and we'll get into your backgrounds. You know, it's it's been remarkable what you've done and what you're doing. But I'd like to start with a question, which is why is leadership so important to you?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, uh, first of all. Thank you for having me here with you. Uh I wish all the best for the series of videos you're doing. So leadership, I think it's uh it's like the lighthouse that uh drives the ship towards the direction. So if if you don't have someone to open to open the light, to give you direction, you can easily lose your path in the in this in the Black Sea. So leadership is about putting things together and making great ideas become a reality by providing a direction of how you should pursue your future. I don't know if it's very generic, but uh that's what I will say.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's appropriate in Greece to talk about a lighthouse uh surrounded by the ocean. And uh I'd like to then take it to the next level. You've served in the military here in Greece, you've created such incredibly successful companies and ventures. What is your proudest moment? What is the what is that thing that you look to to say, my gosh, that is one of the most amazing things I've ever done?
SPEAKER_01:Okay, I I I've done many things which I am very uh proud of been doing. But being an officer of the Navy, I think one of the most uh proud moments for me was uh when we announced the first career transition program for officers of the Navy, of the Armed Forces. And what I want to say here is that the Greece has a very highly educated, highly trained group of professionals which are trained in real situations. We are actually practically the only European nation that has been in active military uh operations for the last 40 years because of the situation of our country. And there is there has been a let's say a policy in the armed forces for many years to educate the officers in abroad, in high level, in top level of institutions like MIT, Harvard, Imperial, and many other universities. So we have a very good uh group of people highly educated, but with a lot of experience from the field with ethics, which uh when they were uh retired, they were not beast. So being able to provide a solution for the Greek uh society to help these people to transition to the private sector, I think this was one of the most proud moments of myself.
SPEAKER_00:You know, it it's incredible because you know, coming from the United States, uh we have a lot of career transition programs for veterans, especially. And to hear that you created uh the first one here in Greece, I mean, it just makes sense because you have such a highly qualified pool of candidates uh that have the discipline, the training, the background, et cetera, to be able to really succeed uh with some perspective in the private sector.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. As you said, it it is it's not only something that uh ethically, or let's say it makes me proud, I think it makes also absolutely sense as a business. As you said, and we actually uh studied all the career transition programs for the United States and Britain and France and many other nations, uh, which are doing a great job. And we were inspired by them. And we we took many aspects of these career transition programs to build our own. And there is a there's a such a big value in this group of people in a society which is growing right now. Now Greece is again back into high growth rates and needs uh professionals which are experienced and educated, and there's a huge pool over there, which has not been used. So it also makes great sense of uh business.
SPEAKER_00:So it's been going great and you want to expand it?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, it's going great. And now we are we are we're connecting with industry. So the industry saw the program now. The industry is coming and saying we want to get in there. So large uh industrial-based corporations uh or societies that want to come and help this thing so they can also find resources.
SPEAKER_00:I want to ask you because it's a big topic not only in the United States, it's globally. Um, and and one that I believe that you're familiar with. Um AI. AI is already here. It's already here, it's not coming, it's already here. And that would be is that one area that you help to train these officers, these well-trained, retiring military folks? So this is something something else.
SPEAKER_01:Uh AI, especially in the defense sector, is something very new. But it's here to stay, and it will actually become one of the main uh topics to discuss about defense and defense innovation. So recently uh we also established the defense sector for AI in the uh national uh society of uh artificial intelligence, and we are leading it. I'm the president, I'm the head of this uh sector of AI and defense. And the idea is to aggregate all the entities right now, like the military, the universities, the private sector, the public sector, and start to educate them, first of all, about the what AI can do. What are we going to face in the future? So to uh adjust our strategic plans and our knowledge and our actions, taking into consideration the the opportunities and the threats that AI will bring in the in the battlefield.
SPEAKER_00:Incredible. It's incredible to think about that. And so you have founded so many companies, you've done so many things, we can't keep up. I mean, if you ask a topic, you're probably involved, especially as it comes to as it relates to innovation and technology. And so I'd like to ask you, tell us a little a few about about a few of your projects. What is a current you know modality? We know AI, you know, do we know uh transitioning veterans and upskilling? Um what are your companies doing? I know I've heard about your venture studio. Yeah, let's talk about that as well.
