Sudeendra is an engineering graduate with management education and a Ph.D. in innovation. His 28 years of experience is in Innovation and Technology Management in India, Singapore, and the Netherlands in various roles, including new product and services development, project management, hardware, software and systems, intellectual property, people, and customer management with more than 20 patents in various stages. He has worked at Philips Netherlands, Europe, Philips India, HCL, and TTK. As a part of his consulting firm, PRASU, he has consulted for top companies, many in automotive technology, to help develop a culture of innovation, build innovation skills, and generate business-relevant innovations and intellectual property. He has been very actively engaged in the start-up sphere by mentoring and supporting multiple start-ups, innovation centers, accelerators, and incubators in multiple domains. He has also worked closely with academia and innovation, being a part of academic councils forging stronger industry-academia collaboration. His Ph.D. by research is titled “An integrated framework for Innovation talent management,” focusing on Innovation & Intrapreneurship, specifically in scaling and managing business-relevant innovation. Also, he has developed a unique innovation talent assessment and management method and is a TEDx and an international speaker, speaking regularly at multiple forums, universities, and conferences won several awards and recognitions. Sudeendra ia a long-standing volunteer at IEEE, PMI, and Women in Big Data. He is also a cartoonist and actor.

Luan Tian is the person responsible for several departments in Innoway (The Leading Government-owned company of Innovation service of China). He has 15 years of overseas working experience in North America and Europe. He acted as jury for several well-known startup competitions nationwide and worldwide, and official innovation and startup mentor for Microsoft accelerator, Hitachi, Walmart, Sino-steel, and so on. He is a senior researcher in Cross-border E-commerce, helps international startup projects settle in China, and traditional enterprises transform and upgrade. IT Education background in Finland.

Dr. Henning Trill has a passion for new ways to make life better and focuses on ecosystems in nutrition and health as the VP Innovation Strategy. Since 2016 his team has supported and enabled Bayer’s employees to innovate in what they do. To make this happen, they developed an internal Innovation Ecosystem involving more than 40.000 employees on online platforms, 1000 part-time coaches in the Innovation Network, and 80+ new business projects in the Catalyst Entrepreneurship Program. 

Before heading Corporate Innovation, Henning led Bayer’s Inhouse Consulting R&D team, worked in a Lithium Ion Battery start-up with the Boston Consulting Group, and got a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the WWU Münster.  

Alice de Casanove is in charge of innovation competencies and learning in Airbus Defence and Space. She develops innovation culture and deploys the relevant tools and methods to accelerate future businesses. Alice plays a pivotal role in the publication of the ISO referential on good practices in innovation management (ISO 56000 series). Since 2013, she has been chairing the international committee gathering 50-plus countries in close coordination with WTO, OECD, WIPO, and World Bank.

Alice started her career in a video deep tech startup, then joined Sagem to manage and develop the value of the innovation portfolio of the French telecom manufacturer. She also previously joined the entrepreneurial adventure of Actimagine to develop video technologies on handled device (video games consoles and smartphones).

Christophe is a research and development (R&D) executive with 25 years of experience in leading and transforming international R&D and quality teams in the FMCG sector (food, household cleaners, cosmetics). Christophe is passionate about bringing meaningful innovations to the market that can impact business, people, and the planet at scale. He held leadership roles in designing business and technology strategies and implementing end-to-end innovation processes across several companies (Procter & Gamble, Reckitt Benckiser, Mars, and Danone) with launches of multiple, consumer-preferred, commercially successful products.

Most recently, as SVP of global R&I for Danone, he led the re-design of the company’s innovation portfolio and built new capabilities around consumercentricity, design thinking, open innovation, and digital R&I. An inclusive leader and talent developer, Christophe believes in solving problems through collaborations across functions and companies by bringing together diverse views and capabilities. Christophe is French, holds a PhD in chemistry, and lives next to Paris.

