Innov8rs Learning Lab on Venture Building & Scaling, 14-16 February 2023

In this session Tarun will address some of the following:
1. What’s success?
2. What are usual pitfalls in corporate venture building?
3. Portfolio strategies between internal & external?

Tarun Sharma is a dynamic business leader with a wide range of experience from startups to Fortune 100 companies. He is currently COO of Nokia Ventures and has extensive experience in working with entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, intrapreneurs and CXO’s to build high-growth technology-based businesses at @NokiaBellLabs, @Microsoft, @IBM, @Nokia, and @Tieto.

Corporate Venture Building is a two-front war, fought internally and externally simultaneously.

• External Front: Product-Market Fit
Product-Market Fit is described as the significant milestone for a startup. Every startup. It is the degree to which a product satisfies a strong market demand. It is also a top reason why startups fail.

• Internal Front: Corporate-Venture Fit
Corporate-Venture Fit is the degree to which a venture matches its corporate mother’s strategy at a given time.
There are many examples of Corporate Ventures that were liquidated despite proven PMF. Cited reasons are primarily changes in strategy. This makes CVF a top reason why corporate startups fail – next to Product-Market Fit.

Join this session to learn about and discuss the concept of Corporate-Venture Fit:
-What is it?
– How to achieve and keep it?

Tino Klaehne is a seasoned innovation expert with +10 years of experience in connecting the dots between strategy & design to drive corporate innovation at scale. He is in charge of the development & operationalization of Lufthansa Innovation Hub’s innovation strategy.
His work fuels the creation of digital ventures in the travel & mobility tech context by fusing traveler insights with entrepreneurial momentum, business strategy, and emerging technologies.
A designer by training, Tino also holds an MBA with a specialization in Innovation & Business Creation from the Technical University Munich. Before joining Lufthansa, Tino led design teams at different renowned design studios and companies across all phases of Design Thinking and Doing. He has gained extensive cross-industry experience ranging from consumer electronics to public transportation across products, software, and services.

Amadeus, one of the leading TravelTech companies, is among the Pioneer companies who upgraded their new-business building approach with the Lean Scaleup.
This is a conversation about the why and the how.
Why was the existing approach – heavily building on the Lean Startup – not good enough?
Why did Amadeus select the Lean Scaleup as basis for new-business building?
How did Amadeus implement it?

Listen in as Steve Kopp, head of Amadeus’ business-building incubation office and Frank Mattes, founder and CEO of Lean Scaleup discuss these issues and insights into new-business building.

Steve is a visionary, result-oriented senior leader with 25 years of experience in designing and building new digital solutions and businesses. At Amadeus, Steve heads the Nexwave Business Incubation Office, responsible for strategy, portfolio management, business-building methodology, marketing communications and operations. In addition, Steve is the Chairman of the Amadeus Executive Incubation Board, the governance committee overseeing the incubation portfolio, and of the Travel Innovation Club, a travel industry-wide association of corporate players collaborating to improve the overall traveler end-to-end experience. Prior to joining Amadeus, Steve held various design and innovation related roles at SAP and Business Objects.

Frank Mattes is an expert in corporate business-building, advisor to Corporate Innovation and Corporate Venturing, and author of two books on corporate business building. In the last four years, Frank focused on the corporate business-building problem: why do large companies struggle dramatically in building new businesses from innovation – and how can they improve?

Together with 20+ industry leaders from many sectors, Frank co-created the Lean Scaleup™ framework. This framework comprises Best Practices in how to create new sizable, profitable businesses. The Lean Scaleup is the latest addition to the corporate entrepreneurship toolbox. It takes the Lean Startup into the corporate context, extends it to an end-to end journey from idea to scale and comprises the Best Practices from some of the world’s finest companies.

To help corporate innovation practitioners improve in business-building, Frank founded the consulting agency Lean Scaleup and published the book with the same name in May 2021. The book was co-written with two dozens of corporate practitioners and two leading business schools, UC Berkeley and the London Business School. Please find more on the book and the Lean Scaleup framework at www.leanscaleup.com/book

As founder of Sinc, a greentech corporate venture by Airbus, Antje will share from first-hand experience and evidence why corproate venture building is a must nowadays, amongst others to diversify product portfolio and enter new markets.

Join her session to learn:
– What can be KPIs for success
– How to find assets in the business to build on?
– Why you need allies and protectors to navigate the mothership

Antje is leading an Airbus Corporate Startup to scale Direct Air Capture (DAC) to numerous applications. The DAC units will allow the sink of CO2 into carbon negative products, fuels, fertilizers or it will be put into rock where it stays forever. She is building on existing Airbus space technology and focuses on commercial viability and early customer integration.

