Innov8rs Lisbon (2-3 May 2023)

While listening to your customers is key for successful innovation, disruptive innovation doesn’t usually emerge from inside a market, but is often triggered by technologies that allow us to think about a problem in a completely new way. But pursuing technology-inspired innovation isn’t merely “tech push”, and successful commercialization of even the seemingly greatest technology is far from trivial.

In his provocative talk, Kai Wicker, head of the ZEISS Innovation Hub Dresden, will share his learnings exploring the business potential of deep tech, such as identifying the right tech and evaluating its potential but also external and internal hurdles for the shaping of new markets, that may seem out-of-reach today.

Kai was pursuing an academic career in physics and always knew that industry just wasn’t for him – until ten years ago, when he took the plunge and joined ZEISS, where he found his passion for innovation and strategy.

Over the years he’s held various roles in R&D and innovation management. As the head of one of two ZEISS Innovation Hubs, he is using strategic foresighting to help ZEISS prepare for a future transformed by radical technological change.

The Nespresso team shares their laser focus on customer-centric solutions and how their unique blend of customer empathy and solution design is geared at transforming the coffee industry.

Since its inception, Nespresso places customers at the heart of every decision. Join us for an enlightening conversation, where you’ll learn how Nespresso’s empathy-led approach to what the coffee drinker wants and needs results in visionary product development.

Ozum has built a strong sense of curiosity on human mind and behavior throughout her academic research years in experimental psychology, and later mixed her curiosity with her passion for innovation to help FMCGs launch high impact innovations that are rooted on strong human truths.

She now leads the Raise the Bar Innovation Program at Nespresso HQ to define a consumer centric and viable innovation pipeline for core and new business together with a cross functional team.

Session participants will be able to understand Sigma’s journey on building up the framework for leveraging innovation as one of the key growth levers towards the future.

When talking about innovation, we all agree organizations must learn how to move with agility and efficiency, embracing risk while anticipating consumer needs and expectations. But that does not happen from one day to the other, and the challenge becomes even bigger when trying to bring together, on the same goal, completely different markets and teams. It implies starting by ensuring alignment on a common approach on innovation, guarantee focus and resources and develop and incorporate new ways of working.

By the end of the session, you will benefit from our learnings when going back to your own journey.

As Innovation Director of Sigma, Marta has a solid professional background in the FMCG sector in areas related to business strategy, project management, product development, branding and communication.

Her more than 18 years of experience in marketing and innovation in the food industry began at Nobre, the leading food company in Portugal, owned by Sigma. After five years as Marketing Director in Nobre, she joined Sigma Europe team to manage the Emerging Categories and Snacks division, and has been the Innovation Director of the multinational food company for the last four years.

The objective of the session is to share the Galp case, an overview of Innovation at Galp: our journey, our mission, the way we work, the Governance model with our internal stakeholders.

Our Mission is to “Build a portfolio of opportunities to boost the energy transition in an agile way”. So we challenge the strategy and the business units with new opportunities, we incubate and boost new projects in complex environments by being enablers, and we take everyone outside of their comfort zone.

The talk will highlight the importance of having a strategic mindset: define and approve the innovation thesis to get the Stakeholders aligned, define a roadmap​, manage the innovation portfolio​, set clear Innovation KPIs; as well as the importance of having a collaborative mindset: implement innovation practices, embrace ecosystems in a collaborative way​, have cross functional & diverse teams​.

Innovation @GALP
– Corporate Innovation
– Hybrid Governance
– Innovation Roadmap
– Bringing a portfolio of opportunities
– Focus on execution
– Proximity to Business Units

Economist, MBA, former investment banker and venture capitalist, Carla initiated her journey in the Energy industry in 2008 where she was exposed to cleantech companies from all over the world. Her passion for innovation, and willingness to learn and bring new business into the scene has never stopped since then. Working with entrepreneurs and tech companies gives her inspiration, resiliency, and agility skills that she adopts on a daily basis, and helps her as a corporate innovation leader to succeed inside large energy companies.

Carla is 45 and mother of two. Being connected with people worldwide and exposed to different cultures, gives her motivation and creativity to carry on, and helps her to be open minded and forward thinking.

