Researchers meet Innovators

Organised by MCAA

11-12 July 2019

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On Site

by Marco Masia

Event Start Date

11 Jul 2019

Event End Date

12 Jul 2019

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In this 2-day meeting participants discussed how to contribute to innovation covering a large variety of roles in the value chain. The event has been designed for people from research, start-up, not-for-profit, and corporate environments, who wanted to learn more about innovation and how researchers and innovators can synergistically and successfully work together.

Photos

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Videos

Presentations

Speakers

Marina Rantanen Modéer

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Marina Rantanen Modéer is an MSCA Early Stage Researcher at TU Dortmund and the chair of the German Chapter of the Marie Curie Alumni Association. She received an MSc Degree in Mechanical Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in 2013 and an MSc Degree in General Management from SSE Stockholm School of Economics in 2011. She was part of a young professionals’ program at HiQ/Scania in 2012 and then moved on as a graduate robotics engineer at the European Space Agency in the Netherlands from 2013 to 2015 working on the European Robotic Arm and the Multi-purpose-End-To-End-Robotic-Operations-Network. In 2015-2016 she was a research engineer in the Smart Mobility Lab at KTH developing visualizations of connected mobility. Since August 1st 2016 she has been part of the process dynamics and operations group of the Technische Universität Dortmund as a doctoral candidate focusing on comprehensive modeling of Cyber Physical Systems. She currently writes a guest blog for the online publication of the Swedish research council.

Florian Hoos

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Florian Hoos is the Director of the Centre for Entrepreneurship at “Technische Universität Berlin” (TUB) since March 2017. Before joining TUB, he worked for six years as an Assistant Professor (2011-2017) and the Scientific Director (2015-2017) of the Master in Sustainability and Social Innovation at HEC Paris where he still serves as an Affiliate Professor. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor at MIT Sloan School (2014-2015), worked as a strategic consultant, and created a social venture in the Ivory Coast. He earned his Ph.D. from HEC Lausanne (Switzerland) in 2010, and holds a M.Sc. (Diplom-Kaufmann) in business administration from the University of Giessen (Germany).
Florian was listed as one of the 40 best Business School Professors under 40 in the world by Poets & Quants in 2014 and won the Best Professor Award of HEC Paris (“Prix Vernimmen”) in the same year. He co-developed one of the first French Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) about changemaking and social entrepreneurship on courser which reached more than 100,000 people, and teaches different topics (entrepreneurship, sustainable business development, leadership and ethics) at various institutions. He is also a certified radical collaboration trainer and certified in theme-centered interaction. He is an active researcher with publications in leading international scientific journals such as the Journal of Business Ethics and Accounting and Business Research. He also serves on the editorial board of the leading academic journal Academy of Management Learning & Education.

Nierika Hamaekers

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Nierika is an enthusiastic change maker who believes in the power of collaborative processes for impactful transformations. She has worked in the fields of innovation and sustainability for three years and has facilitated and coached at many workshops, trainings and events. She loves helping and empowering others to come up with solutions for positive impact – and motivate them along the way. After spending the majority of her childhood in Mexico she exchanged sunny Central America for Groningen. She studied Business and Sustainability in the Netherlands and became obsessed with creative workshop methodologies at a consequent 3-month “Hyper Island” Design Thinking course. She kick-started her career as an Innovation Consultant at one of the biggest auction companies worldwide – Royal FloraHolland, and is now working as a sustainability consultant at The Terrace Amsterdam. Nierika is preparing a very dynamic and interactive session for you, so don’t forget to bring your inner child and let’s get to it!

Borce Stojkovski

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Borce Stojkovski received a double Master’s degree in 2015 from the University of Twente and the University of Paris-Sud (Paris XI) with a major in Human-Computer Interaction & Design, and a minor in Innovation & Entrepreneurship. He earned a BSc in Software & Information Engineering from the Vienna University of Technology. Borce is currently a PhD researcher in Cybersecurity at the SnT, University of Luxembourg, focusing on Socio-technical aspects of security and trust for system protection. Prior to that, he worked as an independent consultant and was the CEO of Kavensis, a family-run business. Active in the EIT Alumni community, Borce is a former President of the EIT Digital Alumni Foundation and a former Vice-President of the EIT Alumni Board.

Carlo Antonini

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Carlo is a scientist and engineer, with a PhD in Technologies for Energy and Environment from University of Bergamo (2011), Italy. In 2012 he started a Marie Curie Fellowship, that led me to ETH Zurich and kept him in Switzerland until 2018. Since 2017 he collaborates with ApiTech (www.api-tech.it ), an italian startup supporting innovation in SMEs, first as innovation manager, now as scientific advisor. In September 2018, he joined the Department of Materials Science at the University of Bicocca-Milano (Italy), as tenure-track senior researcher, with support of a Rita Levi Montalcini Fellowship.

Juana Lucia Flores-Candia

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Juana Lucia Flores-Candia is the co-founder of one of the first Biotech Start-up in South America, pursued scientific discoveries and built businesses on seven countries and four continents. Named as inventor on 22 Patents, published several scientific articles and one Book on Metabolic Flux Modelling. Co-authored the Encyclopedia of Bioprocess Technology (fourth most cited article). Designed, developed, and launched five Biotech Products. Contributed to three M&A and six BD&L. Currently managing pivotal transformational programs in Digital Innovation at GSK. She holds a PhD from the Technical University of Braunschweig, a Master in Biotech from the U. of Kent at Canterbury, and an MBA from IMD.

Carsten Mahrenholz

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Carsten studied biology and received my PhD in chemistry alongside an MBA from universities in Berlin and Cambridge. After working as a consultant for SMEs and scientific institutions, he became CEO of a high-tech transfer company. He co-founded COLDPLASMATECH GmbH in 2015 and became a pioneer in plasma medicine. This team developed a Star- Trek-like medical device for treating chronic wounds and killing multiresistant bacteria. Amongst various awards and prizes for business, innovation and technology, they received the IQ innovation award, the Leibniz Founder Prize and the German Innovation Award 2018. He recently entered the Hall of Fame at the Entrepreneur of the Year award (and was nominated 2016 and 2017) and is one of the first LAB fellows of the Nobel Laureate Meetings.

Maria Peeva

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Having worked for the most prominent startup in the world and for the European initiative on climate change Climate-KIC, Maria has been always attracted to entrepreneurship and new inventions. Setting the first steps of a small venture is of a big importance and methods like the business model canvas are very helpful tools to get you started. In this workshop you will get acquainted with the canvas and learn on real cases how to best implement it. Look forward to meeting you at the event!

Linda van Andel

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Linda has a passion for connecting ideas and people, and she is really into innovation through collaboration. Her pan-European background has given her the basis to explore many different jobs in different places. As a consequence, she has acquired a broad base of experience and skills, some very business, but mostly related to the behaviour of people in teams. In 2015 she definitely quit the large multinational company “sector” and she is investing her talents in what makes her most happy: helping others to become entrepreneurs of their own talent.

Samer Kurdi

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Samer is an Early Career Researcher at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on fabricating sustainable materials to design sensitive memory devices to meet security demands in current information technologies. Furthermore, he is the Chief Strategy Officer of Majico, a social enterprise developing water treatment solutions for the developing world.

Nehama Lewis

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Dr. Nehama Lewis is a senior lecturer in the Department of Communication at the University of Haifa, and head of the department's MA program in Strategic Communication and Public Relations. Her research focuses on health communication, behavior change, and the design and evaluation of strategic communication campaigns. Dr. Lewis received her B.A. (2002) and M.A. (2008) from the Hebrew University, and an M.A. and Ph. D. (2010) from the Annenberg School for Communication, at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to her academic research in health communication and persuasion, Nehama is Chief Behavioral Officer at Medorio (https://www.medorion.com), a company specializing in tailoring interventions to increase patient engagement. Dr. Lewis also serves as a board member of Marie Curie Alumni Association (MCAA),as a management committee member of a COST Action (Sexual Medicine Network), and an expert reviewer for ITN proposals.

