In this episode, I talk to Stefanie Palomino, founder of the agency Red Lab in Berlin. She started creating digital products in the 1990s and now supports corporations that want to become more innovative.   In our conversation, she talks about how she helps companies find the problem behind the problem, about her book on women and professional success and about the benefits of being a bit more experienced in the digital scene.

Making the New

Stefanie Palomino

In this episode, I interviewed Mahdi Manesh, director of the Porsche Digital Lab. From his office in Berlin, overlooking the river Spree, Mahdi and his team investigate new technologies and what they could mean for Porsche in the future. Their work goes way beyond power-point presentations: they actually build rough prototypes and test them right away. He will tell you, for example, about an experiment that started with a coffee machine and ended with a solution for an actual problem at the assembly line.

Porsche: Mahdi Manesh

Christoph Raethke is a known character in the startup scene in Berlin. Over the last 20 years, founded businesses, created an independent accelerator and became a mentor and investor to dozens of startups. Now he also helps corporations that want to become more entrepreneurial. In this interview, Christoph talks about how robust the startup scene has become in Berlin in the last few years and also about the progress made by corporate innovation programs so far.

Entrepreneurship: Christoph Raethke

You probably already heard about Design Thinking. Maybe you even took part in a Design Thinking workshop. The method became so popular in the last 20 years that it is now a buzzword, sold by many as the silver bullet solution to innovation. So, this might be the right time to ask: what is it really good for? The interaction designer Molly Wilson has taught Design Thinking for several years in Stanford and in the Hasso Plattner Institute, in Potsdam. She talks about the origins of the method, why it works and how to recognize when it has reached its limits.

Design Thinking: Molly Wilson

The pharmaceutical and life sciences company Bayer is one of the Germany’s largest corporations. Research and Development is at its core, but now the company is trying to expand the concept of innovation. Beyond new products, Bayer wants to create new ways of designing, marketing and selling. It also wants to simplify processes and become a more agile organization. This episode is an interview with Julia Hitzbleck, she is head of the Lifehub Berlin, a safe space for employees to create outside of the company’s traditional structure.

Bayer: Julia Hitzbleck

With more than 260 years old, VGH is one of the most traditional insurance companies in the world. About a year ago, they decided to create a new company, called Futur X. The goal is to support not only VGH but also other companies in the region of lower Saxony in innovation projects. I was in Hannover and met with Christian Brömer, creative coach at Futur X. He talked about the challenges faced by the insurance industry and his plans to persuade people to work in a more user-centered way. This interview was recorded in late 2018.    

VGH: Christian Brömer

If you were a procurement manager looking for chemical components in the 80s, this is how your routine would look like: you would spend most of your time talking to suppliers over the phone, meeting them for lunch and traveling to trade fairs. Good prices would depend largely on the relationships you have in the industry. And after days of scouting, you would fill out a form and send it by fax to place your order. It might sound anachronistic, but this is more or less how the market for chemical components still looks like today. CheMondis, a startup backed by the German multinational Lanxess, is trying to change that. It just started offering a digital platform to connect buyers and suppliers.   In this interview, managing director Sebastian Brenner, explained the process behind the creation of this corporate startup. He also talks about the necessary distance that CheMondis needs to keep from Lanxess to succeed in the market.  

CheMondis: Sebastian Brenner

The risk of disruption seems to be a topic for most corporations nowadays – and in the eye of the storm is the mobility industry. The success of completely new business models, such as Uber and Lyft, coupled with the promises of the shared economy and autonomous driving, have put companies under pressure to design new products and services. In this episode I talked to Nico Gramenz, vice-president of strategy and digital transformation at Siemens Mobility Management. This part of the company focuses on road and rail infrastructure.  Nico spent years in the military and served in Afghanistan before working with mergers and acquisitions at Siemens. Now his job is to help his company take advantage of the digitalization. He started his journey learning from a previous victim of disruption: the music industry.

