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Innovations-Lounge

Innovationspionier Daniel Schmid zu Gast an der RWU

Daniel Schmid mit Prof. Dr. Hohl und Studierenden des Masterstudiengangs IB
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The students of the part-time MBA program "International Business Management (IB)" experienced a special highlight during their weekend lecture block "Innovative Management Concepts" with Prof. Dr. Eberhard Hohl. The successful start-up entrepreneur and innovation pioneer from Berlin, Daniel Schmid, happily accepted Professor Dr. Eberhard Hohl's invitation to attend the "Innovation Lounge" with the Master's students. In this "Innovation Lounge" format, newly conceived by him, entrepreneurs and innovation experts are invited to engage in a practical dialogue with IB students.

In his kick-off event, Daniel Schmid, who was born in Ravensburg, offered exciting insights into his professional career stages and the experience he gained from them.

He gave a glimpse into his personal path as a start-up entrepreneur and innovation manager: "My experiences as a tech & design agency founder and head of an innovation lab". In doing so, he gave concrete insights into the start-up world, covering everything from the formalities of founding a company, financing a business including customer acquisition and customer care. Furthermore, Daniel Schmid explained various management concepts and systems and put their practicality to the test using concrete examples from his everyday entrepreneurial life. "Important insights are to question one's own motivation and vision when founding a business as well as setting a framework to measure success," said Daniel Schmid. He also emphasised the importance of clarifying "solo entrepreneurship" vs. team foundation and relying on the support of experienced mentors from the industry ("mentoring"). With the current declining numbers of start-ups, he encouraged to take some risks, and highlighted the importance of building and maintaining networking contacts in theory and practice. He also expressed his appreciation for the innovative strength of the Lake Constance-Upper Swabia region.

Daniel Schmid has been a successful start-up founder and entrepreneur since 2008. He is also a member of the supervisory board of "i_city:intelligent city", HIT Stuttgart and CEO of the design & technology agency 47Nord, specialising in innovative digital projects. He currently heads the Berlin-based award-winning innovation lab move lab of the Daimler New Mobility company moovel (becomes REACH NOW).

REACH NOW, along with CHARGE NOW (e-mobility charging infrastructure), FREE NOW (request a ride service via app), PARK NOW (reserve and pay for parking spaces via app) and SHARE NOW (car sharing via app), is part of the mobility joint venture of the BMW Group and Daimler AG launched in 2019. The multimodal mobility platform moovel offers access to a range of mobility options, including public transport, car sharing service, taxi services, bike rental systems or e-scooter providers, including booking and payment - with the vision of "a world without traffic jams". With the move lab, Daniel Schmid promotes innovations that move us in the urban living space.

Daniel Schmid knew how to give the students in the seminar captivating insights into the innovation process: How do you get to a new approach when countless principles such as design thinking, design sprints or the serendipity principle etc. promise supposedly thriving results? How important is the exchange of facts and combinations of facts? Is creative work in a team with specialists and generalists more successful or is individual activity more focused?  How can you create freedom for curiosity, creativity and creative power of individual employees especially under economic pressure?

Finally, the industrial engineer trained in Stuttgart presented a special field of the Lab: the experimental design approach "Corporate Speculative Design", whose goal is to initiate discussions without offering concrete, directly implementable solutions.

For Julia Maschke, IB student and team leader at Vetter Pharma, the practical dialogue with him was a great learning experience: "Daniel Schmid gave us an insight into the world of start-ups and the hard, sometimes rocky path of setting up a start-up yourself on the one hand, and at the same time having the chance to work self-determined according to your own wishes. It was great that he shared his start-up story from employee to self-employed with us in this way. For students who are thinking about implementing their own innovative ideas, he had numerous tips at hand. It is always a professional and personal enrichment to meet such interesting and down-to-earth personalities through the contacts of our professors."

Text:
Professor Dr. Eberhard Hohl