Filippo Guarnieri

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Filippo Guarnieri is CEO of Goldmarck and founding chairman of the Max Planck Alumni Association e.V.. Formerly a theoretical physicist, after graduating at the Sapienza University in Rome he earned a doctoral degree at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Freie Universität in Berlin, Yale University and the NORDITA Institute in Stockholm.

Norman Gerstner

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Dr. Norman Gerstner is co-founder of the Deep Tech startup "BMDX - Biomarker Diagnostix" and new venture lead at the LSI Sachsen. He is board member of the Max Planck Alumni Association (MPAA), founder of the MPAA Career Network and alumni of MPI-CBG, where he did his PhD project. With over 10 years professional experience in Life Sciences, the biomedical devices and molecular diagnostics industries, Norman believes that innovation and entrepreneurship are among the most effective ways to create positive, sustainable impact and advance society.

Anne Schreiter

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Anne Schreiter is the Executive Director of the German Scholars Organization (GSO), a non-profit that advocates for researchers and scientists, offering guidance and training to achieve their career goals and maximize their potential – in academia and beyond. Anne studied Communication in Social and Economic Contexts at the Berlin University of the Arts and Chinese Language and Culture in Nanjing und Shanghai. After her PhD in Organization Studies and Cultural Theory at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland, she worked as a Postdoc at the University of California at Berkeley for one year. Before joining the GSO in 2016, she developed leadership programs and career development workshops for doctoral students.

Francesco Gatto

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Francesco Gatto is the co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Elypta, a molecular diagnostics company. He obtained a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy in 2011 and a Ph.D. in Systems Biology and Bioinformatics in Jens Nielsen lab at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2015. In 2016, he was Visiting Scholar at the University of California, San Diego in Bernhard Palsson lab. He co-founded Elypta in 2017. He is the first author in 10 peer-reviewed scientific papers, and co-authored a total of 16 papers on cancer, bioinformatics, and clinical oncology. His research projects resulted in 3 patent applications that paved the way to the foundation of Elypta, whose core technology revolves around an innovative liquid biopsy for cancer, possibly the first one based on metabolism. He lectured in 8 international advanced courses in systems biology, co-organized 2 national conferences, and was a selected speaker in several international conferences. He raised private and public funding exceeding 5 M€ and he is the project leader for the EU Horizon2020 SME Instrument 2 assigned to Elypta to conduct the first prospective multicenter clinical study in kidney cancer diagnostics. Francesco was enlisted in the MIT Technology Review 35 Under 35 in Europe in 2018 and named Top 10 Young Biotech Entrepreneurs by Labiotech in 2019.

Caro Noemi Stoeckermann

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Caro works as an innovation manager at the Centre for Entrepreneurship of Technische Universität Berlin. She holds workshops with scientists and startups to support them in transferring their innovative technologies from research to business. Additionally, she organizes events to foster the academia-industry collaboration. During her previous job experiences as an account and project manager in global creative consultancies, she guided open innovation projects with clients of diverse industries. As a graduate of the Berlin University of Arts (UdK) master program “Communication in society and economy” she is particularly thrilled about the innovative and creative potential of interdisciplinary and collaborative work.

Femke Ohm

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As a social psychologist Femke’s biggest passions are Talent development and group dynamics in teams. She has been working since 1999 as a trainer for different organizations and has identified the key factors for successful collaboration in teams. She is convinced that outstanding performance is the result of having fun while doing what you are good at. Guiding people to become self-aware and grow their Talent is exactly what makes Femke happy. Helping individuals in teams daring to be authentic and learning them to understand the opportunities of a diverse team is the best there is. Femke is a certified coach & trainer.

Dennis Fink

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Dr. Dennis Fink graduated in 2011 at the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology in Bremen and afterwards co-founded an agency for science communication together with a former colleague in Cologne. After running this agency as CEO for 6 years, he became a campaign manager and social media expert at one of Germany’s biggest biotech companies, QIAGEN. Since the beginning of 2019 he is the head of the performance channel team at QIAGEN, responsible for a team of online marketing experts and the implementation of data-driven marketing strategies.

