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.

Frank Möbius was responsible for Technology Scouting and Forecast within the BMW Technology Office Munich until the end of June this year. His task was to identify, analyse and assess new technology trends from cross industry and science and ensure their successful embedment within the BMW Group. Collaborating closely with all international BMW Tech Offices, the BMW Startup Garage and the BMW R&D departments, he was the central technology matchmaker between external innovation sources and the needs of his internal R&D partners.
After leaving his active role at BMW Group, he is now senior innovation advisor at UnternehmerTUM GmbH, Europe’s biggest entrepreneurship centre.
Before that he was responsible for series development of high voltage batteries and the industrialisation of batteries and electric engines at BMW Group for more than 10 years.
Frank holds a diploma in mechanical engineering from the University of Stuttgart and received his doctorate at the University of Kaiserslautern in production automation and robotics.

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.

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.

One of the world's leading authorities on product-market fit, Sean Sheppard is a serial entrepreneur with three exits, a venture capitalist, and managing partner at corporate venture builder U+. He is a globally recognised thought leader with over 30 years of experience bringing new products to market, including as a five-times sales founder with three exits. In addition to helping hundreds of startups find product-market fit and predictable revenue models, Sean helps global multinationals to identify new applications for their existing technology portfolio, bring new products to market with profitable business models, and organise and train self-managing early-stage innovation teams.

Jordi Rafols is the founder and CEO of Innoget, a pioneering Open Innovation boutique. With over two decades of experience in Open Innovation, technology transfer, and Internet business, Jordi has played a pivotal role in numerous Open Innovation projects across various industries. His expertise has been instrumental in assisting several international companies to evaluate, develop, and deploy robust Open Innovation programs.

Beyond his executive duties, Jordi has dedicated his career to democratizing access to knowledge and new technologies, driven by a vision to create inclusive communities that champion co-development and collaborative efforts among all societal actors. He firmly believes in the power of open access & science and sharing the benefits derived from the innovation value chain in a manner that is both efficient and fair.

Jordi’s commitment extends to acting as a business coach for technology-based startups, guiding them in strategy development and accelerating their business growth. He has also been a managing partner in several EU-funded projects focused on technology transfer and Open Innovation, which are aimed at forging new processes to enhance industry-academia collaboration.

At the heart of Jordi’s philosophy is the notion that societal enhancement hinges not just on technological transformation but on the equitable distribution of resources. He advocates for a shift in how resources and technologies are utilized, fostering transparent and honest communication and promoting responsible consumption to build a more sustainable and well-educated society for future generations.

Jesús Checa has 15-plus years of experience with technology in commercial, marketing, supply chain, and shared services in different sectors, including consumer goods (FMCG), manufacturing, and utilities. Jesús led extensive programs to outcomes in different regions, especially in the EU, UK, and LATAM.

Jesús specialised in technology, digital, and innovation, and led the digital transformation of technology at Bacardi. Jesús established, from scratch, a digital hub with 40-plus people with qualified partners across the globe and a $15 million annual budget. Jesús delivered 15-plus digital products and solutions in partnership with marketing and commercial to drive engagement, conversion, efficiency, and sales.

Jesús worked in leadership positions at Celsa and Agbar, having joined Bacardi in 2013 as PMO/CIO office leader to support the global SAP program, then as digital factory leader and digital CTO. Jesús recently moved to corporate strategy to lead disruptive innovation and to improve strategy realisation.

Jesús has a "can-do" and "from talking to walking" mindset, while being customer-first and value-first, creating and developing high-performance and diverse teams.

PhD at the University of California, Irvine (USA). Fausto also holds multiple certifications from MIT, Columbia University, the London School of Economics and Political Science, Kellogg School of Management, University of Cambridge, and soon also from the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked in multi-disciplinary teams and has over 20 years of experience in academia and industry.

As a physicist, mathematician, engineer, computer scientist, and high-performance computing (HPC) and data science expert, Fausto has worked on key projects at European and American government institutions and with key individuals, like Nobel Prize winner Michael J. Prather. After his time at NVIDIA corporation in Silicon Valley, Fausto worked at the IBM T J Watson Center in New York on Exascale Supercomputing Systems for the US government (e.g., Livermore and Oak Ridge Labs).

Sofía Muñoz is an AWS tech executive focussed on venture capital with 14 years’ experience alternating between big tech and high-growth startups (early Facebook employee). Sofia is a tenured leader in go-to market, international expansion, and community building, especially in the Latin American market. Sofia is a telecommunications engineer, a university expert in innovation and new business models by KTH and TU Wien, and has an executive MBA by IESE. Sofia is personally passionate about music, especially singing and DJing. Motto: Music is the Answer.

Claus Raasted is the director of The College of Extraordinary Experiences (Poland) and an external advisor at McKinsey. The author of 39 books, Claus is a former ruby hunter, a marketing wizard, an innovation strategist, a playfulness preacher, an experience design pioneer, a keynote speaker, and an event designer. With more than a thousand talks, workshops, etc., to his name, Claus has been called “a cross between Thor, Mick Jagger and Lady Gaga”. He also has a past in reality TV, but these days, who hasn't?

Miguel Lancha Luquero has a double major in law and economics from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and an executive MBA from IE University. He has over 11 years of experience in strategy consulting, having previously worked for Accenture Strategy advising national and international banking, insurance, and tech companies. Since 2022, Miguel has led the innovation strategy for AstraZeneca Spain and the Spanish innovation hub, part of AstraZeneca’s worldwide network of innovation hubs: the A.Catalyst network. To ensure the definition and deployment of AstraZeneca’s innovation strategy, Miguel oversees partnerships with startups, ecosystem builders, tech providers, healthcare systems, and accelerators. The Spanish innovation hub has scouted over 100-plus digital health solutions and deployed and scaled over 20 over the past two years.

Alexa Gorman, senior vice president of SAP.iO, leads all SAP startup activities worldwide. The focus of these activities is to turn innovative startups into SAP partners through a variety of acceleration and scaling programs to deliver additional innovations to SAP customers. By the end of 2022, more than 530 such startups had successfully completed one of these programs at 11 locations worldwide.

Alexa has been deputy chairwoman of the investors' advisory board at High-Tech Gründerfonds since January 2023. She is also a co-founder and on the marketing board of encourageventures, a non-profit organisation that connects female angel investors with women-founded startups to foster more diversity in the startup and investor ecosystem.

Alexa has more than 24 years of experience in the technology industry, which she has gained through her work in such diverse areas as business development, strategy, marketing, and open innovation worldwide.

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.

Reza Ghahary is head of industry cross innovation (IXI) at Creavis, the strategic innovation and business incubation unit at Evonik Industries. IXI is focussed on technology and market-driven co-innovation between Evonik and partners in different industries and sectors. With this open innovation approach, Evonik looks for strategic collaboration with innovative corporations to co-develop opportunities in new markets at an early stage.

In his former roles, Reza was running activities in different fields such as product and new business development, marketing, technical service, and intellectual property management.

Reza holds a PhD in chemistry and a master’s degree in business innovation.

Alexandra Begue is a passionate innovation leader at SAP, a social impact founder, and a board member of the government startup organisation, French Tech Berlin. Born and raised in Reunion Island, she keeps nature conservation very close to her heart as an environmental filmmaker. She worked these past five years in the SAP.iO venture studio to help entrepreneurs building new and transformative businesses internally. Today, she focusses on building the next generation of enterprise software for SAP through technology exploration and incubation.