REWE Digital bundles the REWE Group’s strategic online activities. Its goal: to become the leading provider of digital solutions in all of the retail company's markets. In this session, you will enjoy a candid, one-on-one conversation about implementing open innovation frameworks, working with varied stakeholder groups (including start-ups), as well as avoiding common pitfalls along the way.

Oana is currently Head of Open Innovation at HYPE. She specializes in the science and practice of building durable intra- and inter-firm relationships and collaboration. In her daily work, she combines industry expertise with research insights to help organisations large and small, public and private, formulate and fulfil more ambitious (open) innovation goals. For example: designing supply chain innovation programs, running hackathons, engaging a startup community and even engineering full-fledged innovation ecosystems. Additionally, she contributes to shaping HYPE's thought leadership in the Open Innovation space and contributes to new product development. In his current role as Innovation Manager at REWE Digital, Karim is focusing on the question: What will the future of retail be like? In consequence, he extensively collaborates with external startups, academia and corporates, monitors technological developments, while orchestrating an interdisciplinary research engineering squad with expertise in the fields of AI, Computer Vision and Robotics. He is a pioneer in advocating the relevance of strategic alliances. As former Director of New Products of HYPE, Karim has co-created digital products that have changed corporate approaches to manage partner ecosystems at scale. Karim is a passionate collaborator and speaker with vast experiences in the Corporate and SME context, specialized in transitioning initial sparks into market ready digital products.