Alex Shkor

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Alex is a tech entrepreneur and founder of DEIP – a blockchain platform for scientific research. Alex is author of multiple blockchain related techonolgy inventions, mostly in the sphere of distributed systems architecture. Prior to DEIP, Alex was CTO and Head of R&D Department at Paralect.com. Alex has been a speaker at international blockchain conferences, such as Future of Money – Payments Drift Forum (Madrid), Global Graphene Development Conference (Shanghai), Vienna Cryptoeconomics, etc. A thinktank member of Blockchain for Science (Germany).

Markus Schuller

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Markus Schuller is the founder and managing partner of Panthera Solutions. As Investment Decision Architects™, Panthera optimizes the choice architecture of professional investors through applied behavioral finance methods. Empowering the decision makers towards comparative advantages in capital markets remains the ultimate goal. The Panthera intervention toolbox has proven to be equally effective and innovative. As adjunct professor, Markus teaches courses like "Adaptive Risk Management", "Investment Banking" and "Asset Allocation for Practitioners“ at renowned Master in Finance programs of the EDHEC Business School and the International University of Monaco. Markus publishes in academic top journals (i.e. Journal of Portfolio Management, 2018), writes articles for professional journals (i.e. CFA Institute, OECD Insights, etc.) and holds keynotes at international investment conferences. In short, as investment banker, adjunct professor and author, Markus looks back at 18 rewarding years of trading, structuring, and managing standard and alternative investment products. Prior to founding Panthera Solutions, he worked in executive roles for a long/short equity hedge fund for which he developed the trading algorithm. Markus started his career working as equity trader, derivatives trader and macro analyst for different banks.

Leeor Groen

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Leeor Groen is an impact driven global citizen committed to addressing key societal challenges through innovation and technology. Originally from Australia, he moved to Norway and Switzerland to witness first-hand best governance practices for social and environmental policy. Currently based in Zurich he is a Director at BV Ventures, a Swiss venture capital firm investing into and supporting blockchain-enabled businesses. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Shaper Community, volunteers as a Climate Reality Leader for Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project and is an engaged member of the Climate-KIC community; the largest public-private sector partnership to address climate change through innovation.

Wolfgang Treinen

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Wolfgang is manager of EU Funding and Financing at Berlin Partner für Wirtschaft und Technologie GmbH.

Ben Hartwig

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Ben Hartwig is a facilitator, actor and a epigeneticist. During his PhD and Postdoc at the Max-Planck in Cologne he won an audition and joined Germany's most famous Improv theater - Springmaus. He performed all over the world and decided two merge his two careers in science and improvisation into one by founding the training company Neuroblitz (www.neuroblitz.de). His workshops, seminars and speeches are interactive and engaging experiences. He currently lives in Cologne and Brussels where he helps institutions and companies with change processes and transition challenges.

Sabine Hutfilter

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EU Liaison Officer at the EU Office at Technische Universität Berlin.

Maren Borkert

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My passion is about the digital transformation of our society and economy. In my latest research, I focus on how cities interact with the tech startup scene to impact on digital competitiveness and sustainable living. I also investigate innovation diffusion in digital networks, social entrepreneurship and how (ethnic, gender) diversity impacts on the identification and evaluation of business opportunities. In my teaching, I apply an active learning approach, inspired by design thinking methods. I focus on how to manage sustainable and human-centred innovation. I also teach (digital) business research methods.

Bernhard Bobusch

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My love for science (especially physics and mathematics) brought me to studying engineering science and, since fire is exciting, to combustion science.

During my PhD I was in need of a device that was capable of controlling a 900°C airstream in milliseconds – I found fluidic devices. By understanding the underlying principles and optimizing the flow inside them my colleagues and I created the OsciJet Nozzle – a nozzle that enables to take advantage of dynamic jets even under the most difficult conditions and without concessions in durability, reliability, and maintenance of the overall system. To learn more about the nozzle visit www.fdx.de.

We started FDX in 2015. Over the last couple of years we were able to convince various stakeholders to invest in and with us. Watching FDX grow over the last years has been extremely exciting, especially seeing the team putting in a lot of effort and developing one great product after another is truly inspiring. During that time, I have developed a broad skillset besides my deep tech background:

- business development and strategy

- team and project management

- key account management

- investor relations

- business finance and negotiation.