Daniel Paz is a high-tech investor. Daniel works in the investment team of the corporate venture capital arm of Deutsch Bahn. The fund investments in various fields related to transportation from mobility-as-a-service, through IoT and robotics to logistics. Prior to joining DB, Daniel worked at AWS as the startups business development manager in Germany. Daniel holds a BSc in life sciences from the Hebrew University and an MBA from INSEAD Business School.

Walid Benzarti holds a PhD in microelectronics and an executive MBA. He has been working for more than 20 years in innovation and scientific research in various roles and in different international public institutions, as well as private companies like Thales, ST Microelectronics, Mapper Lithography, The French Atomic Energy Commission, Korea Advanced Display Research Center, CEA-Leti, and The French Embassy in Singapore.

In his present position as the Director for Innovation, Research and Technology at Thales Group, he defines strategies and implements tools to boost innovation, research and technology from breakthrough technology development to business successes supporting international development and leveraging cooperation with worldwide innovative public agencies and private companies in the land and air systems domains.

Until recently, Arjan Rensma led the innovation excellence team of DSM. His responsibility was to support the DSM innovation council in achieving DSM’s sustainable innovation targets and developing and executing the DSM innovation excellence program, including the venture development program and the innovation learning program. Previously, Arjan held management and NBD roles in banking, publishing, consultancy, and research. He started his career at the Philips NatLab and recently founded his own startup, SustaInnovate.Today. With partners such as Invest-NL (largest impact investor of the Netherlands) he supports innovation initiatives to achieve the sustainable development goals and green deal.

Arjan is a Dutch national and holds an MSc in business science from RSM and the University of California at Berkeley. He is a member of the advisory board and guest lecturer of the master of innovation and change at HS Zuyd and teaches innovation excellence at the Erasmus University at the LIEP program he co-founded and is a business coach for the Global School of Entrepreneurship, Amsterdam.

Dipl.-Ing. MBE Johannes Grabowski PMP has been working for the Bosch Group since 2005. After years in engineering he switched to innovation, was active in spin-offs in Silicon Valley, pushed robotics projects as intrapreneur and built up an accelerator that won the corporate startup award for best entrepreneurship in 2017. Johannes taught business modelling at the ESB University in Reutlingen. Since 2018 he has been working for Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH to build up a global venture client unit for the Bosch Group.

Nicolas is an international innovation executive, and an expert in corporate innovation programs and innovation labs, designing places where good innovation thrives. He currently helps the 20 innovation managers of Orange Africa to develop their projects locally. Previously, he created several open innovation programs: innovation with employees (Orange Intrapreneurs Studio), innovation with consumers (Imagine with Orange), and innovation with entrepreneurs (Orange African Toolbox). Consolidating this experience with the ones of 40 corporations, in 2019 he wrote “The Intrapreneurs' Factory: A practical guide for corporate managers who want to leverage intrapreneurship.” Nicolas is a passionate speaker (TEDx), a Masterclasses lecturer at Google Academy and tech/business schools, an ISPIM Prize laureate for innovation management in 2016, and a writer of the innovation blog RapidInnovation.fr. Follow him @nicobry.

Kalyan Sarma is an innovation manager on Johnson Matthey’s corporate innovation team, currently involved in corporate venturing and innovation ecosystem building activities for the company. Kalyan joined Johnson Matthey in 2018 and previously worked for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) as a global innovation lead. In this role, he was responsible for providing expert advice on European funding in nanotechnology and advanced materials; and represented UK at the programme committee and high-level advisory group of the European Commission’s (EC) Directorate of Research and Innovation. Prior to this, Kalyan spent more than five years in Singapore, working for a healthcare incubator and was involved in commercialising his own technology that came out of his PhD. In these roles, he was involved in developing commercial and technical development strategies, technology transfer activities, and raising investments from institutional investors and large corporates.

Kalyan holds a PhD in nanotechnology from the University of Cambridge, completed a senior executive programme in strategy and innovation from MIT and IMD, and a fellow at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3).

