Innov8rs Learning Lab on Startup Collaboration & Ecosystem Engagement (14-16 March 2023)

The challenges the healthcare sector is facing are too complex for a single company to solve on its own. Co-creating with other companies in the healthcare ecosystem can be an effective way to bring together the ideas, skills, contacts, and other resources needed to produce truly powerful innovations.

At GE HealthCare, we know that ecosystems are the key to success in the modern business world. Be it close collaboration with global, leading technology companies, broader engagement with organizations across mutual interest areas or mass market nurturing of the developer community, it’s the support in the community and the vibrancy of the outside activity around our products that really make them successful –as well as making our customers successful.

As Senior Director of the Digital Ecosystem, Jan’s role is to drive GE HealthCare Digital EMEA’s Ecosystem Strategy and together with his team develop cooperation with partner companies, indirect channels, start-up centers and networks. Jan is the head of GE Healthcare’s Edison TM Accelerator. With over 15 years of experience in healthcare informatics, the medical imaging domain and management, Jan is a seasoned leader with vast experience in leading strategic initiatives and influencing strategic decisions that ultimately drive revenue and contribute to enterprise value. Prior to joining GE HealthCare, Jan has held consultancy roles in Digital Health start-ups and radiology IT companies. Prior to his Digital Ecosystem responsibility at GE HealthCare, he has been responsible for leading clinical consultancy at GE HealthCare Digital in Europe, Middle East & Africa where he and his team ensured and optimized the quality of clinical solution architecture, clinical workflow consultancy, change management and user adoption. He brings a real passion for the digital transformation of healthcare, understanding healthcare provider needs,improving healthcare workflows and user experience.

Jan lives outside of Leipzig, Germany, with his wife and their two daughters and founded www.gr4ai.academy, a nonprofit to create awareness and educate children around Artificial Intelligence.

Corporates who understand their participation in a holistic venture ecosystem can leverage every part of the ecosystem in the ways those parts work best. We’ll explore how corporate innovation, internal corporate venture studios, corporate venture capital, external venture studios and venture capital can collaborate as a thriving ecosystem that accelerates innovation forward.

Taylor is a cross-functional team leader with 15 years of experience guiding people in diverse and complicated technical industries to form and scale their new ventures. Currently, he is scaling an internal startup studio and innovation ecosystem within Microsoft’s Office of the CTO into a new growth engine for Microsoft. He is a full-stack developer, former educator and entrepreneur. Taylor most enjoys guiding highly technical product companies from infancy to scalable success by offering strategic, operational, and marketing expertise.

In this session Eva will share more about Venture Clienting and how it is a key mechanism for Siemens Energy to accelerate innovation by leveraging the power of startups.

Key session takeaways will include:
– An understanding of what venture clienting is and how it operates to support innovation within a corporate environment
– Insights into an actual use case including the process and the commercial benefits of the pilot/adoption

Eva Teresa Harasewycz is Venture Associate and Team Lead for the Venture Clienting arm of Siemens Energy Ventures. Her role involves bringing the power of startups into Siemens Energy through piloting ventures to help drive the energy transition and climate change through innovative collaboration. Specific areas of focus include digital grid, waste heat recovery, hydrogen and storage, data analytics, AI, robotics and factory automation.

Having joined Siemens in 2016, Eva worked in a number of Corporate Governance and Operational Excellence roles. In 2020, when Siemens Energy underwent a spin-off from Siemens to become an independent company, Eva was a Corporate Governance Consultant. She then joined the ventures team in October 2021.

Eva has a MSc In Digital Innovation & Business Transformation and a BA in European Studies. Most recently she has completed the Venture Finance Programme at the University of Oxford. Eva is located in Berlin, Germany.

Innovation is one of the top strategic priorities for many global organizations and executives: 84% of executives believe innovation is important for growth [1]. To continue growing in a rapidly changing market, many organizations have relied on methodologies proven successful in the world of design and technology, such as Design Thinking and Agile. Although these methodologies come predefined with some clear principles to follow, they also come with mindsets – a prerequisite and key ingredient for successful outcomes.

Using her experience in Open Innovation over the past 2 years in a global mining company, Suzanne will share some lessons learned in this session, exploring the variances and drawing parallels between theory and practice in applying such methodologies.

Suzanne’s mission is to help people and organizations transform and reinvent themselves by harnessing their unique gift of creativity to generate value. She draws from her diverse experiences in engineering, management consulting, technology implementation, digital transformation, corporate innovation, as well as leading corporate diversity initiatives.

At Vale, Suzanne leads entrepreneurial projects using open innovation with the goal of helping her company tackle some of its most complex problems, requiring reimagining rather than incremental innovation; while also accelerating innovation for the mining industry as a whole. With her corporate innovation experiences across industries, she understands that a company’s culture plays a fundamental role in the adoption and dissemination of innovation. The nuance and complexities of the mining industry, and the industrial nature of the work make innovation a particularly challenging exercise – but also a very rewarding one!

