Aug 2, 20223 min read

How was Innovation Summit 2022?

Updated: Aug 3, 2022

First of all, it was LIVE and we had the long-awaited chance to see each other again.

It's been about a month since the biggest tech event in the CEE took place right here, in Bucharest.

We took some well-deserved time, so we can internalize everything we saw, heard, and learned.

Now is the perfect time to share with you some highlights from the Innovation Summit.

Many thanks to our Innovation Summit Partner this year – Orange Business Services for supporting us!

Well, a good day starts with coffee, right? Let’s take a short moment the appreciation of our partner L’or, who was responsible for the good energy around here.

So, how was Innovation Summit 2022?

Sebastian Burduja, Minister of Research, Innovation, and Digitalization
Octavian Oprea, Vicepresident Authority for Digitalization of Romania
Stelian Bujduveanu, Deputy Mayor of Bucharest Municipality
Alexandru Savu, Senior Community Manager, Cognizant Softvision
Tobias Matter, Head of Bosch Engineering Center Cluj
Florin Popa, B2B Director, Orange Romania
Alexandru Măxineanu, Managing Partner, Universum Expo

This is the line-up that opened our Innovation Summit this year, with a lot of emotions (the good ones though), debating the future of technology in Romania, how easily people adopt technology in their lives and how they relate to life-changing innovations these days.

Joerie Nijhuis from Accenture has shared with us his 7 key innovation lessons from the start-up and corporate world and we will just let them down below to guide your steps towards adopting innovation:

Innovation at its core is about creating value, not getting lost in the complexities of new technology.

Customer involvement in interactive development is key for effective value validation.
Customers know their problems, not your solutions.
A well-defined job-to-be-done consists of 3 fundamental elements: goal, situation, and motivation.
Competition is not centered around a product or service, but rather around a similar job to be done.
One MVP is no MVP, most of them will fail anyway.
When thinking about the size of your next MVP, it’s probably to divide it by ten.

Henrik Scharfe from Scharfe Consult had an amazing talk involving the human, the robot, and the power of Data. At the border between dystopia and simplification of life, he brought some interesting scenarios about what the future will look like, especially from the perspective of creating a robot that looks exactly like us.

The most astonishing thing is that Henrik speaks from personal experience because he is the first to create such a robot.

Then… the big question was asked - Does innovation have boundaries?

Alin Turcu, Mobile Community Manager, Cognizant Softvision
Tobias Matter, Head of Bosch Engineering Center Cluj
Vlad Bodea, Co-fondator, Bento
Daniel Rusen, Marketing & Operations Director, Microsoft Romania
Dragoș Preda, CEO, Radiocom

They joined forces to find the answer.

Anna Borbotko from TomTom taught us how to stay relevant and build in-demand products with a focus on what is called these days „product marketing”.

It is about the symbiosis between the value created by producers and the real reason why a customer buys. From the paper map to the mobile app market, we know for sure that the product is always changing, but the desire for progress will be there forever.

Dr. Chris Brauer from the University of London had a very inspirational talk about the impact that technology has on our lives, from a holistic perspective. For example, our life expectancy is more than double than before because of two factors:

adapting to our environment
harnessing the power of technology and science.

Pierre-Yves Paslier and Rodrigo García González from Notpla came up with an exceptional solution to replace disposable plastic in day-to-day life. From Notpla pearls, made for single-use doses of liquids

(coffee, shampoo, sun cream, and so on) to Notpla coating, which is designed to naturally biodegrade, the sky is the limit

Gianmarco Brunetti from Land Rover ended the day with a very motivating note about the impact of digitalization on future cars. He said that consumers will engage digitally throughout the life of the vehicle and beyond and the industry has become less dependent on volume post-pandemic. In his opinion, there are 6 key levers to reduce volume dependency, that will drive specific actions on the product: