The Hellinikon. Social License to Operate!

A. The Hellinikon - A Great Title Attributed to a Great Development Program

For the non-native speakers ‘Hellas' means 'Greece' and 'Hellinikon’ means ‘Greek.’

Four years ago when the Greek State decided to launch the Hellinikon program, I had a memorable discussion with Angeliki, my mother in law, a wise old lady. During a family dinner, I was explaining to her the program scope and the engaging parties, when she suddenly interrupted me saying: “Look son, I don’t know the investment’s details, but I know Greek politicians. If you know the investors, tell them that this project will make them tired, tired, tired.” She paused for a moment, to continue: “They have to be brave, brave, brave.” Then she said “Goodnight” and left the table.

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Transportation designing to live and living to transportation design.

I am designer and engineer: A dangerous half truth.

… come on Christos, you the designers are all the same; you cannot understand our work. We are facing various problems with the designs; they’re causing unexpected delays and we’re losing money. In my opinion there is a lack of professionalism in your industry worldwide… But how is that possible? Designers and contractors we are both engineers after all…

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It's not access to capital that matters...

We’re going to fail miserably. How on earth are we going to scale up our operations abroad? The banks are actually closed and we have no access to our capital. The national economy is dead and our only way out was the Middle East market penetration; we’re dead Christos.

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Character eats talent for breakfast.

In Athens

It was three weekends ago when I experienced the great joy of sharing two whole days together with our 4-year old son, after a long period of business travels. Alas, I experienced tire too; I was exhausted. That experience made me realise the long and tedious effort it takes to properly raise a young boy. My thoughts flew to my wife. I remembered the time when she was breastfeeding our son. I remembered the amazing effort she made to overcome all the initial breastfeeding difficulties and I recalled the answer she gave me when I asked, Why are you doing this? Why are you taking all this pain?

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