YouSaid · the spoken record

François Jackow

lines on the record: 41
first: 2023-06-21
most recent: 2023-06-21
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Well, I think probably the advice that we would give is make a difference. Really think about how you can contribute. And this could be in your neighbor that could be in a large company. But I really push the younger generation to stick in their inner resources what they can bring to this world. Because the world clearly needs them. What I think is really sad and it's really discouraging is when I see the younger generation who don't want to fight, who don't want to bring progress to this world, who don't want to invent, we don't want to fight to get a better world. And I think we need.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think professionally I've got a few people that I trust who are telling me things that are really true feedback and I appreciate that very much the limited number of people but I go and seek their feedback and they feel comfortable enough to provide this kind of feedback. So I try to cultivate that because if you don't push for that you will not get it. My wife, of course, but our children are great for that. So when I start to pitch about what we are doing in terms of sustainability, of course, there are probably strong voice to challenge me on that and that's great. And I like it very much. So probably they help me a lot.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I think about what I've been doing in my career, I realize that at the beginning of my career, I spent a lot of time working and doing things professionally. Maybe I did not spend enough time with my family, with my wife, with my friends. And for me, it's to some extent a failure to be able to listen to my friends, my wife, my children, talking about that and trying to help me to overcome that is quite important. And that's something that does require some efforts because as we go, I mean, and we raise to the top, we have more and more people who are telling us that we are wonderful, that we are doing incredible things, and it's perfect and so on and so forth. So we need to keep our ears open and make sure that we are ready to listen to this kind of feedback.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, of course, I mean, I had failures, professional failures in some of the things that I wanted to achieve probably. Contracts that I wanted to sign that I did not manage to convince the customers. Probably some setbacks about development and technology and market opening clearly. So those are things that I try to reflect upon. We need to have the humility to accept that we are not perfect. And it's very often an opportunity to learn and to improve, hopefully to make better the next time. But for me, there are a lot of learnings from that.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. A lot of fun and a good way also to see the world from a different angle. So the story of Magellan is just amazing in terms also of leadership skills, in terms of adventure, in terms of what he discovered. It's very well written. So I like things which are well written. So I like to read the biographies for sure. But currently I'm reading another one, which is the engineers of Chaos on Dampoli, which is about social media and how social media are used and sometimes misused, especially by politicians. And it's a little bit an investigation in something which is for me a real danger for all of us, which is those populist movement that we see all over.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, sorry, maybe sometimes I do, but I probably have always a book that I'm reading. And the books that I like, I like very much biographies, for example. There is one that I like very much, which is Magellan by St ⁇ phane Sfe. Because it's about sailing, and I like personally to sail very much, it's about adventure.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do I learn? That's a great question because I had this discussion this morning. I had a breakfast with a team of employees and I was insisting on the fact that curiosity and learning is absolutely key. I try to learn all the time and that's part probably also of the answer to your question before about being with the addict for 30 years. Because that's really part of the excitement of this company is that we are exposed to a lot of geographies, a lot of customers, a lot of trends which are really at the forefront of what is happening in the world. And I talk a lot with customers, with suppliers, with people from the different governments around the world. I read, I like to read very much. I visit plants, but also I try to see other things in arts, in other discipline to keep”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. I think there are CEOs that I think are quite amazing recently. I was talking to Guillum Fori from Erbus and I think he's doing an amazing job and he's got a clear vision so he's pretty good.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, probably if you listen to me, you'll get my French accent. But I'm not sure we are a French company. I mean, of course, we have a French headquarters and you are here in Paris. But I think we are truly a global company with, I mean, French and European roots for sure. But we are global and we are very local because our products do not travel. So everywhere we are, we are basically operating as a local company with, of course, I mean, the support of the group, but we are very, very local in what we are doing. And I think this mindset about being in many different places has been since the origin of Erdicid. Remember that Erdikid was created in 1902, and we were in Japan, I mentioned Japan just before, in 1907. And this is true for many, many of the countries. We have been very early on, because for us we are, I think, pioneers.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can do and they can achieve. And that's something which is never ended, but it's really a strong driver for me. But you should keep the two. Respect and performance.