SPEAKER_01:So the venture studio uh was a dream from the past. Uh it started like a technology company into the software domain, uh, but it was highly being affected by another uh uh entity that we started in 2013. It was in 2000, what what happened in Greece during the financial crisis was that people started thinking out of the box. I mean, before the finance crisis in Greece, everybody would wanted to become a public servant. So the crisis killed this uh proposition, and uh that's when actually the startup ecosystem in Greece appeared, because people started thinking let's let's do something else. And in 2013, there were the the startups ecosystem actually started to appear in Greece, and there was no formal structure to help them, like accelerators or things like that. And we a group of MIT grads, we we gathered together and we went to MIT and we said, you know, we have this situation in Greece, and we went a structured uh process to bring them to Greece to help the startup ecosystem to flourish. And that's how we we brought MIT's acceleration program called MIT Enterprise Forum, and we we brought the MIT Enterprise Forum of Greece and we started doing accelerators, acceleration programs every year. This went very well and it's still running 12 years after that. Wow, we have uh accelerated more than 250 startups, they have raised almost half a billion dollars all these years. And but the point is that we got involved into this innovation ecosystem and understanding how the dynamics and the parties involved and all this kind of stuff. And we saw a business opportunity into the innovation field now, and we transformed our Cedars company, which was a software company, to a venture studio, which was no venture studio until then in Greece. And the the the vision of of Cedars is that we're looking to speak with to speak with people that have knowledge of problems from deep industries. For example, Greece has a very large maritime industry. There are some professionals in this industry that they they know problems of the industry, which are very, you need to be many years in this industry to know the problem. If you're not in the industry, the problem is not visible. That's right. Okay, but if you in the in the if you're in the industry, you're usually a professional, many years in the in the in the domain, you know the problems, but you don't have the stack to innovate. You don't know how to form a technical team, you don't know how to do marketing, you don't know how to do sales to fundraising. Exactly. So we we're providing the stack from ideation to fundraising. We also invest on startups, and we we're focusing on people on big industries that can bring big disruptions. Big industries that bring big disruptions. And we can make successful startups. So through this process, we we have brought many startups to our one of the most, and we also do our own startups. And to to answer your question, which one is one of the I I prefer the getting gauge. We recently uh we had a situation in Greece. A few years ago, you probably remember, we were under fire. We uh we had a fire in Nevia, big fires. Then we had the fire in uh Dadia, yeah, big fire, each fire. And that point I was with my partners. I have a very good friend. He's working with in SEDAS, he's a Harvard Grad, actually, from the Navy. Oh wow. Um, and we said, you know, we have to do something. Since fires are being fighted, it's uh, you know, the most efficient ways to fight fires are aerial systems. Yeah, why don't we use drones? So we started an idea, idea, and I want to spend too much time on this because I can speak up for this about it every until the morning, to use drones to fight forest fires. And I'm happy to say that we are the first that successfully did the first uh uh successful tests of fighting fires, forest fires, in collaboration with the Hellenic Navy. Wow. We used the facilities of the Hellenic Navy has the firefighting facilities in Scaramaga, okay, where we used our drones and we put real fires with real trees, and we hit our drones and we we took off the fires with our drones. And now we are in collaboration with the Ministry of Public Safety, they're waiting for us to give them the first drones to use them in real operations in forest fires. So this is one of our first uh one of the nicest, I'll say, things project we're working on right now, and I think it's gonna be big change.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's it, that's it, that's uh near and dear to us with everything that's happened also with uh uh fires in the United States. Uh you saw the Palisades fire, Malibu.
SPEAKER_01:And I have to say, I'm very glad to bring this because uh in order to help this project, we we went to Washington uh uh this year. And the Greek community in Washington helps us a lot. Okay. So we we we managed to raise money from the Greek Greek American community to support this.
SPEAKER_00:You know, and that's fantastic. So the do the drones drop water? No, no, no, no. How do they help? How do they so the the the the idea is that I'm gonna expand now?
SPEAKER_01:Sure, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So that is if if you cannot you drones are small, so they're physically restricted by science, but it means that you they're you know limit by size and they can the payload they can lift is very small and they can fly a limited uh distance. So instead of doing that, we said, why don't what if we put a drone everywhere in the forest? So we made it, we did a study and we say we need 3,000 drones to cover Greece, and that's gonna work. Uh but then we need some way to have them there. So when a fire breaks, the drone will be there. Okay, so we partnered with uh Vantage Towers. Vantage Towers is the uh sole owner of uh all the mobile antennas in Greece, and we're gonna be using facilities. So we we have designed the land systems that the drone will take off automatically, it will go there. The distance will be short. And geo-fenced somehow. Yes, geo-fenced, all this kind of stuff. And the point is that we're using our own design specialized payload, which uses artificial intelligence and uh and thermal cameras. When when the the drone arrives to the location of the fire, it it targets the fire very uh with high accuracy, and we're using a very highly effective fluid, which is 100 times more effective than water. So by carrying just 20 kilograms of this fluid, it's like carrying 2,000 liters of water, which is like a cannot dare. And we have the same effectiveness of so it is dropping something on the fire.
