We often say that our mindsets create our reality. When it comes to sustainable innovation, what are the mindsets, behaviors and values to drive innovation and have a real impact on the planet?

Discover the co-elevation concept and the mindsets, behaviors and values to go further.

Danielle Winandy is a serial intrapreneur at heart with 13 years’ experience in financial services and innovation. Since 2017, Danielle has been the Head of the RISK Innovation Office at BNP Paribas. Her current role involves creating an environment that fosters innovation by introducing intrapreneurship programs, methods, models and metrics. Danielle and her team also facilitate innovation trainings and workshops throughout the company and network with external experts. Danielle has helped shape the innovation evolution within BNPP through several innovation initiatives.

Danielle is committed to issues such as women in leadership and their progress within the workplace. She also co-founded Women in Cyber Network @ BNP Paribas, a global community that aims to bring more women to technological jobs, especially Cyber Security.
Danielle holds certificates from Harvard Business School in Disruptive Strategy, Sustainable Business Strategy, a master on Design Thinking from MIT and she became a Futurist certified from Institute for the Future in 2020. She is passionate about people, Sustainability and Innovation.

The need for innovation for a sustainable future has never been more immediate. We must act - NOW!

This decade will determine the future of life on Earth, for humans and nature alike. In ten years, we must change our entire way of living and acting. Sustainability must shape every aspect of our lives if we are to mitigate climate change and slow global warming.

That said, what does it mean in concrete terms?

In this session, following our recent report on Innovation & Sustainability in 2030, Michelle and Alex highlight a number of trends that will become significantly more important in the next 10 years. Learn how to identify and assess them accordingly. We look forward to an exciting exchange on this highly meaningful topic.

Michelle is a Strategic Insights & Innovation Capabilities Lead at ITONICS. As an innovation practitioner, she has global experience in helping organizations leverage opportunities to capture new value and better serve stakeholder needs. Michelle holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) in Marketing Management from the University of Pretoria where she specialized in uses and gratifications theory.
Michelle oversees the ITONICS Cape Town team responsible for analysis and content generation. Her expertise lies in building innovation capabilities to inspire clients to address customer needs.

Alexander Kruczek has been working in the sales department of ITONICS for 4 years and as a Senior Sales Manager. His main focus here is on the financial sector and the aviation industry. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration with a focus on sustainability and information technology. His clients include the world leader in offshore wind energy Orsted, the food company Mondelez and the American insurer Progressive Insurance.

You know WHY you want to reduce your footprint. You might even know WHAT positive impact to make. But understanding HOW to drive out waste and create positive behaviours while operating profitably is complex.

Connected, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies are part of the answer to transforming your business.

But this isn’t about technology. It’s about the new experiences, new business models and new ways of working that IoT can unleash. Drawing on decades of work and real-world examples, Alan will share his experience of how IoT systems can drive sustainable change and how established corporations can successfully adopt these new technologies and business models.

Alan believes innovation can change the world for the better and brings to this challenge a track record of breakthrough innovation for leading brands over more than two decades.

He currently leads Ignite Exponential, the strategic innovation and design business unit of specialist electronics consultancy Plextek. Initially trained as a manufacturing engineer, and with a passion for design, consumer insight and new business models this broad experience has given him a wide ranging and holistic perspective on sustainability and growth. He’s proud to have partnered with leading companies including Lego, Bosch, Electrolux, Procter & Gamble and many others.

His work has helped to address a broad range of strategic challenges such as creating innovation strategies to manage in extreme volatility, developing next generation product portfolios and integrating design principles into corporate cultures. He’s passionate about working across disciplines and industries as innovation is enabled by unusual connections and partnerships, and the transfer of insight, technologies and inspiration between domains.

There is a lot to learn about regenerative innovation and a lot of it is in flux. Planetary tipping points, regulations, potential solutions, and consumer behaviours are all changing rapidly. How do we make sense of and operate in this dynamic space?

In this session, Sesh defines 10 principles that function as foundational yet flexible guidelines for your work – regardless of your role or industry. Join her for an interactive session where we explore how to put these principles into practice – with examples and methods that combine regenerative thinking with human-centered design methods.

Sesh is an Associate Strategy Director in frog’s London studio. She has 9+ years of experience in strategy, service design, user research and management consulting. Sesh believes in the power of design and innovation as a force to build a world that works regeneratively and equitably for all.

She uses a trans-disciplinary approach to help clients identify whitespace opportunities and build products, services and experiences that meets user needs and creates value for everyone.

2020 marked a turning point: the time to raise corporations’ ambition for the common good they create in society is now. Consumers, employees, investors, regulators, and the civil society all demand it.

Based on more than 100 in-depth case studies of Sustainable Business Model Innovation, we show how the best companies are reinventing their business models to deliver environmental and societal surpluses, in turn, unlocking new sources of competitive advantage and value for the business. This session shares secrets from these front-runners.

