What’s working as an Innovation Manager at Porsche like?
Andy Grau, Innovation Manager at Porsche, tells us what he loves most about his day to day life as an Innovation Manager at Porsche, what the big challenges are and what his job has in common with his free time job as a firefighter.
If you ask the German Wikipedia how innovation management is defined, it refers to the subject as “the systematic planning, control and monitoring of innovations in organizations”.
This makes it sound like innovations are a product that’s easily plannable, controlled and monitored in different stages of its development even though most of us believe that innovations are somehow magical, that they come from an idea under the shower or from the one genius in each generation.
Managing innovations is very versatile
But as the title already says, my job as an Innovation Manager is to actually manage innovations — like in the Wikipedia definition. What makes this task challenging is that there’s not one correct way of doing so. Managing innovations can include the development of new products and services in order to conquer new markets. It can consist of enhancing existing products and services to be better than the competitors or improve internal processes to strengthen the company from the inside and to save costs. Developing new business models to leverage new revenue opportunities can also be part of it. Innovation management is very versatile.
The everyday working life of an innovation manager
I, personally, focus on open innovation and co-working with startups, suppliers, and individuals. I organize open innovation formats like the Supplier Tech Days, Startup Autobahn and Porsche’s NEXT Open Innovation Competition that just finished with a great 2019 final and three well-deserved winners last week. As a Project Lead of the NEXT OI Competition, I was responsible for establishing and launching the first open innovation platform of Porsche together with a great cross-functional team and our platform partner HIGH MOBILITY.
I like to start my working day when it’s still quiet and I have some time to check my email inbox at rest. Most of my days are usually packed with meetings with many different stakeholders. That’s because the projects I am involved in always include many others — so there’s a lot of exchange, discussions and management. Another thing about meeting with so many people day after day is that I get informed about the most innovative trends and developments, what I really enjoy.
Firefighting and Porsche
Even though my current job has nothing to do with what I wanted to become when I was a child — a firefighter — there are still some similarities: The importance of teamwork, the ability to work together with a crew of individuals in order to fulfill one common goal, technical expertise, a strategic understanding of each step in a project and, of course, great cars 😉
That’s why I pursue the passion for firefighting in my spare time as a volunteer firefighter.
Open innovation as a success factor for Porsche
To me, open innovation is so important because I believe in collaboration. I believe that if you work jointly together on a project with suppliers, startups, consultants and open yourself up for new influences, ideas and input, the result will always be better than if you’re doing it alone. And for us at Porsche, it is fundamental to open up as a company in order to build on the success we have enjoyed in recent years in the future. We want to involve, collaborate with and learn from others — and also contribute to open innovation with our expertise and experience and be part of the ecosystem. In this interview, my colleague and Porsche Digital COO Stefan Zerweck explains the mind- and business change of Porsche in detail.
I am happy to be part of this transformation day by day. One of the things I love most about my job is seeing the excitement of young companies when we start a project with them, hearing creative ideas of suppliers on how to enhance collaboration and seeing visionary concepts of digital developers for the future of our sports cars. There is so much energy, creativity and great people I get to meet.
As we always say: Wherever dream cars are built, dream jobs are never too far away. If you’d like to experience the fascination of Porsche as well, have a look at our job offers on jobs.porsche.com.
Andy Grau is Innovation Manager at Porsche AG. Follow us for more on Twitter (Porsche Digital Lab Berlin, Porsche Digital), Instagram (Porsche Digital Lab Berlin, Porsche Digital) and LinkedIn (Porsche Digital Lab Berlin, Porsche Digital). Are you interested in a job at Porsche? You can find all the details on careers and career opportunities at Porsche here. For a look behind the scenes, follow us on Instagram.
