Prof. Dr.-Ing. Guido H. Baltes is Director of the IST Innovation Institute at the University of Konstanz, visiting professor at UIBE University in Beijing and the Rady School of Management at the University of California in San Diego. He is a professor, scientist, entrepreneur, manager, advisor, mentor and international expert in strategic transformation and innovation. He combines his research with corporate experience. He is the author of numerous journal and book articles and shares his knowledge as a keynote speaker and in panel discussions as a guest or presenter.
Guido H. Baltes in an interview:
1. What are the core subjects of your keynote speeches?
In my keynote speeches I talk about:
- Successfully implementing strategic innovation
- Building change and innovation capabilities
- Successfully shaping the future with agile transformation
- Disrupting from within – shaping the future with entrepreneurial teams
- Successful leadership for change and transformation
- Implementing an ambidextrous organization and shaping the future
- Building ambidexterity (“two-handed organisazion”) in leadership and organization
2. Which audiance or which branch do you reach with your speech?
Employees and executives who want to or should actively shape the changes of our time in their respective organizations
Executives and managers who are looking for inspiration, design tips and hands-on implementation examples in order to successfully shape innovation and transformation in their area of responsibility.
My audience very often has an industrial background from companies that need to compete in their respective markets based on innovation. At the same time, I am also frequently requested by organizations from other sectors that are under high transformative pressure like e.g. the service or healthcare industry.
In particular, my specific expert know-how on start-up-corporate collaboration is requested as there are only very few individual in Germany who have specialized in this field and our research makes us one of the most experienced and high-profiled experts in this field.
3. Are you a PREMIUM SPEAKER? Where do you get your insights from?
The diversity and breadth of my professional experience is extraordinary: I have a senior executive background as a member of the upper leadership level at Siemens AG and the executive team of a billion-dollar business, over the past 15 years I have built up a high-profile, international research institute in the field of strategic innovation and transformation and I am also a successful startup and technology entrepreneur – my audience benefits from this breadth in experience by receiving impulses from very different angels and perspectives.
As a supervisory board member and CEO coach, I regularly support challenging strategy and transformation projects in high-profile industrial companies – my audiences therefore benefits from hands-on experience and tried-and-tested design tips that can be easily connected and transferred to their own area of responsibility.
Through my research and teaching in China and California, among other places, I am first-hand familiar with the relevant developments and trends, judgements and perceptions at the most relevant economic and political poles of our time – my audience benefits from this as I can frame and discuss developments in Germany and Europe in that global context.
4. What will be in the future? Does «time» play an important role in your work?
We are in the mid of a profound societal and economic transformation, which can best be compared with what we experienced at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.
Presumably, it holds true what an Italian nobleman – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa – wrote in his only novel “Il Gattopardo” at precisely that time: “If we want everything to remain as it is, then everything must change.”
This future needs to be actively shaped with the willingness to let go of what we have grown to love and the ability to deal with the complexity and uncertainty of this transformation “well”, i.e. in a healthy and effective way. This challenge of dealing well with the complexity of our environment will be with us for the foreseeable future.
5. Tell us your life motto? What do you want to give your listeners to take with them?
“There’s more than meets the eye, so dare to move forward boldly.”
“When the world around us is changing at a dramatic pace, the biggest risk is staying where you are today.”