Alexander Hertel is the CEO and Founder of Public Value Hub an NGO that is focused on creating social impact through entrepreneurship. Over his career Alex worked as reporter in different media companies such as MDR and ARD in Germany and as well abroad in Central Eastern Europe.

In our conversation Alex shares the story how he got to build the Public Value Hub we talk about RestartUA a program that helps displaced people from the Ukraine to start a social business in Germany and how this fits into the Public Value Incubator

Natalie Turner is back on the podcast after her appearance in Episode 187. In today's episode, we'll be diving deeper into the topic of innovation capability development and using a case study of one specific team to explore this concept further.

Jörg is driving Innovation and Digitization for one of Europe’s most successful E-Commerce companies based in Germany. His favorite topics are IoT, Smart Home and Conversational Commerce. He founded a fishing mail order company in 1999 and since then loves E-Commerce, Marketing and Digitization since that time..

In this episode we talk about technology and tech innovation. Jörg shares his experience of visiting IFA Berlin and we talk about e-commerce innovation in corporations and the challenges of the German culture for innovation.

In this episode I let the listener look into my big list of things I have written down during the last 20 years that I did not like about how people lead me.

I call this list how I will not lead. I am looking at this list at least once per year to remind myself about all the topics.

Topics I cover:

I will not micromanage my team

I will not jump in and solve every problem

I will not be a tank / asshole

I will not let people “hurt” me in public

I will not be the grumpy manager

I will not shout at others

I will not type while a person talks to me

I will not blame my team members in public

I will not talk negative about people behind their back

I will not wait to long to take decisions

Natalie is an experienced innovation specialist having spent over 25 years working as a corporate innovation director, a business consultant and entrepreneur. She has worked for and consulted with some of the world’s leading organizations including Cisco Systems, GSK, LEO Pharma Asia, Edgewell, and the Singapore Government, helping them build innovation systems, culture and capabilities as well as generating new ideas to help them grow their teams and businesses.

As Founder of The Entheo Network, based out of Singapore, she has made her passion for purpose and people driven innovation practical as well as inspirational to elevate people’s thinking on not only what they can create, but how - the mind, skill sets and cultural environments - that make everyday innovation happen.

The topic of the episode: Corporate Innovation - How to build an innovation team?

• Questions I answered in the live show:

• What is the right org setup for innovation?

• How do I find the right people for innovation?

• Do I need to lead innovators differently?

• How do I train people to innovate?

Adam is the founder of Treehouse Innovation, a London-based innovation consultancy. He specializes in collaborative design, innovation, design thinking, creativity and cross-boundary collaboration. He has led numerous innovation projects and design events for global organizations across sectors. In addition, he has designed and delivered learning programmes with leading business schools including Cambridge University, Imperial College London, Rice University and others.

He is the author/co-author of several published works (IBA, Managing Partner, CIPD, Others) focused on strategy, innovation, and learning with special focus on the professional services industries.

The topic of the episode: Corporate Innovation - How can human innovation change business results?

Questions I answered in the live show:

Because of covid it is all about saving costs right now in our company. How can I still innovate?

Everyone talks about innovation in our company but all we do are small improvements rather than real innovation. How to change that?

I am a new leader in an organization and responsible for +100 people. How do I motivate people that are long term in the company to innovate themselves?

How could I measure our innovation efforts differently? I am working in finance administration and am responsible for producing the weekly reports. How can we measure innovation?

I don’t have an innovation question but hope you can help me. I am working in a large organization and would like to hire a new person but don’t have the head count. How can I get a new headcount approved?

I am a manager with 5 direct reports, 5k employee company. My manager has no idea how to lead people. He is micromanaging me and the other managers. I am considering leaving the company but want to give it another last try, any idea what I could do?

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: Corporate Innovation - How to engage the organizational silos?

Questions I answer in the show:

What can I do as a leader in mid management to encourage my team to work better with other teams when innovating?

Other departments work against us, how do I turn this around as a leader?

The other departments (marketing and Finance) are not supporting the innovation efforts despite that it is a clear goal in our company strategy. What can I do as a leader?