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think I'm probably pretty close to the values of Erdikid. For me, there's two things which are very important. The first one is respect, respect of people, which mean respect of employees, respect of customers, respect of shareholders, of stakeholders. And that's really a fundamental value in everything you do. You have to put the people at the center of for who they are. That's one. The second one is performance. And again, this is true for electricity, but this is true for myself, tend to be never satisfied, wants to reach the limit. We are fortunate to have capabilities, resources. I think my duty for myself and for the people around me, for the organization, is to really help everybody around to fulfill their full potential and to go at the maximum of what they”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In that crisis, and that's very often the case in crisis, everything is basically compressed and you see the immediate impact of your action and you sense this responsibility. So for me, that was very important. And again, to use my own internal compass to make decisions and to connect the two, your personal life, your personal value, and then your professional life. And that's very important. I cannot say that because that's a drama for everybody in Japan, but this experience was really for me something which helped me to be clear on who I am and where I want to go.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In this case, basically, in this case, in spite of the insistence of some of the employees to drive the truck there, I asked to make a deal with the army where we supplied the nitrogen 50 kilometers away from the plant, from the nuclear plant, and then they came and took the nitrogen, delivered that to the nuclear plant, and then came back because they were equipped to be close to the radiation. But that's just one example among, I mean, almost a hundreds that I had to take for the few months during the crisis and probably one of the things that I realized is that when you are leading a company, you are making decisions which impact the life of people. But very often you don't see that directly because it's kind of diluted in time. And if you take a right or the wrong decision, you will impact the life of people, but you will see that maybe few years later.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, in the middle of all the explosion and all what's going on, you have some of your employees which are volunteering to come there. So as a leader, you're really in a position where there is nothing written. There is no procedure. So you have to really make up your mind and decide by yourself. That's where I really had to go back to my inner values and decide what is right or what is wrong or what I should be doing.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably one of the crises which for me was really a challenging one was that I was the CEO of our Japanese operation in 2011 during the Fukushima crisis. So, I mean, first physically, when you are in the middle of this, the early kid in Japan is quite a larger subsidiary. I mean, you physically go through the earthquake and the tsunami and everything, then you need to have to take care of your almost 4,000 employees that you have there. And then suddenly, I mean, a few hours after the beginning of the earthquake, you've got a call from the plant manager of the Fukushima nuclear plant, which is asking you to deliver a nitrogen to the plant to inert some of the processes to prevent explosion. So what do you do? You send somebody there.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“After I got experience in terms of a technical aspect, I was in charge of innovation, I was in charge of some part of the engineering at some point. But I had also the opportunity to early on think in terms of strategy. In 1999, the top management of EDK at that time asked me to work specifically for the general management on two topics, so 1999. One was CO2 and global warming. What does it mean for us? And the other one was hydrogen as an energy vector potential, what this could mean. So that helped me really, I mean, to think about that. And I don't know if I should say I've been fortunate, but I've been through several crises, which also as a leader is very important. To be able to run a company when things are good and quote unquote easy, it's never really easy, but also in difficult times.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the first one probably I myself have more I would say technology background because I am a chemist I studied in France and in the US then I did an MBA but I really wanted to start with the commercial and business development function and for me it's one of the key elements in any personal development to be in front of the customer I still do that all the time every week I meet”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So mobility is something which is very important. It's also helping to build the network internally and again to know our businesses. I think the depth is very important. But it's not only, I mean, getting and moving in different functions because we value also very much the technical expertise and the depth. And we have identified already more than 20 years ago a kind of technical carrier ladder where we grow the people in their expertise to make sure that they can continue to grow, to learn, to develop themselves while keeping really very strong focus on specific area, which is the only way for us to create value.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we do hire people more than 10,000 every year basically, but this is true that typically we don't hire so much mid-career people because we have a culture of developing people providing opportunities to work and to get experience in different parts of the world, in different businesses. I don't think working within silos we give opportunities. You can be working in technical field, then moving to commercial, then moving to HR, then moving to finance. So that's part of the DNA, which I think is creating a lot of, I would say, interest and excitement. As a result, people tend to stay longer with eat, more than 10 years on average, and many of them much.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there are many, many benefits clearly. The fact that I've been around quite a bit in many countries. I've lived in several countries. I have been involved managing a lot of businesses. I know our teams, I know our customers, I've been through different times, sometimes a crisis, difficult ones. And for myself, extremely important. And I think it's giving me the opportunity to really understand our friends, but also our weaknesses and to position ourselves currently at best. Because I think one of the very exciting things today is that we have more opportunities than ever. So we have to be in a position, and I think as a CEO, I have to position Us to be in a position to seize those opportunity at best.