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Jean-Luc Scherer

Business Incubation / Advisor @Sandooq A Watan - Startups Growth

Jean-Luc Scherer is an experienced industry leader with over 20 years of expertise in the mobile industry, currently serving as a Business Incubation Expert & Advisor at Sandooq Al Watan in the United Arab Emirates.14 His career is characterized by a strong background in sales, marketing, and innovation, with a particular focus on helping startups and corporations innovate and grow their businesses.1

Professional Experience

Scherer's career spans various roles and organizations:

  • Sandooq Al Watan: Business Incubation Expert & Advisor (February 2023 - Present)1
  • Innoopolis: Founder and CEO (October 2016 - Present)1
  • Scality: Managing Director (June 2022 - January 2023)1
  • Khalifa Innovation Center: Business Development & Startup growth (February 2021 - June 2022)1
  • Ericsson: Held multiple leadership positions, including Head of Service Line Revenue Growth and Head of Solution Hub GCC (2008 - 2016)1

Expertise and Specialties

Jean-Luc Scherer's areas of expertise include:

  • Sales and marketing strategies
  • Innovation coaching and consulting
  • Startup mentoring and growth
  • Digital transformation
  • Future communications technologies (M2M, Internet of Things, Big Data)12

Entrepreneurship and Mentoring

As an entrepreneur and innovation coach, Scherer has founded Innoopolis, a Digital Innovation Factory, to assist enterprises in maximizing their innovation initiatives.1 He is also actively involved in mentoring and coaching startups through various programs:

  • Startup Mentor at startAD (2017 - Present)1
  • Mentor at Stockholm School of Economics (2016 - Present)1
  • Startup Coach and Mentor at in5 Innovation Centre (2015 - Present)1

Recognition and Contributions

Scherer's expertise and contributions to the field have been recognized in several ways:

  • Jury Member for the World Summit Awards (2015 - Present)1
  • Received the President's Award for Innovation and Continuous Improvement from Ericsson Region Middle East in 20141
  • Regular speaker at IoT and Smart City industry events2
  • Blogger and social media content curator on topics related to the Networked Society2

Jean-Luc Scherer's LinkedIn profile (username: jeanlucscherer) showcases his extensive experience and current role, reflecting his commitment to fostering innovation and supporting startup growth in the UAE and beyond.13

Highlights

Aug 29 · linkedin

How startups can make the most out of their corporate engagements?

When founders engage with corporates for the first time it can quickly turn into an emotional roller-coaster ending up with more frustrations than positive outcomes.

When securing your first meeting with a corporate you probably already see that as a major achievement and are over excited.

  1. The first problem you will face is to understand whether this customer actually has a need that is addressed by your startup.

2.1Secondly, how far have they come in expressing their needs? 2.2 Are they evaluating the technology and doing PoC? 2.3 Do they have clear requirements? 2.3. Are they planning to run (commercial) pilots?

  1. How do they typically proceed with sourcing new solutions and how do they qualify vendors?

  2. Do they have the capabilities the operate your solution?

  3. How difficult is it to integrate your solution in their exisiting business operations?

  4. Do they have a budget allocated for providing a solution?

These are all questions you need to be able to answer! And the answers you get will give you an indication on whether you should actually further engage with that customer, qualify the opportunity, or simply pull-back because the customer is not ready.

The risks that you will face if engage a customer that is not mature enough on points 1 & 2 is that the customer is still in a discovery and learning phase. In this phase you can create influence, but the reality is that at this stage you are really educating the customer and teaching them about the technology. This can become a costly exercise for cash strapped startup.

3 and 4 are good questions to understand their innovation readiness and whether they procurement processes and learning processes in place allow them to smoothly work with startups. This could be a clear no go for you if they cannot adjust.

  1. This question is a lot about timing and maturity of the startup. Enterprise readiness is essential for larger corporates and you will have to demonstrate that you can quickly fit into their environment. This is something you need to start working on right after securing an initial PoC and most of that is usually checked in a commercial pilot before procurement.

6 . This helps you to quality the opportunity and decide on how much effort you put into this engagement. Minimize your sales costs before the customer has actually allocated a budget.

Assessing each of these areas will allow you to better qualify and prioritize your corporate engagements.

Jul 25 · linkedin

While AI is the talk of the town, and while it is making more and more moves into arts and media, it is quite resfreshing to have a second look at the art work that has been with us for centuries. From perfection in being imperfect like the tower of Pisa, from masterpieces of the grand masters like the Venus of Botticelli, the more you look at it and the more you read about it, the more you will discover layers of concepts, Ideas, messages and unexpected depth in meaning. Maybe that will be the next fromtier for AI, to be able to convey multiple meanings in artwork by combining different styles and techniques. Any thoughts on this? Any generative AI tools you know off that could capture such depth?

Related Questions

What are some notable startups Jean-Luc Scherer has advised?
How did Jean-Luc Scherer transition from the mobile industry to startup mentoring?
What is Innoopolis, and how does it support innovation initiatives?
Can you share examples of Jean-Luc Scherer's work at Sandooq Al Watan?
What are Jean-Luc Scherer's key achievements at Ericsson?
Jean-Luc Scherer
Jean-Luc Scherer, photo 1
Jean-Luc Scherer, photo 2
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Location

Dubai, United Arab Emirates