How much innovation is there in a wine bottle?

From the vine growing and selection of grapes to the ageing period, including the whole winemaking process, technology is widely present. In a continuous pursuit for excellence, the industry is incessantly looking for the best innovative solutions to keep on producing uniqueness and ensuring that there is always something new to discover in every bottle.

André Campos is the Head of Strategy and Acceleration of Sogrape. Being responsible for the Innovation in the group, he has been focused on fostering an innovation culture within Sogrape and positioning the company in the ecosystem as a relevant innovation player within the beverage industry.

André Campos holds an MBA from INSEAD and a degree in Economics and a master’s degree in Finance from the School of Economics of the University of Porto. He has an experience of over 10 years in large Portuguese companies in the Telco and Banking industry, where he was responsible for Marketing, Strategic Planning and Business Development areas.

How to navigate the turbulent waters of frenzy startups with a large corporate vessel and reach win-win partnerships?

Join this session to explore current trends in terms of corporate innovation sources, understand different models of collaboration with startups, and discuss the lessons learned from a 5-year collaboration project that connected a diversified portfolio of large companies with more than 50 startups.

João Mil-Homens is the Innovation and Sustainability Director of Group Jose de Mello, where he is responsible for the implementation of a strategy strongly anchored in partnerships with startups to support the sustainable growth of the Group’s portfolio. He is a faculty member of SingularityU Portugal and a speaker on topics of disruptive innovation. Previously he was the National Delegate for the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation funding program, and an adjunct professor at University of Algarve. Joao holds a Masters and PhD in Planning, Governance and Globalization from Virginia Tech.

Innovation is risky. But that doesn’t mean we should take unnecessary risk. From his past 10 years as an innovation management executive, Claus has seen quite a lot of failures. Over all those years, he gained a better understanding why some initiatives failed by design. You can easily increase your risk of failure, for example, by ignoring the corporate immune system, by missing the identification of key assumptions or by being too far away from the corporate strategy. In his session, Claus will share a few real-life examples about what NOT to do in innovation.

Claus is Vice President and Head of Business Model Innovation at SAP SE. His team designs the business model strategy for SAP’s platform of the future and provides services for innovators to run fast and flexible innovation experiments.

Previously, Claus held various management positions in product development where he most recently was responsible for driving SAP’s industry standards and open source strategy and programs. Claus holds a master’s degree in computer science from the Braunschweig University of Technology, Germany, and a joint executive MBA from Mannheim Business School, Germany, and ESSEC, France.

Juha will walk you through AB InBev’s story, showing the process of going from failure to think about longer-term future opportunities to defining a replicable process with shared alignment between different parts of the organization.

A kitesurfing sailor preparing for a sailing competition from South America to South Africa later this year.

Global manager Research and Tech transformation @AB InBev working on our long-term innovation processes.

Previously founder of Freedm.eu – marketplace for household services.

Formerly working in politics as a senior political advisor on economic policy and during the EP elections 2019 responsible for polling, surveys and research for the most prominent EU campaign.

Forbes 30 under 30 Europe – Policy honoree.

What does it take to drive successful, capital-efficient and bold innovation? Large corporations are faced with a special challenge: The combination of optimizing the existing business with the simultaneous exploration of the new. Many companies focus on optimizing their core business and neglect the exploration of new, unknown business areas. Methods, business models, and strategies that have proven themselves in the past can’t be applied one-to-one in new business areas.

New paths are needed that require different structures, skills, ways of thinking, and measures of success. Learn in this session how this can be done in practice.

Karina began her career at Siemens as an Innovation Manager and made innovation her professional focus ever since. Now she is Head of Innovation Excellence at Factory Automation, Digital Industries at Siemens.

She is passionate about unleashing the organization’s creativity and innovation power. Turning innovation projects into success is a part of her daily focus. She especially believes in technology with purpose. That’s why she focuses her energy on analyzing what customers, corporates and society needs.

