Matthias Heinz · Co-CEO · CTRL-S · Shift

At the HEIDELBERG SHIFT event in Heidelberg, we met with Matthias Heinz from Ctrl-S to talk about something that increasingly defines the future of our industry: the ability to learn, adapt, and turn new ideas into practical projects.

For Ctrl-S, events like SHIFT are not only about presenting solutions. They are just as much about listening to other industries, understanding new approaches, and identifying ideas that can be applied to print. Topics such as structured data, specifications, Factory-X, and AI are becoming increasingly important, and Matthias points out that many of these developments require more than technology alone. They require the right mindset and an organization capable of moving quickly.

That agility is one of the advantages of being a smaller company. With AI lowering some of the traditional barriers to development, speed is increasingly determined not by the number of employees, but by how quickly a company can make decisions, experiment, and turn knowledge into working solutions.

We also talk about Ctrl-S projects with larger printing companies, where the challenge is often to transform complex systems in the background while keeping the user experience familiar and simple. In faster-growing companies, the expectation can be very different: bring the best ideas, best practices, and experience from previous projects and help them move forward as quickly as possible.

For Matthias, the value of SHIFT is therefore found in the combination of learning, networking, and conversations that may eventually develop into new projects. And, of course, the conversation ends with another event already on the calendar: FLOW in Germany, November 3–5, where Ctrl-S will also be part of the discussion around software, automation, workflow, and the future of print.

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