David Young is a Managing Director & Senior Partner in the Boston office of Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and leads BCG's total societal impact and sustainability topic globally. He is a Fellow of the BCG Henderson Institute, researching Sustainable Business Model Innovation (SBM-I).

Dave has gained deep knowledge and experience in the Social, Public and Private sectors in developing strategy and transforming these organizations to achieve greater social impact, at higher scale, more quickly. He strives to support businesses achieve their Sustainable Development Goals, as well as find profitable new businesses with higher social value and be recognized by their stakeholders for doing so.

Join this session for a conversation about these five questions, John has outlined for a new generation of innovators.
1. What lies beyond the barrier? Or what is calling to us from beyond the barrier?
2. Who are we and where are we headed?
3. Are there not among us, those who will act on behalf of all, people who will attempt to do the things that need to be done and who do not need to be supervised as they address these problems?
4. What does civilization bring to people that they did not already have, and why is civilization so hard on the people who turn it down?
5. What sort of future can we expect never to see?

John Suh is vice president and founding director of New Horizons Studio, which is focused on the development of Ultimate Mobility Vehicles (UMVs), including the concept vehicle Hyundai Elevate. New Horizons Studio is expected to push the extreme limits of vehicle development, building vehicles to traverse off-road terrains with unprecedented mobility, through a combination of robotics and wheeled locomotion technology.

John has held several leadership roles at Hyundai Motor Group since 2011. He served as founding director of Hyundai Ventures, and then led Hyundai CRADLE (Center for Robotic-Augmented Design in Living Experiences) as its founding director based in Silicon Valley. He brings over 35 years of expertise in the automotive and emerging technology sectors, including roles at Stanford University, Palo Alto Research Center (PARC; formerly, Xerox PARC), and General Motors Company.

John has a BS degree in electrical engineering from Kettering University and an MS and PhD degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University. John has numerous technical publications and has six patents and patents pending in the fields of robotics, artificial nose technology, and location based services.

Triangulating macro-developments such as the US rejoining the Paris agreement, the growing influence of the Task Force on Climate-related Disclosure, and the IRIS initiative of Carbone4, there is reinforced momentum across sectors and geographies for taking action on climate change. And for any national, state of local government, transportation is a key part of the mix, typically representing 25-30% of CO2 emissions from fuel combustion.

In regions such as Europe, however, rail represents a mere 1.8% of total transportation emissions. Given rail’s status as the most sustainable mode of motorized transportation, increasing rail’s portion of the mix will directly decrease transportation’s percentage of region emissions and total emissions in general. Rail offers a net environmental benefit, not to mention social benefits around safety and accessibility, and economic benefits related to GDP growth and land value capture.

In addition to scaling traditional rail infrastructure, there are several innovation opportunities for further decarbonizing the rail value chain.

Building on Alstom’s already strong portfolio of sustainable solutions and initiatives such as our science based targets, our commitment to 100% renewable energy by 2025 and of course, our hydrogen powered train, our Climate Innovation platform offers clear and present value to our customers. While specific to rail, Alstom’s Climate Innovation offering holds promise for any organization looking to increase customer value through renewables, ecosystem partnerships, energy storage and green finance.

An articulate, agile & transversal innovator with a proven ability to analyze complex issues, determine strategic directions, engage and execute. Multi-lingual global leader on a mission to build innovative and sustainable communities through scaling rail infrastructure. Market transformation to sustainability on four continents.

In this session, Stefan will explore how Grundfos targets UN sustainability goals through innovation, how they are organizing themselves in regards to core business and external partners, and how they drive activities forward. He will present examples of activities that they are bringing forward.

Stefan Kloster Kinze is result oriented and passionate about solving the world's climate challenges through new business models technologies and innovation.

In this session, we will discuss Enel’s combined approach to Innovation and Sustainability: Innovability®. Top tier Business Schools such as Harvard, Berkeley and INSEAD have studied the case of the Italian energy giant and how it uses an ecosystem of startups, NGOs and innovators to navigate the energy transition.

What is the connection between Sustainable Development Goals and open innovation? What are the opportunities that Enel’s Corporate Venture Client model offers to startups? What tools and solutions can be used to tackle topics such as climate change, resilient cities and inclusion?

Fabio Tentori has been Head of Enel Innovation Hubs for the Enel Group since 2017. He first joined the company in 2013, and went on to gain significant experience in the field of energy innovation, working first in various roles in the development of the residential energy services business and then as Innovation Manager in Italy. He also contributes to the teaching of several Master’s courses on innovation and management. In 2010 he received an MBA from the INSEAD Business School. He has a degree in management from the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan, graduating in 2006. Prior to joining Enel, he spent six years working in Milan and London for McKinsey management consultants.