Dr. Austin Kozman is a senior director of R&D at PepsiCo, leading the external innovation (XI) team. The XI team is an upstream, externally facing department within PepsiCo R&D. We actively scout for, identify, and develop strategic partnerships with external collaborators. Our goal is to locate key external insights, business models, and technical unlocks and new capabilities that, when partnered with PepsiCo’s robust internal R&D expertise, will yield disruptive innovation in our core products and/or new and emerging products.

PepsiCo is currently exploring novel technology spaces that can dramatically impact their portfolio of foods and beverages. They’re interested in improving all facets of their supply chain — from raw material inputs all the way to the consumer consumption — and identifying global efficiencies in areas including crop science, ingredients, processing, packaging, equipment, distribution/fleet, retail, and ecommerce. They’re also committed to sustainability for our planet and our communities.

Austin has worked as a thermal engineer for over 25 years. Austin received his BSME from the University of Texas at Austin and his master’s of engineering and PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. Austin has three issued US patents and six currently pending (3 issued UK patents). In 1999, Austin was selected as the Young Engineer of the Year by the North Texas Electronic Packaging Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). In 2010, Austin was elevated to Fellow status in ASME. Austin is a registered professional engineer in the state of Texas.

Dr. Dominique Massonié is head of innovation at Elektrobit (EB). In this role, he serves as a catalyst bridging together internal ideas and projects with external industry trends and innovation to ideate and build the next generation of software that will power the future of mobility.

Dominique joined EB in 2006 and pioneered the first voice destination entry feature for after-market devices in Europe. Since then, he has led many successful innovative speech and voice technology projects for various premium carmakers, while also being actively involved in the development of EB’s software offerings as a product manager.

Dominique holds a PhD in the field of automatic speech recognition and dialog systems from Avignon University.

Jordi Ràfols is the founder and CEO of Innoget.com, one of the largest online open innovation networks. He has more than 20 years of experience working on open innovation and technology transfer, and internet business. He has been directly involved in hundreds of open innovation projects in a wide range of different industries and has worked with several international companies in the evaluation, development, and deployment of their open innovation programs. 

As part of the Catalan national program “Startup Catalonia,” he acted as a business coach for technology-based startups, helping them to develop and implement their strategy and accelerate business growth. He has been a managing partner at Science2Society.eu, one of the largest EU-funded projects in the field of technology transfer and open innovation aimed at developing new processes to enhance industry-academia collaboration. 

Jordi holds an MBA at ESADE Business School and a corporate finance degree at IE (Instituto de Empresa in Madrid) and has been involved in corporate venture and valuation projects. As an innovation conference speaker, he has shared his view on open innovation and collaborative R&D and innovation ecosystems in many international and cross-industries events in Berlin, London, Edinburgh, Boston, Paris, Singapore, and Barcelona. He has also given lectures to MBA program alumni at ESADE Business School on online open innovation business models.

Stéphane Gervais has more than 30 years of experience in the high-tech industry as global marketing, business development, innovation, project management, and product designer.

He has worked for multi-national companies in Europe and in Asia in the consumer and industrial segments. Stéphane also has experience in emerging technologies and markets. His current position is Executive VP of Strategic Innovation at LACROIX Group. Some of his favourite topics include industrial internet-of-things (IIoT), new technologies, electronics, autonomous vehicle, and smart city. Stéphane holds a PhD in electronics from the University of Bordeaux (France) and an MBA degree from Newcastle University (Australia). He holds patents and has written numerous papers.

