Workshop-Key-Contributors and Moderators

Innovation Challenges in the 21st Century

Dr Richard Messnarz, Dr Georg Macher were WP leaders in the EU Blueprint project DRIVES, which developed a skills agenda for the future automotive industry. The project delivered studies about drivers of change, new skills needs, and new developments towards a networked smart car which is connected to other services around. One outcome was that is a need for more innovation in creating new business models that fit with the new expected changes. The concept of an innovation agent skills profile has been created. In the EU project TIMS an innovation assessment method and tool has been developed that will be used by the innovation agents in future.
Dr Richard Messnarz (in cooperation with TU Hannover) and Dr Georg Macher (in various secondments) were supported by the Marie Curie EU Project OPENINNOTRAIN for meeting partners that collaborate on these innovation strategies.

Mag. Bruno Wöran together with Dr Messnarz developed in the past an innovation manager training, and they drift now to a new paradigm that instead of having an  innovation manager centrally controlling an innovation database in times of radical innovation we need to empower agents in all teams to unleash the ideas of how to use the new functional options that come up.

Prof. Tom Peisl is a highly recognised researcher at Hochschule München and teaches innovation and business models and has numerous projects with industry in that area as well. He will contribute with recent studies about human centred innovation strategies which are imposed by the innovation agent concept.

Joanne Hyland is the President of the rInnovation Group and former Vice President, New Venture Development at Nortel Networks. She is a strategic innovation expert and consults fortune 1000 companies and contributed her ideas to DRIVES about the future skills of innovation agents.

Laura Aschbacher has a BA degree in information design and a MA degree in communication, media and interaction design from the University of Applied Sciences Joanneum, Graz. She is a member of the EuroSPI innovation agent workshop series program committee and in the DRIVES project created the innovation agent key note and lecturing videos and co-moderates the innovation agent trainer interaction workshops.  She is a researcher in digital innovation and has also a Master degree in communication and interaction design at the University of Applied sciences Joanneum. Currently in a cooperation between TU Graz and ISCN she does an MBA study (in parallel to her job) for digital business innovation. In the EU blueprint project FLAMENCO she is together with Dr Messnarz, and DI Ekert setting up an European innovation agent task force.
In the EU project TIMS she is a researcher that developed with the TIMS partners and the ISCN team an ISO 56000 based innovation assessment system and tool that is now used in leading industry.


Olaolu Segun Odeleye and Babatunde Adedotun Salawu from Nigeria are members in the EU project TIMS in which training for the new ISO 56000 Innovation Management System norm is being developed and an ISO 56000 assessment system will be established in Europe and Nigeria. Deloris Mundo acts as an innovation contact point for European organisations in Nigeria.

See the KEY NOTE from Prof Peisl in the EuroSPI Youtube Channel, held at the DRIVES innovation workshop.

• Study results from EU Blueprint DRIVES
• The new human centred innovation concepts
• The human centred innovation agent strategy
• Papers from innovation research
• creative workshop about future business functions/options in a connected environment (with automotive networked)