Cordelia Krooß is an Agile Coach at BASF. She is responsible for Agile Transformation in Digitalization of R&D. A biologist by education, she sets up agile experiments and enables teams and executives to apply agile principles in an R&D context.

Cordelia is an acknowledged expert on Digital Transformation, with a strong background in coaching, organizational development, change management, learning and communications. In her 28 years with BASF, she has built a track record of sustainable successes. She was part of the team behind connect.BASF, one of the first Online Business Networks established in the German industry. When leading the Change Management workstream for BASF’s introduction of Office365, Cordelia established a consulting team for “New Ways of Working” that still operates today. Prior to this, she worked in various communication roles in Germany and Hong Kong.

Since 2019, Eric Tachibana has been the global Chief People Officer for the Professional Services organization at Amazon Web Services. In this role, Eric helps large enterprise customers across Asia with the organizational transformations necessary to deliver maximum benefits from the Cloud Operating Model and supports AWS teams with hiring, training, and culture at scale. From 2014 – 2018, Eric was the Professional Services lead for APAC, Japan, and China.

Previous to his role at Amazon, Eric was the Asia Pacific COO for UBS, across the Investment Banking, Wealth Management, and Asset Management Chief Technology Office where he was responsible for Innovation Management, Enterprise Architecture & Strategy, and Enterprise Social Networks. Before UBS, Eric was with Bank of America Merrill Lynch where he served as APAC Technology and Operations COO and was responsible for Innovation Management, Business Management, Risk & Compliance, and Employee Engagement.

Prior to his years in banking, Eric was an entrepreneur, focusing on the financial services space for over 14 years - creating, building, and eventually exiting, successful small and mid-sized companies in Silicon Valley, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and the U.K. Today Tachibana continues his entrepreneurial endeavors as a regional angel investor, strategic adviser, and mentor for young, developing entrepreneurs, serving as founding non-executive advisor for 7 companies ranging from IT, to F&B, to retail/fashion and as Program Advisor for the DBS Bank HotSpot Accelerator.

Eric is also an author of 8 books on technology development and innovation management and continues to earn regional industry recognition as an adjunct Professor at the National University of Singapore and Thammasat University business schools.

Trying to enjoy the journey, not the end. Being a student of my three small teachers in life. Last decade with Ingka Group (IKEA) working with sustainability and innovation, strategy.

David Robertson is a Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management. Formerly, as a Professor of Practice at the Wharton School, Robertson taught Innovation and Product Development in the undergraduate, MBA, and executive education programs. From 2002 through 2010, Robertson was the LEGO Professor of Innovation and Technology Management at Switzerland’s Institute for Management Development (IMD), which received the #1 worldwide ranking by The Financial Times for its executive education programs. At IMD, he was Program Director for IMD’s largest program, the Program for Executive Development, and co-Director of the Making Business Sense of IT program, a joint program between IMD and MIT Sloan.

Robert D. Austin is a Professor of Information Systems and Innovation at Ivey Business School, and an affiliated faculty member at Harvard Medical School. Prior to his current appointments, he was Professor of Management of Innovation and Digital Transformation at Copenhagen Business School, and before that, a professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. He is author or co-author of eight books, most recently The Adventures of an IT Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2016) and has published in many academic and practitioner journals, e.g. Harvard Business Review. He has held managerial positions at Ford and Novell, and served as CEO of the largest executive education provider in northern Europe. His research focuses on innovation, digital transformation, managing creative companies, and talent and performance management.

With a broad background in design leadership, product innovation, user centred design thinking and launch of innovative global products and services, Michael now focuses on building human centered innovation cultures in large size organisations. His hands-on leadership approach has brought him to companies like Amazon, PayPal, eBay, Nokia and Lego as well as several startups. He currently leads the UX and design thinking practice at Ørsted, a leading renewable energy company.

At Ørsted, Michael oversees the creation of the Design Thinking strategy while maturing the UX design function for the company. This includes operational, strategic and cultural ways to embed design and design thinking in a program at global scale in conjunction with the agile transformation into SAFe (Scaled Agile Frameworks).

Michael lectures and teaches at several design schools and MBA programmes in design thinking and design strategy. He has recently been appointed adjunct professor of Design at the Royal Academy of Architecture and Design in Copenhagen (KADK). Furthermore he actively pursues communities and partnerships that rethink design in concert with the fields of Psychology, Business development and Marketing in an effort to create new frameworks for change.

Ken Webster is a leading figure in the development of the theory and practice of a circular economy in its 21st century guise. He was, until recently Head of Innovation for the Ellen MacArthur Foundation* and helped establish the intellectual basis of their approach from its inception in 2010 through to 2018. He is currently a senior lecturer at the University of Exeter Business School’s Centre for Circular Economy where he is leading on the establishment of an International Society for Circular Economy in tandem with a number of leading academics across the globe. He is guest researcher at Linköping University in Sweden.

His book The Circular Economy: A Wealth of Flows (2nd Edition 2017) relates the connections between systems thinking, economic and business opportunity and the transition to a circular economy. He makes regular contributions to conferences, workshops and seminars around the world. His current interests include total product liability, open vs closed circular economy loops and the relationship between large and small scales in the creation of effective economic systems. He is a supervisory Board member of the Dutch Madaster Foundation, a materials passport initiative in the built environment.

*The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s aim is to accelerate the transition from a linear ‘take-make-dispose’ economy to a circular economy

Ian Machan’s expertise, developed throughout his 40 years working with manufacturing businesses, are in supply chain, strategy and continuous improvement. Executive roles, both permanent and interim in the healthcare sector, followed an engineering and production career in traditional manufacturing and fast moving food consumer goods.

An experienced university industrial fellow, for the Advanced Services Group, Ian now leads their advisory services, including organisational development workshops, executive education and commissioned projects. He has worked extensively with several multi-billion dollar businesses in their transformation journey towards a servitized value offering.

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Ammon Salter is a Professor of Innovation and REF Director at the School of Management, University of Bath. He received his doctorate from SPRU at the University of Sussex in 1999, where he also worked as a researcher from 1998-2002. From 2003-2013, he was a faculty member at Imperial College London, acting as the co-Director of the Innovation Studies Centre. From 2009-2013, he was the Research Director of the UK Innovation Research Centre, which was collaboration between Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge. His research has been published widely, in journals such as Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Journal, Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change and California Management Review. His current research focuses on open and distributed models of innovation, social networks and innovation, and university-industry collaboration and typically involves engagement with policy and practice through collaborative projects with industrial and governmental partners.