Bernhard Kowatsch is the Head of the Innovation Accelerator at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which he started in 2015. The WFP Innovation Accelerator was named by Fast Company #2 Most Innovative Non-Profit Organisation 2021. In 2020, their innovation and startup portfolio positively impacted the lives of 3.7 million people.

This session will examine the key success factors in product management for startups and innovations for large scale social impact, based on scaling innovations in their current portfolio.

Bernhard Kowatsch the Head of the Innovation Accelerator at the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP). which he started in 2015. The WFP Innovation Accelerator was named by Fast Company as Best Workplace for Innovators and Innovative Team of the Year 2020 for its work in identifying, nurturing and scaling disruptive startups and innovations to end global hunger. In 2019, innovations supported by the Accelerator positively impacted the lives of 1.4 million people directly and many more indirectly across the globe. Most recently, the Accelerator also runs programmes for external partners such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in primary healthcare, Humanitarian Grand Challenge and others.

Prior to starting the Accelerator, Bernhard co-founded the award-winning ShareTheMeal fundraising app and built-up WFP’s Business Innovation team. Bernhard was previously a Project Leader at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) for global tech and industrial goods companies, and holds three Masters degrees from HEC Paris and Vienna University of Business.

Across the private and public sector, firms and institutions are adopting bold transformation targets that place impact at the center of business and policy. How do we build the teams to deliver the innovative products, services, and business models needed for this new combination of profit and positive social outcomes? This session will share lessons learned from standing up innovation teams focused on “hard problems” – and how they apply to leaders looking to do the same.

Valla Vakili envisions and builds strategies, teams, and products that help businesses thrive within changing and challenging environments.
As Head of Studio at Citi Ventures, Valla works to foster economic vitality in an era of rapid societal change. His team leverages data, design, and partnerships in unique ways to create new and expanded growth opportunities for people, businesses, and cities. Previously, Valla helped create the D10X accelerator program as the first Entrepreneur-in-Residence, mentoring Citi teams in entrepreneurial principles to reimagine consumer financial services.

Valla began his career at Yahoo, creating revenue-driving products and teams that anticipated shifting online customer behavior. He is a former digital startup founder and CEO, an experience that gave him valuable insight into the peaks and valleys of entrepreneurship.

A graduate of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, Valla has conducted doctoral research at the University of Oxford and holds patents for inventions in interactive television content delivery and commerce. He also is a fan of fine whisky, great fiction, and good movies.

How will we live and work in the future? And how will this affect business areas and the environment?

In order to be able to guarantee corporate sustainability, companies are dependent on innovation. In particular, purpose-driven sustainability ideas can be innovated more easily with bottom-up innovation management. At the same time, thanks to intrapreneurship, a corresponding culture of innovation can be established within the company and the transformation of the employees can be driven.

Marius Schlegel has worked at Swisscom in Bern since 2012 and has been Deputy Head of Corporate Responsibility since 2015. He was previously involved in the topic of sustainability as a sustainability manager in the energy industry and in strategy consulting. Marius Schlegel holds a master's degree in geography with a focus on economic geography and environmental and agricultural economics. He lives in Zurich, is married and has two children.

Before joining Swisscom, Ralph worked for several companies abroad and in Switzerland and founded two startups. At Swisscom, he started off in the role of an 'Open Innovation Developer' building up the Kickbox program involving tasks such as coaching of intrapreneurs, internal marketing, and company building. After the program got known by other companies, Ralph is heading the Growth team at GETKICKBOX which enables other organizations to implement and scale their own kickbox program working towards an 'open innovation ecosystem'. Ralph holds a M.A. in Business Administration from the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and is lecturing at the university of applied science in Chur.

In the session Johanna will cover the necessity of working together in order to provide answers to climate crises and other grand challenges of our time. In addition to the outside-in approach, she will tackle the internal innovation capability of a traditional oil refinery, Neste, to reinvent itself as the 3rd most sustainable company in the world.

Collaboration for change is the name of the game! At Neste, Johanna Fräki enjoys working with customers, academia, cities, even competitors, in order to mitigate the climate crises. As responsible for establishing innovation ecosystems for renewable and recyclable solutions, she is convinced we can solve the great challenges of our time… together.

With a M.Sc. in Computer Science, an MBA, a long career in telecommunications, maritime and energy fields, and a stint at running her own disruptive e-commerce business, Johanna is well versed in the customer-driven innovation approach.

Johanna lives and breathes the oceans. When she’s not involved in innovations for a better life, Johanna can be found with her husband and three sons in the serene Finnish Archipelago, or on warmer, southern waters.

The rules of business are changing dramatically. In this session, Judy Samuelson, vice president at the Aspen Institute, and founder and executive director of The Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, describes the profound shifts in attitudes and mindsets that are redefining our notions of what constitutes business success, and the systemic forces that are holding us back. Internet-powered transparency, more powerful worker voice, the decline in importance of capital, and the complexity of global supply chains in the face of planetary limits all define the new landscape.