With the great team of FDX I am happy to offer the world’s first full range of optimized OsciJet Nozzles. The nozzles that saves water, pollutant emissions and energy.

Stela Ivanova

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Stela is an innovation manager at the CfE and supports researchers at TUB in identifying their transfer potential: “In my role as an innovation manager at the university it is my pleasure and privilege to learn daily about new ideas and projects that have a direct impact on our society and economy.”

Marieke Üzüm

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Dr. Marieke Üzüm is Senior Program Managerand responsible for Career Consulting at the German Scholars Organization, a non-profit that advocates for researchers and scientists, offering guidance and training to achieve their career goals and maximize their potential – in academia and beyond. Marieke studied Chemistry in Berlin and holds a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Technical University of Berlin. She worked as scientific coordinator in a transregional research centre. Since 2016 she has been supporting and advising scientists in their careers and offering individual career advice.

Johanna Emmerich

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Johanna Emmerich is Research Fellow at Technische Universität Berlin since 2014. She holds a Master’s degree from the Humboldt University Berlin with an expertise in environmental resource management. In the past years she has worked in numerous H2020 projects and has experience in project acquisition. She is involved in an international Consortium on optimizing Polymer recycling for the electronics sector joint by numerous industrial partners along the value chain as well as on data gatherings for battery stocks and flows in Europe.

Partners

Organizing Commitee

Marco Masia

Daniel Rohr

Marina Rantanen Modéer

Carlo Antonini

Esther Volz

Brian Cahill

Pavlo Bazilinskyy

Patricia Martí Puig

Daniel Price

Manuel Acosta

Rohan Soman

Venue

TU Berlin

Ernst-Reuter-Platz 1

Berlin

Germany

Useful information

ACCOMMODATION: We suggest participants to book well in advance to find good prices for accommodations well connected to the Venue. Unfortunately, we cannot offer any discount code for specific hotels. The Berlin Convention Office has provided us with a search engine to find an accommodation. We also suggest to check your favorite reservation platform in addition to it.

TRANSPORTATION: Public transport is very easy and convenient in Berlin, with just one purchase, you can use all the public transportation like bus, train, tram, subway, metro within valid time. Here is the link for online public tickets: https://shop.bvg.de/index.php/tickets You can also use the BVG App to purchase e-tickets. Ride sharing options like Uber, MyTaxi, and Clever Shuttle are also possible. If you have driving license, you can also use car sharing application on your phone like Car2go and Drivenow.

Program

11 July - SETTING THE STAGE
(2:00 pm - 8:30 pm)

2:00 pm Registration

2:30 pm Welcome - Florian Hoos & Marina Rantanen Modéer

2:45 pm Panel discussion: Taking action - founding as a researcher

Moderated by Anne Schreiter

- Samer Kurdi

- Carsten Mahrenholz

- Francesco Gatto

- Bernhard Bobusch

4:00 pm Coffee break

4:30 pm Panel discussion: Business, Academia, and Innovation

Moderated by Daniel Rohr

- Carlo Antonini

- Nehama Lewis

- Juana Lucia Flores-Candia

- Alex Shkor

5:45 Parallel sessions with Short talks (10/12 min + 5/3 min Q&A)

Session 1: EU Funding for research driven companies (room “CURIOSITY”)

Moderator: Marina Rantanen Modéer

- Collaborative Projects in Horizon 2020 – Innovation Actions support “Science meets Industry/Business” (Sabine Hutfilter & Johanna Emmerich)

- SME instrument: EU-support for top class innovators, entrepreneurs and small companies (Wolfgang Treinen)

- Fast Track to Innovation: bottom-up innovation support promoting close-to-market innovation (Wolfgang Treinen)

- Spotlight transfer: How innovations come to life (Stella Ivanova)

Session 2: Facets of business careers (room “THINK BIG”)

Moderator: Brian Cahill

- Entrepreneurship of migrants (Maren Borkert)

- Scientists' careers in Business (Anne Schreiter)