Siemens: Nico Gramenz

How to help traditional German butchers innovate? This is a particularly tough crowd: mostly men in their 50s, leading family businesses in small German towns. To support the craftsmanship, Frank Kühne and Olga Graf created the Trüffeljagd, a movement that connects, inspires and equips butchers wishing to change. Full disclosure: Coaeva has helped design this solution. 

Trüffeljagd: Frank Kühne and Olga Graf

How can a traditional rubber company produce smart digital products? This is the challenge of Chris Seeger, head of innovation and digitalization at Contitech, a division of Continental - the German multinational most known for manufacturing car tires. Chris is now responsible for building an innovation lab from scratch: choosing projects, hiring a team and even designing a working space. Our conversation took place in Hamburg, inside an old factory building that is now being refurbished to host his venture. The location was very carefully chosen: the charming empty building is it located in the middle of an active rubber plant. The idea is to integrate the digital team with the core manufacturing business that is all around it. This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva, a business design in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, please check our website: www.coaeva.de.

Continental: Chris Seeger

From robots that carry letters to electric vehicles built by the Deutsche Post itself: these are some of the innovation efforts at Germany’s traditional postal service. In a scenario where fewer people are willing to work delivering parcels door to door and where cities are already blocked with cars, the company has to become more creative to stay in business. From his office in Bonn, Clemens Beckmann, executive vice president of innovation at Deustche Post, told me about other solutions he is working on right now to address the growth of online commerce. He also talked about a harsh competitive landscape: with low margins and a powerful Amazon, willing to leave profitability for the future.  

Deutsche Post: Clemens Beckmann

If you have been listening to this podcast, you probably realized by now that it is very hard to talk about innovation without talking about entrepreneurship. So in this episode, we are trying to find out how entrepreneurial Germany is. Unfortunately, according to our guest, the situation is not the most encouraging. Benjamin Knöfler is secretary general of the Junger Mittelstand, an organization that represents a new generation of leaders at small and medium size companies. He explains why young people in Germany don’t seem to have the right incentives to start new businesses and what could be done to change that.    This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva, a business design agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, please check our website: www.coaeva.de.

Junger Mittelstand: Benjamin Knöfler

The Impact Hub is a community of markers dedicated to the topic of sustainability. There are 100 hubs around the world and one of them is in Berlin. I was there to get to know their co-working space and to talk to Anna Laesser, the co-founder. In this interview, Anna told me about the kind of grassroots projects developed at the Impact Hub and why more and more corporations and traditional governmental organizations want to get involved. This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva, a business design agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, please check our website: www.coaeva.de.

Impact Hub: Anna Laesser

At this point, most corporations have a created an innovation lab or a startup accelerator in the attempt to develop new businesses. Deutsche Telekom, the telecommunications giant, is part of this group, but they also decided to invest in something a bit different. The UQBATE is an accelerator for internal ideas. Employees that take part in the program continue to receive a wage but have the time and support to explore new ventures.   Johannes Nuenning is a business angel for corporate entrepreneurs at Deutsche Telekom. In this interview, he shares what he has learned in years trying to empower employees to become intrapreneurs. This episode is a bit longer than usual, but I really encourage you to listen until the end. Johannes was very honest during our conversation and I think we can all learn from his experience, specially those struggling to push innovation forward in big corporations.   This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva Innovation. Learn more about us at www.coaeva.de.

Telekom: Johannes Nuenning

Digitalization is a big challenge for companies in several sectors, but it is particularly so for TÜV Nord, a testing and certifying multinational working with all sorts of industries. The company inspects from cars to satellites and children’s toys. As their clients become digital, so too must their certifying process. In this interview, Stefan Kistler, senior manager of corporate strategy and innovation, talks about promoting change in this 120-year old corporation.  This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva Innovation, a creative agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, check out our website: www.coaeva.de.  

TÜV Nord: Stefan Kistler

A podcast about the innovation scene in Germany and the people behind it.

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Making the New

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