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is using electricity, low carbon electricity, because it's from hydro plants, and producing hydrogen. And on top of that, we are going to scale that by a factor of 10, having three large projects in Europe, 200 megawatt each. So yes, today, in fact, we are emitting CO2 when we are producing hydrogen, but we have a clear roadmap to decarbonize the hydrogen production.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we have been always very clear on the way we are producing hydrogen, and this, by the way, is being audited by third parties. So I don't think there is any misunderstanding on this. Most of the hydrogen that we are producing today is coming from natural gas, so it has a carbon footprint, for sure. But we are also the most advanced in converting the hydrogen production to reduce the carbon footprint, either on putting carbon capture on our own unit. We are the only one today to have an industrial scale carbon capture unit in operation since 2015 in one of our plants to be able to capture the CO2. That's one, and we have many other projects for our existing units. And on top of that, we are the company which is operating the largest electrolyzer in the world, in Canada, in Bacon, which is 20 megawatt for a pen unit.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we have indirect emission because we are using electricity. We are completely committed to carbon neutrality. And on top of that, we have a clear roadmap to reduce by one-third the absolute value, and we were the first in the industry to take that commitment by 2035 in terms of scope one and scope two emission. And either by 2025, we are going to see an inflection, a reduction in the absolute value of our emission. We do that, and that's part of the thing that we are committed to do to reduce our own emission. purchasing renewable electricity, for example, capturing CO2 from our hydrogen plant, or switching the hydrogen production from fossil fuel-based process to electricity using electrolyzer, for example.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the glass, but it's the same in aluminum, for example, recycling. It's a big market which is booming right now because, again, not only efficiency in terms of energy utilization and reduction of the bill, but reduction also of the carbon footprint.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your gas, your oxygen, which is coming from air with pure oxygen, then the benefit is that you've got a much higher flame temperature, you've got a much better energy transfer in the furnace, and you can save between 15 and 20 percent of fuel in your process. So that's great because it's saving energy, but also it's reducing the carbon footprint because you're emitting less CO2. On top of that, because you don't have the nitrogen and you have replaced the nitrogen from air with pure oxygen, then the flue gas is highly concentrated in CO2 and you can capture the CO2 much more easily. So for the companies who want to capture CO2 outside of their process, it's a much more economical to do so. So oxycombustion”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clearly, in the energy transition, we see ourselves as being what we call a climate champion. We should be enabler to help our customers to reduce their carbon footprint, to improve their energy efficiency. And we have many tools for that. And the thing is that we are in a position today to offer concrete solutions. If I take one example around oxygen, because we talk a lot about hydrogen, but oxygen can be also very helpful in the energy transition. If you use oxygen in air combustion process, for example, when you are making glass, and when you are making glass, the first step is to basically have a furnace with a very hot temperature to melt the feedstock to make the glass. If you replace your”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“extract resources and use resources, manage waste, for example. So a lot of questions which are very interesting for the space exploration, but also which probably bring back to us some of the solutions that we can use already on Earth.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Apply to some of those satellites. And what we see today is a renewed interest in space exploration, so it's very exciting for many of us because it's talking about helping to launch satellites with very low carbon footprint to think about alternative fuels and hydrogen is one of them to be able to reduce the carbon footprint of the space activity. But also more and more we have requests from customers to work with them to find ways to extend the life in space, for example, to have life support, how you are going to breathe in space, how you are going to purify oxygen, how you are going to capture CO2, for example, in the shuttle, in the space, but also how you are going to”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Space is a very interesting area indeed, and that's another application. We have been involved in the space program in Europe since the 60s and the beginning of the Ariane rocket, because when you look at the Ariane, and since then we have worked on all the versions of Ariane, basically what you see from the outside is a very large liquid hydrogen tank and a very large liquid oxygen tank. So we were making those tanks and we were also supplying all the liquid oxygen and hydrogen. So we continue to do that for the rocket and for the launch, of course. So we are present there. But we have also other activities, for example, in the satellite, where for the satellites where you are doing Earth observation, for example, you need to have some kind of infrared equipment, which requires a very, very low temperature. Those are super sophisticated devices that we”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. I mean, we supply to many of the chip makers or the memory makers in the world, either the original maker or the foundries.