Innovation professionals and their teams face unique challenges: they must navigate today's era of continued disruption, with its technological advances, geopolitical shifts, and unpredictable economic outlook (just to name a few!), while delivering short-term returns on longer-term investments.

The dizzying pace of change, combined with inevitable future uncertainty, means that innovation portfolios must be designed to be as resilient as possible. But how to best do this?

This industry-agnostic workshop will demonstrate the value of applying strategic foresight to shaping future-proof innovation portfolios. Together we’ll work with future scenarios to stress-test opportunity areas and search fields, unlocking insights on how to streamline investments, (re)allocate resources, and ultimately, do more with less.

Tobias is Chief Innovation and Strategy Officer at Creative Dock, the largest independent European Venture Builder. Before, he founded and led Rohrbeck Heger, a boutique consultancy focussed on strategic foresight that was acquired by Creative Dock in 2021.

Tobias has a background in foresight, innovation management, and strategy. He continuously advises clients such as Bosch, Deutsche Telekom, Hyundai, LG, Mondelez, Siemens, Tata Group, Webasto, and many more. A futurist by heart, he engages in building up new companies in addition to his day-to-day job. His areas of expertise are:

* Mobility, telecommunications, and digital manufacturing
* Digitalization, servitization, and industry convergence
* Foresight-Driven Innovation and Strategy
* Collaborative and networked co-creation

Before founding Rohrbeck Heger, Tobias was Head of Innovation at EIT Digital Germany, a PPP focusing on strengthening European competitiveness in the digital domain. During this period he has worked with clients from multiple industries with a focus on the future perspective, digital businesses, and the application areas of information technology.

Parallel to consulting, Tobias is also an active researcher, lecturer, and business angel. He completed a PhD on foresight at University of Potsdam, Hasso Plattner Institute and his research was published in leading international journals and on conferences such as Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Futures, ISPIM, and the R&D Management Conference. Through his investment company, Tobias advises founders, with a particular focus on IT, logistics, and mobility.

Sebastian Knab is Director of Foresight & Strategy at Creative Dock, Europe and MENA's largest independent corporate venture builder. He is also Deputy Managing Director at Rohrbeck Heger, a foresight consultancy that was acquired by Creative Dock in 2021.

Sebastian has 15 years of experience in foresight, strategy, innovation and sustainability and holds a Doctoral (Ph.D.) degree in Management from Universität Hamburg and a Diploma (M.Sc.) degree in Industrial Engineering and Management from TU Berlin.

His areas of expertise include:
+ Innovation, technology and business field exploration/radars
+ Scenario-based strategizing and business modeling
+ Business model innovation and collaborative business modeling
+ Socio-technical/sustainability transitions and systemic innovation
+ Selected sectors: Energy, Mobility, Telco/ICT/Digital, Industrial, Public-private partnerships

Before joining Rohrbeck Heger, Sebastian led foresight and innovation activities at the EICT, Berlin, a partnership of Deutsche Telekom, Daimler, Siemens, Opera Software, Fraunhofer, and Technische Universität Berlin. At the EICT, he established the future energy business group and led projects on strategic foresight, business modeling and innovation planning. Sebastian also established and co-led the smart energy systems and business modeling activities at the EIT Digital, a leading European digital innovation, entrepreneurship and education organization driving Europe’s digital transformation.

Previously, Sebastian worked for the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) in the department of Energy, Transportation and Environment and for Prognos in the area of Energy Economics and Policy. He also gained international industry experience at Total, France, Elektral, Turkey, Daimler and Aurubis, both Germany.