- Science + Improv = Business (Ben Hartwig)

- Cloud services for MCAA fellows (Bob Jones)

Session 3: Meet scientific founders (room “INVENTION”)

Moderator: Carlo Antonini

- my story as a founder I (Samer Kurdi)

- my story as a founder II (Francesco Gatto)

- my story as a founder III (Carsten Mahrenholz)

6:50 pm Social event with themed tables

- I have an idea - founding a business

- I want to work - careers in businesses

- I want to get involved - innovation labs

- I want to be social - social businesses

- I want to cooperate - bridging science and business

8:00 pm Social event at Biergarten Schleusenkrug

12 July - WORKSHOPS
(8:30 am - 6:30 pm)

Room "THINK BIG"

8:30 am - How to tackle failure with applied improvisation

Facilitator: Ben Hartwig

Description: In this workshop you will learn about the most important factors for building resilience: connection, self-confidence, humour and optimism. You'll experience exercises with learnings that are applicable to everyday life and work. We will playfully find out about your personal stress-triggers and develop more self-awareness and strategies to deal with stress symptoms. The workshop contains applied improvisation techniques, resilience and humour training. It's a fun and engaging workshop to sharpen your soft skills.

Participants: 40

Length: 2 hours

10:30 am - How to find the right team members for your start-up idea

Facilitators: Femke Ohm and Linda van Andel

Description: Having the "right" team is key for start-up success and credibility. But how to attract the right co-founders? How to improve the results of your entrepreneurship by collaborating in the right way with complementary partners? This workshop will allow participants to understand what TALENT means in a start-up setting. Through playful exercises and group work we will allow every person to start understanding his/her own Unique Talent Code and what are each other's key contributions to team work. We will work together on understanding how conflict in teams can naturally arise and be dealt with in a productive way. Participants will learn a different form of Talent Coding which supports collaboration in most settings.

Participants: 40

Length: 2 hours

12:30 pm - The business model canvas

Facilitator: Maria Peeva

Description: Working on a business idea and on the business modell canvas (BMC) is like preparing a delicious cake - you not only need the right ingredients, but also time and imagination. Also, the recipe for success might change over time and lead you to a new ground breaking idea.

In this 3 hour workshops you will learn about the different components of the BMC and we will deep dive into real examples of how to best evaluate a business modell. The BMC is suitable for enabling dialog about choices, opportunities and alternatives. We will work in teams of max. 5 people and you can unfold your creativity and imagination. You can come with your business idea and already formed team or join a group of new members. While discussing your business modell we will map existing ones, improve them and maybe even invent new ones.

Participants: 30

Length: 3 hours

3:30 pm - User Research and UX evaluation of a secure e-mail system

Facilitator: Borce Stojkovski

Description: Protecting the secrecy of messages online is not only in the interest of citizens that would like to exercise their Right to Privacy and Right to Freedom of Information, but also those with a professional duty of confidentiality (e.g journalists, lawyers, doctors etc.). GDPR requires from all controllers and processors of personal data to implement appropriate measures, such as encryption, to mitigate any accidental or unlawful actions that could lead to physical, material or non-material damage to data subjects. With the total number of business and consumer e-mails sent and received per day, estimated to have exceeded 281 billion according to the Radicati Group, it is clear that the need of securing e-mail communication is as relevant and pressing today as it was two decades ago when the first usability studies showed significant problems with the existing e-mail encryption mechanisms.

This workshop would inform participants of user research and UX evaluation methods, while giving them a chance to interact with and evaluate a new system for end-to-end e-mail encryption.

The participants’ feedback would be useful to better understand the user experience and suggest improvements to the system design within a collaboration framework established between the company developing the system and our university.

Outcomes:

- exposure to new user research and UX methods

- awareness about the importance and challenges around secure e-mail

- awareness about collaboration opportunities at the intersection between academia and industry in Luxembourg

Participants: 20

Length: 3 hours

BYOD - It would be necessary for the participants to bring their own devices (laptops)

Room "INVENTION"

8:30 am - Design Thinking

Facilitator: Nierika Hakaemers

Description: In this 4-hour workshop you will learn the principles of Design Thinking and how to apply them for turning your climate solutions into successful products and services!