Participants will explore how to choose the right set-up to succeed with innovation for their organization. This talk will offer insights and practical tips from how to get the C-suite on your side to how you build the most effective innovation set-up to achieve your goals. You’ll hear real-world examples from a range of industries, giving you practical ideas and tools to design dynamic innovation set-ups that drive success, differentiation, and growth in the face of disruption.

Line is a futurist and innovation expert who’s shaking up the business world with her insights on innovation and digital transformation. As Chief Entrepreneur and 20 years of experience in global leadership roles, Line is a seasoned corporate entrepreneur and innovation expert who has helped businesses across a wide range of industries future-proof themselves for success. Her expertise spans media, consumer goods, healthcare, medical devices, design, and engineering consultancy, making her a sought-after speaker and thought leader on the global stage.

Hear how Aliaxis has set up a new division to make societal impact and build new businesses beyond its current success.

What is the mandate?
What are the expectations?
What is the operating model?

Fredrik will share concrete achievements and learnings after 12 months in operation.

Fredrik Östbye is a serial entrepreneur who, after multiple good exits, has dedicated his life to make impact on sustainability by investing in, and coaching entrepreneurs building digital businesses, solving the world’s water challenges.

Oceano Fresco is a sustainable seafood company using innovative aquaculture techniques to grow high-quality bivalve species. Portugal based Oceano Fresco has been funded by its founders, public grants, and venture capital investors who all share our paradigm-shifting vision of a true ‘Blue Economy’ for Europe and the World.

A deep dive on bivalves a regenerative farming. Oceano Fresco farms only native European species, starting with clams (V. corrugata and R. decussatus), currently in decline and threatened by exotic and invasive species. The breakthrough comes from the actual biology of low trophic animals. With no major negative inputs (no artificial feed, no antibiotics) and several positive outputs (including CO2 capture in the shells, filtering of water, and the sanctuary effect of our open-sea farm) bivalves are an obvious yet largely untapped protein source and among the most sustainable, naturally healthy and tasty foods available anywhere in the world.

The challenge to scale up bivalves in a sustainable way. Our clams are bred in the hatchery at our state-of-the-art BioMarine Center (Nazaré, Portugal) and then go to the Atlantic Ocean to the world’s first open-sea clam farm (off the coast of Lagos, Portugal) to be fed with naturally available microalgae and grow to adulthood. With vertically integrated operations, bivalves can be farmed in a sustainable and scalable way. Our commitment to our customers is to provide a reliable, all year-round supply and business partnership to re-establish consumption of premium clams, both out of home and in-home. It requests us to scale up successfully cultivation but also commercial operations and R&D + Marketing innovation.

Frederico Reis is the Chief Commercial Officer and executive director of Oceano Fresco. He is a marketing and sales executive with more than 15 years’ experience in fast-moving consumer goods, consumer health care, electronics and food retail across Europe.

In this session we will look at how Pingo Doce is looking at innovation in grocery retail. We will explore a new store concept, launched in 2019 focused on a new generation of consumers (and workers), and we will discuss the main learnings behind this transformation journey.

Francisco has been with Jerónimo Martins Group for the past 9 years, working across the Group’s multiple businesses in both Portugal and Poland. He is currently driving the digital transformation and the innovation agenda for Pingo Doce. Before joining Jerónimo Martins, Francisco was a strategy consultant and an entrepreneur.

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, companies must continuously innovate and adapt to stay ahead of the competition.

Join Catarina an inspiring journey as she shares Delta Cafés’ success story of implementing an innovative culture that encourages creativity, experimentation, and risk-taking within the company. Discover the MIND – the Delta Innovation Model, a decentralized model that empowers employees to contribute and transform ideas into tangible products.

We’ll explore the goals and challenges of implementing corporate innovation programs and the practical steps you can take to create an innovative culture in your organization. Learn from Delta’s pivotal moments and lessons learned. Be inspired to embrace innovation to drive growth and success in your business.

Catarina is the Strategic Thinking Coordinator at Diverge – Grupo Nabeiro’s Innovation Center, where she leads a team focused on driving innovation and growth. Her role involves identifying new business opportunities, developing innovative food and beverage products, and managing corporate innovation programs to support the organization’s growth and competitiveness. Through these efforts, the Strategic Thinking team fosters a culture of innovation and creativity that empowers all employees to think creatively and develop new approaches to achieving company goals.