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think indeed we are extremely fortunate to have a fascinating customer and we are at the leading edge of the transformation and the innovation of industry. Probably one of the most demanding customers are the customers in the semiconductor, in the fabs, because the fabs are becoming bigger and bigger and more and more advanced. And the level of purity which is required for our gases is just amazing. Here we are talking about level of impurity in nitrogen, for example, which is used in a fab at the level of one part per trillion. So really, really nothing in terms of impurity. And on top of that, you cannot stop because if you stop, it's tens of millions of dollars of damage that you can create to the full production line. Them of benchmarking and standard, that's probably the most demanding and fast moving industry.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, absolutely not. I think the industrial gas industry for the very large plants are shared between few competitors who have the technical capabilities to build this kind of units and to operate them. But we are competing everywhere in the world where, of course, it makes sense for each of us. So in some places we are very strong. In others, it's more challenging. But no, it's a global competition for sure”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Typically, you have An obligation to take part of the volume, which could be 70, 80, sometimes 100% of the nameplate capacity of the unit. But what we are doing also, which is very important, is we are taking, of course, the full responsibility and the full risk for the investment and for the operation.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, typically, I mean, for those large customers, they are 15 or 20-year contracts. What is very important is that we design ourselves the plants because we have our own engineering capabilities, which is part of the recipe. Not only we design the plant, we build and we own and operate the plant, but we are feeding back the engineering and the technology team with the experience of an operator, which is making a huge difference between somebody who is just an engineering company or somebody who is just an operator. We have a full circle, basically, where we can improve the plants, the design, the performance based on the operation. And we have the technical capabilities to do that.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think that's very important. On top of that, we are a grooming company and we have been always growing between five and seven, eight percent over the past 20, 30 years. I would like also to believe that the recipes comes from who we are, where if we think about our culture and our values, performance is something which is really deeply rooted in our DNA. Being a successful company for 120 years, I think we never are fully satisfied with the results. We always try to push the limit. We think long term. We want to innovate. We want to bring value through innovation. And I think that's very important and that's part of the recipe for the long term and the long-term performance.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think maybe part of the recipe is that we managed to have a mix of resilience and growth capabilities. I think the resilience is based on the mix of our businesses, being in manufacturing, but being also in healthcare, for example. Having a footprint which is a global footprint in the different geographies, but also the resilience comes from the business model, where part of our activity, especially when we are dealing with the largest customer, when we build, own and operate a plant which is dedicated for a customer or for an instrument basin, we have long-term contracts with stakeholder pays, with indexation for energy cost path-through, for example. And that business model is providing a very, very strong capability to perform in good but also in more difficult”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From the petroleum. So it's very useful today in terms of environmental impact. But tomorrow the big potential is in the energy transition to be able to use hydrogen as a clean energy vector.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My personal favorite gas. I think it's probably oxygen because, as I mentioned, oxygen is the gas of life. It helps us to breathe. And unfortunately, I mean, we all have seen the importance of oxygen during the COVID time, where oxygen helped to save millions of lives, but also oxygen is the gas which is helping high temperature for, as I mentioned, oxidation processes, but also cutting welding. So probably oxygen, which has been at the roots of early kids, is one of my favorites. But today, more and more we see also hydrogen and hydrogen is becoming also clearly one of the favorites because hydrogen is the gas which today is used to make clean gasoline and diesel. It's used to remove surface.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you've got multiple rare gases which are parts per million or parts per billion in the air, and those have also unique properties”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think basically you can extract them in the main components. So the main one is nitrogen. Nitrogen is a great gas to inert to avoid explosion, for example, in refinery, but also to protect any kind of oxidation. In the food, for example, industry, they're using a lot of very pure nitrogen. But also when you are making semiconductors to make sure that the atmosphere is super pure. So that's the main one. But the other one, which is also unique, is oxygen, which oxygen is the gas which is the gas of life because you're breathing oxygen, but it's also the gas of fire, which is helping combustion, welding, cutting, metal fabrication, but also oxidation to make a lot of stuff, which could be steel, glass, plastics. And then you've got smaller components, argon, for example.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's maybe a part of the recipe of early kid. You know, we are working with very simple molecules that we have not even invented ourselves. Somebody else did that a billion of years ago. So it's mostly working with oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, CO2, argon, xenon, ergases. But I think the key is to really focus on our business, not only on how to produce, extract those gases who have unique properties, but also to find ways for our customer to use them, either for safety, for productivity, for health, many, many, many applications.”
2023-06-21 · In Good Company with Nicolai Tangen · François Jackow CEO of Air Liquide · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source