Drawing from her recent book, The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World, and her unique vantage Samuelson will discuss how to engage business decision makers and identify the forces that are moving the needle in both boardrooms and business classrooms, and offer a powerful guide to how businesses are changing today--and what is needed to succeed in tomorrow's economic and social landscape.

Judy Samuelson is founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program and a vice president at the Aspen Institute. She is the author of The Six New Rules of Business: Creating Real Value in a Changing World. Signature programs under Judy’s leadership include a ten-year campaign to disrupt Milton Friedman’s narrative about corporate purpose, a multiyear dialogue to produce the Aspen Principles of Long-Term Value Creation, and a partnership with Korn Ferry to rethink executive pay.

She previously worked in legislative affairs in California and banking in New York’s garment center and ran the Ford Foundation’s office of Program-Related Investments. Samuelson writes regularly for Quartz at Work, is a Bellagio Fellow and a director of Financial Health Network.

In 2015 Joan embarked on a social Intrapreneur project inspired by her son’s Dyslexia and her conviction which lead to an innovative product, inspiring content and community engagement. A triple play for the business by reaching underserved customers and fans, truly social innovation.

She’ll take us through her experience on how she achieved this: the approach, internal and market place engagement, as well as how she navigated this on top of her day job as Retail Finance Director at Disney. She’ll also explore the question of how this approach can be leveraged to drive Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at the company.

Originally from the Los Angeles area, Joan relocated to Paris, France where she embarked on a 25-year international career with Disney. A seasoned commercial finance executive, she has held leadership roles across a wide range of businesses – from Film Distribution & Acquisitions to Consumer Products & Retail – at both the Regional and Market level, working in Paris, London, Amsterdam & Brussels.

In 2016, inspired by her son, Joan launched “Dysnie” a social intrapreneur venture geared toward empowering Dyslexic children to unlock their potential through innovative & inclusive product, inspiring content and community engagement. An eye opener and total game changer, Joan is now taking the professional leap into social innovation. She is a currently Aspen First Movers Fellow.

As VMware looks to the future, they see sustainability as a new frontier of innovation, which is why they have arranged their business to have the sustainability team report to the CTO. The team is developing a framework and practice of intrinsic sustainability innovation that designs carbon efficiency into their products and services, helping to reduce the environmental impacts of VMware’s customers’ digital operations.

Nicola Peill-Moelter, Director of Sustainability Innovation, will discuss the evolution of their process and illustrate how sustainability and innovation teams are collaborating together to expand VMware’s reach beyond its walls for truly global-scale impact.

Nicola is the Director of Sustainability Innovation at VMware in the Office of the CTO. She collaborates with product and R&D teams to improve product and operational efficiency helping customers and VMware advance sustainability goals. She also identifies emerging verticals that address major environmental challenges where VMware is strategically positioned to help accelerate solutions. Her role is the culmination of a 25-year career in high-tech and academic training in engineering and environmental science that has evolved her belief that we can make the fastest progress addressing the world’s most urgent sustainability issues when sustainability and business value are aligned.Two early projects include a demand flexibility demonstration on VMware’s campus solar-powered microgrid that explores the emerging Smart Grid sector and mechanisms to identify stranded and unused compute capacity.

This session takes you on board of a circular innovation journey – going through all stages from corporate start-up to scaling up in the regular business lines.

It all started in the summer of 2017; one room, 2 colleagues, the lean start-up book and lots of post-its. At the end of the summer the business proposal for the board of directors was ready. After the approval we started to build the team and after 2 months we were sitting into a new office with 10+ team members. It was all about validation of the problem and desirability of the solution. Not an easy task as we were combining a technical innovation with a business model innovation. While kick starting technical feasibility and development of the technical version 1. It turned out to be a bumpy journey, but one of the best experiences in my career. Today the innovation is being part of the regular portfolio of solutions, with around 50 people working on its further development.

Esther Kersten is Global Sustainability Officer at Vanderlande and loves her job day after day. Her passion is to show that sustainability makes good business sense and goes hand in hand with innovation. Working at Vanderlande since early 2012 and jumped into various innovation adventures. She likes the early phase of innovation, starting with a blank sheet, imagination, lots of customer validation and uncertain bumpy roads. Involving people from all levels and disciplines. A true intrapreneur. Today she is empowering her colleagues to make the world a bit more beautiful.

Her sustainability & innovation roots date back to 2006, when she started at DSM. Afterwards she worked for various companies and organisations in the field of sustainable innovation. She learned that businesses have the power to deliver tremendous progress, and a unique ability to make this world a better place. Strongly connected is her belief in the intelligence of mother nature. She is mother of Mike (7) and Kate (6) and loves to travel the world.