Researchers meet Innovators

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
Click here to visit the photo gallery.
Videos
Presentations
Scientists‘ careers in business - Anne Schreiter
Business Model Canvas - Maria Peeva
Cloud Services for MCAA Fellows - Marion Devouassoux
The Power of Visual Storytelling - Dennis Fink
From science to start-up - Francesco Gatto
Entrepreneurship of migrants - Maren Borkert
Behavioral Considerations For Investment Decisions - Markus Schuller
Spotlight TRANSFER: How innovations come to life! - Stela Ivanova
Speakers
Marina Rantanen Modéer
Florian Hoos
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.


Carlo Antonini

Carsten Mahrenholz
Maria Peeva
Linda van Andel
Samer Kurdi
Nehama Lewis
Filippo Guarnieri
Norman Gerstner
Anne Schreiter
Francesco Gatto
Caro Noemi Stoeckermann

Dennis Fink

Markus Schuller
Leeor Groen

Ben Hartwig

Bernhard Bobusch
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.



Johanna Emmerich
Organizing Commitee
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
- Alex Shkor
5:45 Parallel sessions with Short talks (10/12 min + 5/3 min Q&A)
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)
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)
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"
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
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
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
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"
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
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
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"
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
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
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
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