Agile Leadership in Action Panel at the Design Thinking ImpAct Conference 2022

We are celebrating 15 years of Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute. 15 years of enablement of people from all around the world in human-centered innovation. We review the highlights of the last 15 years of Design Thinking activities and discuss how we can further shape business and society with the innovation approach! Design Thinkers from all over the world came together who shared their experiences on making a difference with Design Thinking.

At the HPI Academy we also developed Leadership formats so that leaders can be enablers for innovation and agility. I am grateful for all the wonderful people I met so far on my journey. Let’s see how much more we can accomplish together with all the planetary challenges and much needed system changes ahead of us. 

We were very happy to welcome three very special human beings and leaders:

  • Manja Bartlog – Head of Learning & Growth Hub, Roche Pharma working on new ways of working and the re-thinking of leadership in an agile setting
  • Laura Engelhardt – Technology and Innovation Management, Siemens founder of the global intrapreneurship program “Siemens Intrapreneurs Bootcamp” which became a movement inside Siemens and founder of PureEdge
  • Sebastian Benndorf – Director of Manufacturing Engineering at Bentley Motors Ltd, UKdefining the DREAM FACTORY for Bentley’s electric future; a carbon neutral, fully connected and digitalised factory 

We took a look into the hearts and minds of these three leaders. Leadership in Action means for us, gaining insights into their challenges, decisions and leadership behaviours. In German you would say “Butter bei di Fische” or let´s cut to the chase.

We talked about 4 Agile Leadership Practices:

  • How to Create and communicate a clear vision
  • How to Foster psychological safety
  • How to Build Systems to learn and experiment
  • How to Enable autonomy