SPEAKER_00:It's spraying. Spraying.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, but the problem the technology is on our on the payload we we design. Wow so the spray will be optimal use, so we don't use, we don't yeah, you know, and we use it optimal. And with 20 liters, we can be really effective. That's how we did it also in the Scarama gas.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. And you can go, so how how are the just again, how is it how are you notified that there's a fire starting?
SPEAKER_01:So we're not we don't work with the notification. This is not our case. We've just been alarmed that there's a fire there. There's a fire there. Okay. So there are so many technologies in detection. Sure. We didn't want to get involved. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, wow. But you're in the mitigation, you're in the you know, we're just in the suppression.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, suppression.
SPEAKER_00:We're doing suppression on it. You know, not often speechless, but uh, you know, you're speechless when you talk about these types of because we've seen it, you know, and in and in in California, yeah, uh the the the hellfire winds, there were like 120 mile an hour winds that that stirred up these fires and they spread so quickly. So the point if if we if you reach that point, yeah, it's too difficult to fight the fire, even with drones.
SPEAKER_01:So to get back again, I think that we're gonna be talking about drones here. Yeah, uh, there are four operational scenarios we're we're taking over. I mean, the first one is you can go fast and you you're you're in the field. So this is the situation. If you manage to get there very fast, you're okay. The other one is the reason that the was burned was the firebrands. Firebrands, the number one reason that they create small spots, fire spots, they're too small for the airplanes, because airplanes usually go to large fires. Right. They're too far away for the land bases. Until they go there, they're becoming they're becoming big fires. So you have these drones that can go and smoke, shut up, you know, turn off all these fires. Incredible. The main reason. Yeah. Okay, so this is the number two uh operational uh scenario we're targeting. The third one is drones can fly during night, which is the case that no airplane fly fly. And we we can keep on during the night. This is the main reason the firefighting department is looking to use our drones for. Right. And the fourth reason, uh for the fourth case is um there are there are places like gorges. Yeah. The airplanes cannot go there. Cannot go there. And land bases can take hours to go there. Right. So you have these drones, they can go immediately and take off the fire, at least in the immediate case.
SPEAKER_00:You can't even you can't even quantify how incredible that is in a conversation like this. It doesn't do it justice, you know, but but the ability to simply be able to talk about it, I think, is profound. I want to shift a bit, uh, Costanina, to um cross-sector collaboration. Okay, because I heard about your belief in it through what the questions you've answered. And you know, at Idea Jen, we're all about cross-sector collaboration. We believe that many of the world's most vexing issues can be solved by bringing together people from different disciplines who maybe speak a different language because of the work they do. But in the end, their solution one sector over. Maybe it's the finance sector, maybe it's the health sector, it's the business sector, you know, all these all these sectors coming together. And that's what you've done, and that's what you're upskilling. You're taking, you know, the veterans and upskilling them and showing them the pathway forward. Why is that so important? Why is it so important to upsk to upskill this the veterans? Uh why is cross-sector collaboration so important?
SPEAKER_01:Because uh, you know, the you I think you solve you you can see bigger problems. I mean, if you're in medicine uh and you know the problems, but you don't know the solutions. The solutions are cross-disciplines. I mean, you need IT, you need electronics, you probably need you you absolutely need business, you need sales, you need marketing. So, I mean, it is by the definition cross-sector. I mean, you cannot do innovation, you cannot do business if you're not cross-sectional. It's like having a business without a marketing department. Is it possible? It's impossible. That's right. So that's right. It I think it's it comes without asking that cross uh discipline collaboration is the way to go. Otherwise, you solve just part of the problem, which eventually will hit the wall.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. And what I've heard from you today, it what's inspiring me about this conversation, one of the most inspiring interviews I've ever had, really, is your leadership. And it's remarkable when you think about how one person, one person can actually change the world like you're doing.
SPEAKER_01:I don't think I'm changing the world.
SPEAKER_00:It's okay to be humble, but it's also okay to say, here's what I'm doing, and you have. And and that's important because one person can be that spark, right? Not to use the drone analogy and all that, but you are the spark, Costandino, for you know, saying, well, we have this incredibly well skilled, disciplined pipeline of veterans. You came from that world in the military. And you say, well, why don't we help these people like they're helped in other countries and around the world to enter the private. Sector to find other opportunities, second, third, fourth career.