Our innovation team works a lot but we don’t get recognized from the organization. What should we do to improve ourselves?

Lemuel Lasher International Executive, Investor, CEO of Boehme Eckhart LCC and Chairman of the Board of LEO - Leading Edge Only joined me to connect the dots of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Lem shared his story being Chief Innovation Officer at CSC, the setup, structure and how he changed the innovation culture in CSC. We talk about how he is helping organizations to innovate and the 4 critical questions he is asking before he agrees to support a company. Furthermore we talked about LEO and the opportunities of a true global innovation marketplace. And last but not least he shares a dirty little secret about innovation.

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

Last week I was interviewed by Katharina Mormann from Aragón Exterior here in Zaragoza Spain

Aragon Exterior is the Foreign Trade and Investment Promotion Agency of the Regional Government of Aragón, Spain.

Katharina established a Webinar / Podcast called La Ventana al Mundo - the window to the world

Enjoy the Q&A Moderated by Katharina Mormann

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: How to build an innovation System for a company?

Because this is a complex topic I have created a PDF that supports visually what I explain.

The 4 parts I explain are:

Problem

• What do we want to solve and why?

Sourcing

• What are the ideas and solutions we want to test?

Validating

• What solution is valuable to scale?

Scaling

• How to measure and secure success long term

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: How to build innovation Culture?

Some of the questions I’ll cover in this episode:

• What is innovation culture?

• How to build an innovation culture?

• Why does a company benefit from an innovation culture?

• How to build an innovation lab?

• What is the difference between innovation and entrepreneurship?

• How to build an innovation strategy?

• Innovation Culture vs Innovation Management

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is: How to generate business impact?

Some of the questions I’ll cover in this episode:

Definition of impact!

How to change a business model?

How to generate quick success to convince my manager?

You always talk about leadership and empowerment. What about the business?

How to get started with innovation?

How to measure success in innovation?

Is innovation important for business success?

HIQA - Human Innovation Questions Answered

The topic of today’s episode is How to transform a business

Some of the questions I’ll cover in this episode:

What can I do as a manager to manage change?

How can Innovation help businesses to transform?

How to secure a Business transformation long term?

Why should our business transform when everything is well?

How can I support transformations as an employee?

When should a business transform?

HIQA (Human Innovation Questions Answered Live)A format where I answer questions and go deeper into a specific topic.

The topic of this episode was: How not to pitch as a startup

Some of the questions I’ll cover in this episode:

• What is the right process?

• How do you structure an innovation department?

• How to convince my manager that we should innovate?

• How to motivate the organization to innovate?

• How much should the innovation budget of an organization be?

Ricardo Rosa Head of Innovation Sonae Sierra, an international Commercial Real Estate Company, joined me to connect the dots of innovation and entrepreneurship.

In our conversation he shared his story of how he developed from one decade of working in marketing to running the innovation Department in Sonae Sierra. We talk about Innovation in the commercial real estate industry, changing areas inside of it and how he works with Innovation in Sonae Sierra.

Tony is the pioneer of Jobs-to-be-Done Theory, the inventor of the Outcome-Driven Innovation® (ODI) process, and the founder of strategy and innovation consulting firm Strategyn. Tony has applied his ODI process at some of the world’s leading companies and across nearly all industries to inform breakthrough innovations—achieving a success rate that is 5 times better than the industry average. Philip Kotler calls Tony “the Deming of innovation” and credits him with bringing predictability to innovation. Published in Harvard Business Review and MIT Sloan Management Review, Tony is also the author of bestsellers What Customers Want and JOBS TO BE DONE: Theory to Practice.

Ivan Jimenez Head of Innovation at Mutualidad Abogacía and Seed Investor at BackFund joined me to talk about mental adaptation, corporate innovation and how corporations can work with startups.

Marta del Castillo, CEO of Spain Startup - South Summit joined me to talk innovation.She shares her inspiring story from living on 4 continents in different circumstances. We I talk about the importance of purpose driven organizations , Female Leadership as the core skills and of course innovation in startups and corporates.