Corporates can choose among a set of different approaches when working on (radical) innovation, often they face the question of “”make or buy?””
At VNTR | Innovation & Venturing by PostFinance we are tackling innovation opportunities from different angles, depending on the most promising approach of BUILD/PARTNER/INVEST. Different mind-sets, cultural constraints, architecture-, security- or legal concerns make corporate/startup collaborations to a (rewarding) adventure. Navigating the unknown and building bridges between corporate stakeholders and the startup “”pacemakers”” can pave the road to successful innovation projects.

Luca started his career at INTERSPORT in the sports retail industry and after his studies in International Management & Entrepreneurship, he moved to the retail banking context, working for VNTR | Innovation & Venturing by PostFinance, one of Switzerland’s largest financial institutions.

As the open innovation lead at VNTR | Innovation, he contributes to developing forward-looking innovation projects, even outside of banking. He believes that it is crucial to open up the company’s innovation process to the outside world, and that the bank should develop capabilities to successfully collaborate with startups and other innovation partners.

Large organizations struggle to create successful open innovation programs for startups. Their cultures often clash, incentives can be misaligned and complex organizational structures can result in a lack of focus, making it difficult to get things done.

Session participants will get insights on ABB Electrification’s experience on what works and what doesn’t when partnering with innovative startups in a venture clienting model. These lessons learned are aimed at establishing the foundations, framework and governance required to cement open innovation as an engine for growth.

Erika Velazquez is Open Innovation Lead for ABB Electrification based in Zurich, Switzerland. She has more than ten years’ experience in partnerships and innovation management, business development, product management and strategic marketing across multiple industries including microgrids, energy storage and renewables. Key areas of expertise include digital transformation enablement and segment value proposition creation and rollout.

Erika holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering from the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Mexico, a M.Sc. in Sustainable Energy Futures from Imperial College London and has completed executive education at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) and IMD Business School.

Today we make media differently in the metaverse and with the help of AI. We distribute media differently via an overload of (streaming) platforms and podcasts. We consume media differently on demand and on the road. Great content is just not good anymore to win.
As the public broadcaster for Flemish television and Radio, the VRT needs to follow the increasing innovation pace in the changing media market. Therefore, VRT launched 7 years ago ‘VRT Sandbox’ = the front door (literally) for startups to enter the VRT. The incubation and acceleration model became a blue-print for other media organizations and other industries (Flemish Government, B-Post…)

How do you create your own startup-driven experimentation sandbox?
What did we learn from 7 years Sandbox, both on entrepreneurship and interapreneurship?
To focus on startups or scaleups? Or both?

As ScaleUp Coordinator at VRT Sandbox, Mathias bridges the gap between scaleup founders and corporate leads within VRT or in the VRT media ecosystem. He actively scouts the startup scene to find new technological and creative opportunities that fulfill the needs of the media creator or consumer.
Once a startup has entered the VRT corporate walls, Mathias coordinates the process from beginning to end. After a successful collaboration, he finds new ways to share the startup-inspired innovation story with the outside world to keep the ‘VRT Sandbox heartbeat’ pumping.

With previous startup experiences at What’s In the Box?, Cloud, and FLAVR, Mathias is also not shy about an entrepreneurial adventure.

Sessions participants will have the chance to learn about the Generali’s approach to Open Innovation and understand how the central innovation team of a large multinational Group operates and supports Innovation’s scaling. Indeed, Innovation can come from anywhere and this is particularly true in the context of any large multinational Group, that’s why Generali developed a pragmatic but yet democratic approach to Innovation, crystallized in the motto “”Innovation everywhere, for everyone””
Some of the main takeaways you can expect:
– How to support Innovation’s scaling within a large multinational Group
– How to avoid Innovation’s pain-points in large federated corporates

Senior Innovation manager with expertise in Open-Innovation, Venture Capital and Venture Building. Filippo Maria held managerial and consulting positions of increasing responsibility across multiple industries, including: financial services, insurance, tech. and the arts in companies like Generali, Plug and Play Tech Center, Google and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. A natural trailblazer with a strong growth mind-set. Passionate about Open Innovation and Behavioral Economics’ topics, Filippo Maria is supporting early-stage startups as Mentor at Plug and Play Tech Center and Startup Geeks

Sharing the particular journey of BSH Home Appliances Group to identify and adapt the Venture Clienting model as most effective tool to drive innovation at quality and speed. The key principles of the concept is simply: It is about having a clear focus and creating tangible business impact.

Lars is Head of BSH Startup Kitchen, the Corporate Venture unit of BSH Home Appliances Group – with a particular focus on Venture Clienting. Lars has more than 14+ years of experience in corporate venture capital, corporate strategy and strategy consulting. Having seen the world of corporate venturing from different angles, Lars is passionate about creating long-term value and best returns in corporate venturing for both startups and corporates.