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that integrates the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success. By using design thinking, you make decisions based on what future customers really want instead of relying only on historical data or making risky bets based on instinct instead of evidence.

Is this playful approach with fast and chaotic iterations something completely new for you? Time to get out of your comfort zone!

Participants: 40

Length: 4 hours

12:30 pm - The power of visual storytelling

Facilitator: Dennis Fink

Description: Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools that you can use to get your message across. It doesn’t matter if you’re creating a slide deck for a scientific presentation, a talk for a conference or an article for a journal. In this hands-on workshop we’ll discuss the different strategies of storytelling and get practical in terms of creating a visual story in Instagram-style. The agenda includes:

How visual storytelling influences the mind
Science communication and the image of the scientist in the public
Storytelling on Social Media
Visual storytelling exercise (5 Shot technique)

Participants: 20

Length: 3 hours

3:30 pm - Ideation workshop: from research to market

Facilitator: Caro Noemi Stoeckermann

Description: In this 2-hour workshop you will learn the basics on how to identify the market potential of your technologies and research results. In the first step, we will collaboratively ideate different application fields based on max. four technologies or research results. The second step is to prioritize the most potential applications with the team and to further develop the application idea. As a result, we finally elaborate on the potential value for the applicant/customer and the solution/market fit.

Participants: 20

Length: 2 hours

Room "CURIOSITY"

8:30 am - How to turn an innovative idea or technology into a successful business

Facilitator: Norman Gestner

Description: In this 3-hour workshop we establish the foundation for how to construct a realistic business strategy, based on an innovative idea or technology. After a short introduction into the topic we will form teams of 3-5 people and work on specific innovative ideas/technologies and how to turn them into a product and business. It would be most ideal if we use your ideas to do this exercise and exemplify based on them. Therefore, please bring whatever innovative idea or concept you have in mind, either based on your research or just because you have the motivation to solve a certain problem. We analyze the idea, take it apart, do the reality check, and put it back together with a strategy to turn it into a business.

Participants: 15

Length: 3 hours

11:30 am - Pitching your company to investors

Facilitator: Filippo Guarnieri

Description: Startups need to raise capital to start or scale up. The common way is to pitch a short overview of your business model and progress to investors to engage and convince them to fund you. A successful pitch requires you to show a robust knowledge of the market, encouraging early results, how you will keep head of competition, and how you will lead the company to a hockey stick growth chart. In this 4-hour workshop we will structure the graphical presentation of our startup ideas, the so-called Pitch Deck, and present it to our audience. Will we manage to convince them?

Participants: 16

Length: 3 hours

2:30 pm - Defining your Value Proposition

Facilitator: Leeor Groen

Description: A strong value proposition is one thing all companies need, even if it is not fully unique. In this session we will explore the process of value creation and dive into the various aspects that differentiate startups. Bringing together the latest insights and approaches from the World Innovations Forum (https://wiforum.org/), you will leave the session with a base understanding of what it is investors look for in a company and how they work together with entrepreneurs to help define and deliver on successful value propositions.

Participants: 20

Length: 2 hours

4:30 pm - Behavioral considerations for investment decisions

Facilitator: Markus Schuller

Description: Investment management, is it discretionary or systematic, can benefit from insights gained in behavioral finance. In this workshop, participants will learn and experience themselves why professional investors tend to talk more about behavioral finance in investment management than actually make use of its practical takeaways in favor of more rational, thus more evidence-based decision making.

Why more talk than walk?
What are the benefits of applying Behavioral Finance insights?
How to overcome the knowing-doing gap?
How to take most evidence-based investment decisions?

Workshop Design

45´ Introduction

30´ Investment Committee Simulation - Part 1 (Preparation): Separated in 2 groups, participants analyze a given investment case and prepare to reason/defend their conclusion(s) during an investment committee meeting

30´Investment Committee Simulation - Part 2 (Execution): the 2 groups enter the setting of an investment committee, during which they share their findings in a way to win the argument.

15´ Reflection & Takeaways

Participants: 15

Length: 2 hours