Legacy Interviews.

In the US, this has long since become a profession. Private individuals pay five-figure sums for it. Companies, where significantly more is at stake, almost never do it.

A profession that hardly anyone knows

In the US and the UK, there is a dedicated profession for this: Personal Historian. There are certification programs that teach oral history methodology, interviewing, archiving, and the ethical handling of sensitive topics.

The market is real and not cheap. The provider Legacy Interviews in St. Louis charges $5,000 for a Full Day: three interview sessions, catering, three finished videos, digital and on DVD. Yes, on DVD. Obviously, the future really is analog (David Sax) – a physical medium that you can hold and give as a gift has a different value for a keepsake than a link that eventually leads to a dead end.

Private individuals pay a lot of money to have a life professionally recorded. Companies, where the same person leaves and takes twenty years of professional judgment with them, practically never do it.

Why this is becoming important in Germany right now

By 2039, around 13.4 million members of the workforce will have exceeded the statutory retirement age of 67. That is nearly a third of all active workforce members available to the German labor market in 2024. (Source: Federal Statistical Office, Microcensus 2024)

Significantly fewer will follow. Even if the two youngest age groups under 25 entered the labor market completely after their training, that would only be 8.7 million workforce members. (Source: Federal Statistical Office, Microcensus 2024)

The credit insurer Atradius surveyed over 330 companies from sectors ranging from automotive to IT in May and June 2026, with turnovers from under five million to over one billion euros. The result: every fifth company has no systematic strategy for securing the knowledge of its employees. (Source: Atradius, July 2026)

Why this is not a documentation problem

In our view, this is an exciting point that many knowledge management projects do not have on their radar.

So-called implicit knowledge does not exist as an Excel file or in textbooks. It is about experiential knowledge, about skills that you grow into and that cannot be concretely named. Added to this is transfer knowledge: the know-how at the interfaces between development and production, between sales and technology. (Source: Prof. Axel Plünnecke, German Economic Institute Cologne)

Technical process knowledge can be written down. Which lever is flipped and when belongs in a work instruction or a video tutorial. You don't need a media production for that.

What cannot be written down is judgment. Why was this decision made this way back then? How do you handle this customer, and why exactly that way? What really happened during the last crisis, not what is written in the minutes. How do you recognize that something is going wrong before it shows up in the numbers? Who do you tell first?

That only exists in stories. And stories only emerge when someone asks the right question.

Why it's not enough to just sit someone in front of an AI

The obvious objection is: surely you can just record people and let an AI transcribe and summarize it.

Technically, that is correct. Practically, it fails in four areas.

The question that no one asks. Someone who has been with the company for twenty years no longer asks why something is done a certain way. An outsider asks that. Then comes an answer that no one has ever spoken out loud before.

The role of the listener. A master craftsman who is retiring does not tell his supervisor what really went wrong. He tells an interviewer who plays no role in internal politics. That is not a trick; it is a distribution of roles.

Omission. AI can record and transcribe limitlessly. That is precisely why recording has become worthless. No one reads an eighty-page transcript. Condensing eight hours of material down to three that someone will listen to voluntarily is the real achievement. That is editing.

The format. A transcript in a wiki is dead as soon as it is filed away. A produced series is listened to, shared, and used in onboarding. The difference is not in the content, but in whether someone accesses it voluntarily.

How the process works

At Inventive, a legacy interview process in a company consists of two parts, and the first is the decisive one.

Part 1: The editorial meeting.
Before anyone steps in front of a microphone, it is determined which knowledge is critical and who holds it. This is not an interviewer's job; it is a task for management that needs to be facilitated. Management and specialist departments clarify three questions together: Which people are leaving in the next three years? What knowledge is leaving with them? What questions must be answered before that happens?

The result is a prioritized list of people and a catalog of questions that comes from within the company, not from the production partner.

Part 2: The production.
Interviews based on this catalog, conducted by someone who comes from the outside and is allowed to ask questions. Then editing, post-production, and the final series. The result is not an archive tape, but a format that people actually use: during onboarding, handover, and the training of successors. Of course, the format also goes into the company archive.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Legacy Interview?
A Legacy Interview is a professionally conducted and produced interview that captures the experience and judgment of a person before they leave a company or a role. The term originates from the private market in the US and UK, where providers record life stories for families. In a corporate context, it is about knowledge that cannot be documented because it only exists in stories.

How does this differ from classic knowledge management?
Classic knowledge management provides a system into which information is written. It works well for explicit knowledge such as processes, procedures, and technical manuals. Legacy Interviews target implicit knowledge: decision-making logic, customer understanding, judgment. The two are not mutually exclusive, but one does not replace the other.

Who should be interviewed?
People whose departure leaves a gap that cannot be closed simply by filling the position. Typically, these are long-serving specialists at interfaces, sales staff with established customer relationships, managing directors, and shareholders. The selection is a management decision.

When is the right time?
Much earlier than most people assume. The conversations must be conducted while the person is still with the company and the context is fresh. Anyone who starts only in the final month before departure will get retrospect instead of substance.

Wrap-Up

In the US, the Personal Historian is a profession in its own right; private individuals pay $5,000 for a single day of recorded life history. In Germany, around 13.4 million members of the workforce will exceed retirement age by 2039, and every fifth company has no strategy for this.
What is lost is rarely process knowledge, but rather judgment, and that only exists in stories. An AI can record everything, but it cannot ask the question that no one in the company asks anymore, nor can it decide what to leave out. The process therefore does not begin with the microphone, but with an editorial meeting.

Who is leaving your company in the next three years?

If you can answer this question, the first step has already been taken. The second is to clarify what knowledge goes with them and which questions must be answered beforehand. That is precisely why we facilitate the editorial meeting. Arrange a call

AI in the Loop: The content of this article was developed using AI-supported research and editorially evaluated. The texts were accelerated with AI and written by our experts. All figures, data, and facts are backed by sources. Topics and stance correspond to our experiences, consulting services, and offerings.