Labs
Immersive sessions with short presentations and group discussions / exercises facilitated by professors and corporate experts

Björn Theis
Vice President and Head of Foresight
Evonik
Björn Theis is Head of Foresight at Creavis, the strategic innovation unit and business incubator of Evonik AG. He holds a master's degree in cultural anthropology, philosophy, and English from the University of Cologne. Björn Theis teaches futures research at various universities, is the founder of the Conjectural Futures Network, and is a member of the Future Circle of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Currently he works on the foresight project "Sustainable Food Futures 2040", which investigates how to enable healthy and sustainable nutrition for the world's population of tomorrow.
The Futures of China – Leveraging Scenarios to Inform Corporate Innovation, Marketing and HR Strategies and Long-Term Plans
Björn Theis will lead a lab on leveraging scenarios to inform strategic involvement in China. He will briefly introduce the large-scope scenario study Evonik has conducted and share the main strategic findings. This will be followed by a group workshop.
The lab participants will learn and work on the following:
- Understand the scenarios and the most important strategic insights for each of the scenarios
- Work in groups on a selected research question focused on innovation, marketing, or HR
- Use the future wheel approach to identify the consequences of the main development with respect to the group’s research question
- Work as a group to determine how to respond to the challenges and opportunities the results of the future wheel present
- Harvest the workshop’s results
- Business Model Innovation, Intrapreneurship & Future Scenarios
- HR Lab
- Innovation in China and Globalization of R&D
- Innovation Lab
- Marketing Lab
- Marketing Organization & Transformation
- Organizational Development & the Role of HR

Chris Brauer
Director of Innovation
Goldsmith
Dr Chris Brauer is Director of Innovation in the Institute of Management Studies (IMS) at Goldsmiths, University of London. He conducts high impact research studies on the intersections of human behaviour and emerging technologies with a particular focus on workforce productivity, performance, and wellbeing.
5 Things You Need to Do Now to Augment Your Human Workforce with Automation
Augmented businesses perform better than their counterparts on multiple levels – including business, finance and employee engagement. By freeing people from the repetitive and mundane tasks, but also by enabling human-machine collaboration, augmented businesses further enhance innovation and creativity. This lab offers a framework for organizations to augment their workforce through optimizing work for people and machines, and encouraging collaboration between people and machines. Dr. Chris Brauer will start off the lab with a foundational presentation followed by group discussions, based on his making-work-human framework. Lab participants will:
- Get to know the five main challenges in augmenting work, and learn how organizations can tackle these to develop augmented services, data, and culture
- Work in groups to assess a real job description filtering the role’s tasks using the making-work-human framework in order to redefine the job for the purpose of increasing creativity and innovation via human-machine collaboration
- AI, Internet of Things & Emerging Technologies
- Future of Work, Agile HR, HR Tech & People Analytics
- HR Lab
- Innovation Lab

Roopesh Panchasra
Global Head of Executive Talent Acquisition
Uber
Roopesh has 20+ years of joy as a Talent Acquisition Leader and believes that the best is yet to come. At present he has the privilege of leading the Global Executive Talent Acquisition teams for all Uber businesses worldwide. Roopesh has had the fortune to work with incredible leaders who have pushed and challenged him over his career working for amazing brands such as SAP, Workday, Expedia and VMware. Building teams that have tangible impact and help to create optimal experiences at every touchpoint of the hiring process, that's the goal. A magnifying lens on inclusivity and data driven strategies have been the common thread across all that he has done whilst making sure to have fun along the way.
Building a High Potential Pool for Executive Hiring – Approaches and Criteria
Roopesh Panchasra will lead a lab on executive hiring. He will start off the lab off by briefly introducing a framework to guide the group discussion that follows. Lab participants will discuss and learn about the following:
- What criteria organizations use to identify internal talent with high potential for executive positions
- How do organizations establish their criteria, measure the program’s impact, and nurture and adapt it – and how do they continue to build the talent pool and reassess its members
- HR Lab
- Talent Acquisition & Management