Corporate innovators have, in theory, access to a lot of expertise and manpower that a lean and mean start-up does not. But the preferences, processes and priorities (or lack there of) are very different and not perfectly aligned between innovators in a rush and often compliance oriented support functions like, legal, finance, compliance, marketing, communication and branding.

This means that many corporate innovators get the worst of two worlds: Excruciatingly slow and cumbersome processes while still missing out on muscles and competence that could have helped them propel past start-ups that have to invent, build or buy everything they need as their producs and services mature.

We have started with training finance in applying innovation tools and methods, and are expanding to legal and marketing and communication. Join this session to hear the ins and outs of our journey so far.

Kristian N. Lindøe is Group Innovation Manager in DNV.

In this role he is responsible for the Innovation Ecosystem in DNV – removing barriers and speeding up commercial innovation and digital transformation throughout the company.

He has 20 years of experience from strategic communication, crisis management, PR and culture building. In 2006 he set up and led DNV’s internal communication function before he went to Houston, Texas in 2012 to take a position as DNV’s communication manager in North and South America. In 2015 he returned to DNV’s HQ in Norway and became increasingly involved in digital transformation and innovation projects before taking on his current role.

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

In this session you will learn the lessons from setting innovation process and governance in large corporation. For example how to adapt balanced score card to quickly evaluate ideas and how to visualize the scores so that it provides actionable insights for innovation portfolio management and decision making. You will also find out how to align organization behind key opportunities, how to engage the top management and what tools to use along the innovation journey and see some practical examples how Škoda brings it’s Simply clever solutions to digital age.

Roman Šiser has 15 years of experience in the field of marketing, innovation and project management at The Coca-Cola Company, is a qualified Black Belt Innovation Ignitor (facilitator of innovation projects and creative workshops), founding member of Czech Innovation, launched of Liftago start-up (taxi booking service) and Mazzagrande drink. Currently, Roman is driving innovation management at ŠKODA AUTO.

During the presentation Greg will share Airbus’ approach to building disruptive R&D capabilities, including how the organization creates innovation vehicles to apply internal and external technologies to new and existing businesses.

– Setting up a Disruptive Innovation Organization: Creating innovation vehicles, balancing new and existing businesses, and building an ambidextrous organization.
– Moving from Technology Readiness to Accelerating Application: Example of accelerating technology application or new business models.
– Empowering and Aligning Regional Innovation Centers: Regional innovation center strategies.
– Collaborating with Startups: Building a venture client unit and supporting external startups.
– Fostering a Culture for Disruptive Innovation: Strategies for building a culture of disruptive innovation.

Dr. Grzegorz (Greg) Ombach is a highly accomplished and visionary senior executive passionate about driving innovation and change. Throughout his career, he has led the development and implementation of game-changing innovations that have disrupted industries and driven growth. With a truly global outlook, having worked at various companies e.g. Siemens VDO, Qualcomm, Airbus across Europe, the USA, and China, he specializes in creating innovative solutions that meet customers’ needs and transform industries.

As the Head of Disruptive Research and Technology at Airbus, Greg focuses on accelerating the development of disruptive technologies and solutions that can shape the future of aerospace. He collaborates with internal and external stakeholders to identify emerging trends and opportunities and develops strategies that drive innovation and continuous learning across all Airbus divisions.

Greg’s leadership and commercial expertise have led to his success in high-tech innovations, change, and commercialization. As the Chairman of the Board of Directors at AdvEn Industries Inc, he has helped transform the company from a research and development startup to a disruptive growth company with a new state-of-the-art manufacturing facility and industry-leading patented and patent-pending technologies for next-generation batteries, energy storage systems, and other applications.

Greg is a dynamic leader passionate about managing technological innovation from ideation to broad market adoption. His ability to drive transformative change across multiple industries has earned him a reputation as an effective and inspiring leader who thrives in dynamic environments. With a track record of leading game-changing innovations, Grzegorz has the potential to transform industries and is a respected leader in the field of innovation and change.