Currently the CEO at R2A Labs, a startup and innovation studio, Hai has been leading growth, product, and strategy for more than 20 years in early stage startups as well as Fortune 500 companies. Prior to his current role, Hai served as senior director of product and innovation at Stubhub (NASDAQ: EBAY) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT), leading product, engineering, and strategy teams tasked with corporate innovation and creating new business lines in ecommerce, fintech, and omni-channel initiatives. Earlier in his career, Hai held leadership roles at multiple hyper-growth, venture-backed B2C and B2B tech startups, including: Fulfil, Apester, Spritz, ClarityRay (acquired by NASDAQ: VZ), Unbotify (acquired by NASDAQ: APP), and others. Prior to that, Hai helped grow Conduit (NASDAQ: PERI and Como.com) from an early stage startup to a tech unicorn, overseeing product, strategy, marketing, and operations. Throughout his career, Hai has also served as an advisor to numerous tech ventures on strategy, growth, and go-to-market as well as a mentor and speaker in various programs and accelerators, including Google’s global accelerator in Silicon Valley, Asia, Europe, and LATAM.

As a member of the Covestro leadership team in China and Asia Pacific, Prof. Dr. Michael Schmidt has been the Head of Global Innovation Management and Group Innovation Asia Pacific since July 2021. Michael started his career in 1997 in Erlangen, Germany at the Institute of Polymer Materials, leading the acquisition projects from an engineering aspect for about four years. In the following 17 years, within the business unit polycarbonates of Bayer MaterialScience AG in Germany, he took up various global management roles in overseeing production and technology, R&D, and sales and marketing activities. He was VP of business development at business unit polycarbonates in Asia Pacific from 2012-17 based in Shanghai, with responsibilities for developing innovation strategy and activities for the region, namely Greater China, Korea, Japan, ASEAN countries, India, and Australia/New Zealand of Covestro.

From 2016-18, he drove Covestro’s polycarbonate composite business as a global co-CEO, meanwhile, leading as managing director the Covestro thermoplast composite GmbH in Markt Bibart, Germany. Returning to China, he took over the extended responsibility for Covestro’s regional innovation activities in Asia Pacific, including its regional innovation hub in Shanghai from September 2018 to June 2021. In July 2021 he was appointed as Covestro’s Global Head of Innovation Management and Group Innovation Head for Asia Pacific, based in Shanghai. Michael was born in 1971 in Mumbai, India. He holds a PhD in polymer materials from Friedrich-Alexander-University-Erlangen in Nuernberg, Germany. Among other awards, he won the scientific award from the German Society of Rheology as best scientist in 2001. Michael is the dean of the Covestro-Tongji Innovation Academy in Shanghai and advisory board member of the Institute of Textiles, RWTH Aachen. He was appointed as advisory professor from Donghua University, Shanghai in January 2021.

Oscar Gil Gonzalo is global digital innovation manager at Nestlé, helping to incubate tech-powered concepts and new business models and building meaningful partnerships with the external innovation ecosystem (IT vendors, startups, universities, venture builders). He is passionate about helping organisations to take advantage of digital technologies to disrupt in the business and offer meaningful experiences to their customers. An innovator and entrepreneur at heart, he applies his technical and business background to understand problems, identify opportunities, and find solutions applying digital innovation. He has played technical and management roles for international organisations in education, consultancy, media, fashion, and consumer packaged goods sectors. He loves making connections and communicating; that’s why he enjoys so much to be a speaker in international events, a co-author of books and magazine articles, a keynote speaker at universities and business schools, and a mentor to startups and students.

Ed Essey helps intrapreneurs incubate new businesses in the Microsoft Garage. An MIT grad, serial founder, and veteran product guy, he's passionate about technology, creating great cultures, and innovating through experimentation.

During his engineering career, he's researched AI, developed intelligent agent-based systems, and democratized parallel computing. He has led company-wide change management programs in innovation, design-thinking, and agile methodologies that have helped over 25,000 employees earn raving fans for their products. He founded the Garage experimental outlet that has delivered over 130 new and exciting projects to market.

Ed practices mindfulness to bring his most courageous and caring self to every connection. He champions wise technology, because the best products cannot stop at intelligence, they need wisdom. He and his family live in Seattle.

Visit edessey.com to read his articles on innovation, incubation, and growth.