Before she was a Startup coach in the Airbus BizLab in Hamburg and led the Airbus Startup Accelerator for a time. In her role she promotes entrepreneurship and innovation as well as their impact within the Airbus organization. Prior to this position she was leading the Change Management of an Airbus M&A project and held positions in Marketing and Business Development. Before entering Airbus she was setting up the Corporate Social Responsibility campaign for a major German Bank and published a book on CSR and the impact of Social Business. Antje holds a Diploma in International Business, she has studied and worked in the UK, France, Germany, Brazil and Argentina. Antje lives with her family in Hamburg – Sankt Pauli / Germany.

In this session, you will learn about the power of self-appointed teams and how Innovation Labs or Innovation responsible can create a process that helps executives choose the right ideas and secure funding enough for them to be validated.

Take-away’s
– How can Self-Appointed teams create growth, faster and at the same time contribute to a more entrepreneurial culture
– How can an Internal Corporate Venture fund change the mindset of executives and create growth

Morten has +25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and management consultant. As a practices lead for Strategy and Innovation he has worked in multiple industries helping large corporations strengthen their innovation efforts and building their “innovation muscle mass”. Morten advises executive boards on setting the aspiration for Innovation, creating their innovation strategy and building the road map for execution. Morten’s professional focus is to create growth through innovation. He has supported many teams in validating their ideas, from early stage to scaling and advised corporations on how to create “safe space” for ideas to mature into investable ideas.

Hannes is the Chief Intrapreneur aka ZukunftsBauer of Raiffeisen-Landesbank Steiermark AG. ZukunftsBauer literally means Builder of the future or Farmer of the Future. A true farmer will regeneratively grow the basis for our future. Appreciating both, rain and sun. And banking & finance, which forms a big part of the business of Raiffeisen-Landesbank as the biggest bank in the South of Austria, is heading for a stormy future. The task is to be ready for what is to come.

With all signs pointing to recession, corporates are revising budgets and typically pull back on hiring, Marketing and innovation initiatives. Start-up valuations are already down because VCs are more reluctant to take the risk.

Which is exactly why serial entrepreneur and Co-Managing Partner of EMEA for Mach49 Chris Lindener says the time is right to both deploy wisely budgets AND get results. In this session, Chris shares practical insights into how you can make the most of the looming economic downturn by building and/or investing in quality ventures that drive strong and sustainable growth. Without fear, but with outcomes.

Christian is a serial entrepreneur who has co-founded several successful startups, including Reflex Aerospace — the first venture-backed satellite manufacturer in Europe, a virtual reality startup that was acquired by booking.com, and Skyroads — an open digital operations platform for the urban air mobility market. He was also CEO of UN:IO Enterprise GmbH, Europe’s first low latency and high bandwidth satellite mega constellation.

Before joining Mach49, Christian served as Head of Airbus Scale — Airbus’ central innovation unit — where he drove all of the company’s internal and external innovation activities. He also served as Managing Director of Wayra Germany — Telefónica’s CVC arm — where he oversaw the strategic direction of the organization and managed the selection of and investment in startups to be integrated into Telefónica’s portfolio.

Christian has created and advised over 20 incubator and accelerator programs across Germany, Switzerland, and Austria and holds board seats at several high-tech, high-growth startups across Europe. As Co-Founder and Director of TechFounders — a high-tech hardware accelerator based in Munich — he was responsible for the development of over 50 high-tech startups.

Born in Brazil and raised in Mexico, Christian holds degrees in international business administration and economics from the Leopold-Franzens University in Innsbruck, the University of New Orleans, and the University of Barcelona. He now lives in Barcelona with his wife and two children, and enjoys surfing the European swells in his free time.

All companies must exploit their current business models while simultaneously exploring new ones, but how exactly do you explore new ones? A vast array of approaches has emerged: venture builders, internal and external incubators, innovation hubs, CVC. Do any of them work? Which one is most effective? Or should companies employ all approaches to diversify their bets? In this talk, I will outline how Mann+Hummel approaches this challenge with a particular focus on exploratory business and venturing. This talk will give participants a better understanding of the pitfalls, challenges, and opportunities in corporate venturing.

Key Takeaways:
1. Before venturing, have well-defined strategic ambitions and tangible goals, including proper organizational setup
2. Only invest at the speed of learning with a strict governance regime
3. Have a clear reintegration plan

Michael Nichols joined Mann + Hummel in 2022 where he is responsible for investing in and developing partnerships with external startups who can help drive the next generation of business models at Mann + Hummel. Additionally, he coaches internal ventures and technical projects as they validate their business ideas. Before Mann + Hummel, Michael worked at Bosch from 2014 – 2022, specializing in the field of business model innovation. At Bosch, Michael was responsible for the Bosch Accelerator Program and for the implementation of a Bosch-wide innovation process with a clear focus on developing an ambidextrous organization to bring more innovation ideas beyond the core business to scale. The Bosch Accelerator Program has systematically (in)validated over 300 innovation projects in its first 5 years.