Making the New

How can a traditional rubber company produce smart digital products? This is the challenge of Chris Seeger, head of innovation and digitalization at Contitech, a division of Continental - the German multinational most known for manufacturing car tires.

Chris is now responsible for building an innovation lab from scratch: choosing projects, hiring a team and even designing a working space. Our conversation took place in Hamburg, inside an old factory building that is now being refurbished to host his venture. The location was very carefully chosen: the charming empty building is it located in the middle of an active rubber plant. The idea is to integrate the digital team with the core manufacturing business that is all around it.

This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva, a business design in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, please check our website: www.coaeva.de.

From robots that carry letters to electric vehicles built by the Deutsche Post itself: these are some of the innovation efforts at Germany’s traditional postal service. In a scenario where fewer people are willing to work delivering parcels door to door and where cities are already blocked with cars, the company has to become more creative to stay in business.

From his office in Bonn, Clemens Beckmann, executive vice president of innovation at Deustche Post, told me about other solutions he is working on right now to address the growth of online commerce. He also talked about a harsh competitive landscape: with low margins and a powerful Amazon, willing to leave profitability for the future.  

If you have been listening to this podcast, you probably realized by now that it is very hard to talk about innovation without talking about entrepreneurship. So in this episode, we are trying to find out how entrepreneurial Germany is. Unfortunately, according to our guest, the situation is not the most encouraging.

Benjamin Knöfler is secretary general of the Junger Mittelstand, an organization that represents a new generation of leaders at small and medium size companies. He explains why young people in Germany don’t seem to have the right incentives to start new businesses and what could be done to change that.   

This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva, a business design agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, please check our website: www.coaeva.de.

The Impact Hub is a community of markers dedicated to the topic of sustainability. There are 100 hubs around the world and one of them is in Berlin. I was there to get to know their co-working space and to talk to Anna Laesser, the co-founder.

In this interview, Anna told me about the kind of grassroots projects developed at the Impact Hub and why more and more corporations and traditional governmental organizations want to get involved.

This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva, a business design agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, please check our website: www.coaeva.de.

At this point, most corporations have a created an innovation lab or a startup accelerator in the attempt to develop new businesses. Deutsche Telekom, the telecommunications giant, is part of this group, but they also decided to invest in something a bit different. The UQBATE is an accelerator for internal ideas. Employees that take part in the program continue to receive a wage but have the time and support to explore new ventures.  

Johannes Nuenning is a business angel for corporate entrepreneurs at Deutsche Telekom. In this interview, he shares what he has learned in years trying to empower employees to become intrapreneurs.

This episode is a bit longer than usual, but I really encourage you to listen until the end. Johannes was very honest during our conversation and I think we can all learn from his experience, specially those struggling to push innovation forward in big corporations.  

This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva Innovation. Learn more about us at www.coaeva.de.

Digitalization is a big challenge for companies in several sectors, but it is particularly so for TÜV Nord, a testing and certifying multinational working with all sorts of industries. The company inspects from cars to satellites and children’s toys. As their clients become digital, so too must their certifying process. In this interview, Stefan Kistler, senior manager of corporate strategy and innovation, talks about promoting change in this 120-year old corporation. 

This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva Innovation, a creative agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, check out our website: www.coaeva.de.

In this episode, we explore a very traditional German success story: we are featuring a family-owned, medium-size, 120-year-old organization. Pascoe is a homeopathic medicine company. It has received for two consecutive years the award of best employer in Germany by the organization Best Place to Work.

The CEO, Annette Pascoe, shares several lessons about talent management and product innovation that might be particularly interesting to other small and medium-size organizations.

This time the conversation was conducted in German by my partner at Coaeva, Alissa Rohrbach. 

Making the New is an initiative from Coaeva Innovation. If you want to know more about us, visit our website: www.coaeva.de

Online shopping has changed the lives of people in big cities. As consumers, we have become used to having things delivered to our doorstep. We are also used to not paying - or paying very little - for this kind of convenience. This imposes a huge challenge to companies like Hermes, one of Germany's leading logistics companies. In this episode, Martin Andresen, senior manager of strategy and innovation, explains how he is trying to improve the so-called “last mile logistics”, which is delivering a parcel to its final destination.

This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva Innovation, a creative agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, check out our website: www.coaeva.de

Airbus, a giant in the aerospace industry, has recently created an accelerator to transform ideas into new businesses. The program of the Bizlab is open to both employees and external startups. In this interview, Rey Buckman explains why a global corporation - that is normally busy closing multimillion dollar deals - decided to invest in much smaller new businesses.

This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva Innovation, a creative agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, check out our website: www.coaeva.de

Industry as we know it has been changing dramatically in the last few years.The sector is going through what is called the fourth industrial revolution. The idea behind the Industry 4.0 is that factories should become smarter with the use of automation and data exchange technologies. Germany, as a traditional manufacturing hub, is specially interested in leading change - and Andrea Rosen's job is to facilitate this process. At Cube, she matches corporations with deep tech startups from all over the world, that are helping build the industry of the future.

This podcast is an initiative from Coaeva Innovation, a creative agency in Berlin. If you want to know more about us, check out our website: www.coaeva.de