SPEAKER_01:So let me expand on this a little bit, please. Because I think there's more in this. I think it makes sense professionally, business-wise. I mean, there's there is a market looking for talent, and we're providing talent, which has really good skills. I mean, exceptional skills, I would say. Okay. Now on the other side, the the military also getting, I I on the long run, they will benefit it long big time. The reason is we studied a lot the the American case. So becoming an officer in the United States gives you a badge of professionalism, which is then you can you can use this in the market. That's right. And that makes you be a better officer because your fame will follow you, and this will be what we you will use afterwards in the market to find a better job. And because officers in the United States have been so good uh professionals, the market demands them and they're well paid. That's right. Is it right? That's right. So there is a the are we trying to do the same thing in the Greek uh army. So if you have a potential after serving, then you will become a better officer while you're serving. That's right.
SPEAKER_00:More pride, more vision of the future, what you're gonna do maybe next, or whatever.
SPEAKER_01:If the government in Greece cannot you know give higher salaries to the officers, they can give them a vision for be being better and for for the for the next day, and also be able to attract more young people to join the uh armed forces for recruitment. For recruitment, which is the case right now. You know, we call that a win-win. Exactly. It's a win-win. That's what I see right now. It's a win-win for the army because they're trying to find ways to you know to enhance to promote joining the armed forces, and it helps the private sector at the same time, and it's also good business for us.
SPEAKER_00:Costandino, you know, you're leading the way. I want to I want to close the interview by asking you a question. And the question is what advice, what advice would you give to someone starting their career now, to the future global leaders like yourself? You're leading the way, you're forging the way, you're creating opportunities, you're creating solutions. That's the powerful thing. What advice do you have for someone who's just starting who says, geez, I want to be like Costandino, I want to, I want to be able to change the world and solve problems.
SPEAKER_01:So, what I see that has changed generation by generation is that you need to start from the very lowest and don't be, you should be humble and do whatever it takes from the lower step to go the higher step. Because the reason I'm saying this is not just because you need to follow the path, is that because that's way how you will understand the people that you will have to uh say guide and lead the next day. You cannot lead someone if you have not been part of the lower scale. So you need to go from the lower steps to the higher steps and not be afraid to take this path. I I have the feeling that lately I see people that want to go directly to the top, but this gives leaves them a void about understanding the lower ranks, and that's a big problem because eventually you cannot lead if you don't understand the lower ranks.
SPEAKER_00:So you're saying there's value. There's value in going on the journey and actually putting in the work. Yes. Because if you skip that step, you're not getting the full value of what you can learn and do ultimately. Yes, and you won't be able to lead. And you won't be able to lead effectively. Incredible. And so the final thought here is how can folks find out more about the work you're doing? What's the best place they can learn about what you're doing?
SPEAKER_01:Well, they can go online. Yeah. And they're if they can visit our website, cedars.gr, okay or EDVS, uh the European Defense Venture Studio, which is I don't we didn't talk about that, but it's another. I want you to talk about that for a moment. So you're glad you mentioned it. Okay. So in the same notion that we we were in the innovation and in the venture studio, and we uh I started hiring defense professionals, uh veterans, and our we uh our business took another path with the veterans. So I saw the effectiveness of this. And uh last year in Europe, everybody starts started talking about defense innovation, and we were in place. So running a mighty enterprise forum, and I'm gonna be very short about this. Uh, running a IT Enterprise Forum all these years, we tried in different years to run verticals so to see how we can do more focused uh actions on specific domains. For example, we we we ran vertical on maritime innovation, we did vertical on energy innovation and uh on uh health innovation. So every time we we verticalized our acceleration paths, we saw that the innovation ecosystem was thinner. So there was no potential to repeat it in another year, in another year, because the innovation in a small country like Greece, sure, it's limited. Right. Okay. So when Europe came out and said we need defense innovation, capacity building, and we said, you know, we have technology, we have the innovation, and we know defense, and we know we have these three key elements. I immediately said we know we cannot go on a national level, agree, because it will come verticalized, it will become very thin. So, but on a European scale, this kind of work, and we can actually go there because then no one else in Europe right now has defense technology and innovation at the same time. So we established uh in uh and it was announced in Brussels in February the the European Defense Venture Studio, the first venture studio for defense in Europe. First in Europe? Yes, in Europe. Incredible. And the idea is to aggregate all the parties related to innovation and defense, and we have been swamped, actually, by everybody want to get involved. Because it was a again, there was a void in this field, and it just we try to fill this up.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and and that's my point. A leadership starts at the top, it takes what it that that Kostandino Mechanizes, you are leadership defined. That's what the you just defined it for me. Thank you very much. That's the last word. Thank you for your leadership.
SPEAKER_01:I hope young people will get benefited by this and try to do things. I think for Greece especially, it's the time where we get out of the financial crisis, Greece is is growing, we have great potential, and we can take advantage of this situation right now and do big things.
SPEAKER_00:Your advice is for everyone across the world. All those future global leaders listen to Kostandinos Mikanetzis, he's changing the world. Thank you so very much. Thank you. Thank you.