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Michael Lunzer
Co-creating corporate innovation | Venture building | Climate innovation
Michael Lunzer, formerly known as Michael Wlaschitz, is a prominent figure in the field of corporate innovation and currently serves as the Manager and Head of Venture Design at Pioneers.io. His professional journey spans over six years at Pioneers, where he has been instrumental in co-innovating with corporate clients and leading large-scale projects focused on innovation strategy and venture building methodologies.35
Professional Background
Lunzer has a rich entrepreneurial background, having co-founded several transformative companies that leverage technology to optimize various sectors. Notably, he co-founded a vendor management system for the staffing industry, which was acquired in 2002. He also played a key role in the establishment of Warm Health, a company aimed at improving care management communications, which was later acquired by Altegra Health in 2012.1
Before his current role at Pioneers.io, Lunzer worked as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, where he identified opportunities to enhance medical policy processes. This led to the incubation of Itiliti Health within BCBSMN.1
Current Role at Pioneers.io
At Pioneers.io, Lunzer focuses on developing and implementing innovative strategies that help organizations navigate the complexities of corporate innovation. His work emphasizes not just providing digital tools but also offering comprehensive methodologies that guide clients from idea validation to market execution.25
Personal Life
In a personal update shared on LinkedIn in September 2023, Lunzer announced his marriage and the adoption of his new last name, marking a significant milestone in his life.4
Overall, Michael Lunzer's career reflects a strong commitment to driving innovation and creating impactful solutions within the corporate landscape.
Highlights
💡 "#Corporate #venture #building needs more inspirational success stories." That was the conclusion of an internal discussion at Pioneers.io around 9 months ago.
💪 Thus, in January 2024 Michael Obrist, Christina Senft, and I set out to shed light on DACH corporate entrepreneurs, their stories, successes, and learnings and prove that venture building, if done right, can generate a large positive impact for companies, clients and the planet.
🔎 To find examples, we did not have to scout very long. We just had to look at our yearly published DACH Corporate Venture Landscape (link in comments) and results from our projects such as the Green Hydrogen Unit from ANDRITZ.
💬 Based on a pre-selection of interesting cases, we had five deep-dive conversations with corporate venture founders from:
Mavie Next from UNIQA Insurance Group myflexbox and one2zero - green energy solutions from Salzburg AG, rready AG from Swisscom and Green Hydrogen from ANDRITZ
Each conversation provided quite different insights, but we also found several #patterns throughout the five #conversations:
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#Corporate #founders, like startup founders, need to be strongly passionate (and stubborn) about their ideas to overcome internal and external challenges.
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The #mothership #assets are vital especially in the beginning to gain trust in the market and build up a first customer base. Later on, a certain distance from the mothership is important to enable fast growth of corporate ventures.
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Corporate ventures usually require #people with a different skill- and #mindset than those employed today by the mother company. Thus, building its own brand and hiring externally is key to success for any corporate venture. ...
🌿 And concerning #impact? The 5 ventures have created over 300 jobs and achieved $150M+ in annual revenue. While not yet comparable to a large corporation, all 5 are entering the growth phase, with numbers expected to surge in the coming years.
👉 To learn more, find the summary of all stories here: https://lnkd.in/dMdVAfHj
🔭 We are not done yet! As a next step, we want to dive deeper into the growth journey of corporate ventures, so if you know any company we should talk to, tag them in the comments.
👏 A big thanks already for the great conversations and your time Erich Kruschitz Tobias Wiener Jonathan Grothaus Lukas Wieser Ralph Hartmeier Peter Eisenköck!
#corporateventuring #venturebuilding #corporateentrepreneurship #inspire #empower #create
Corporate Innovation teams often lack a 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘢𝘤𝘩 to 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻.
At Pioneers.io, we thus designed a step-by-step approach to take advantage of green technologies and develop successful climate ventures 👇
✅ 𝗦𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁
- Understand climate trends and future scenarios
- Define the company’s climate vision and ambition
- Identify innovation gaps
✅ 𝗦𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗜𝗻𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱𝘀 𝗠𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴
- Mapping sustainable innovation fields
- Identifying must-win battles and strategic action
- Roadmap to close climate gaps
✅ 𝗖𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗻𝘁
- Ideation of innovative ideas and applications of green technologies
- Use case selection, concretization, and validation
- Global Green Tech partner scouting and collaboration or climate venture building
Learn more on our climate website: https://lnkd.in/dKZ8iyNd
What's your take on climate innovation? What tools and methods do you use in your company to develop "green" offerings and business models? Do you follow a streamlined approach?
Eager to learn from you!
Thomas Höpler Daniel Hoffmann Iris Kattinger Magdalena Neidhart Julia Weber Ulrike Regner Jutta Grabenhofer Ruth Moss Thomas Glanzer Gregor Mihaljević Andreas Theil Fabio Wurm Alexander Hell Ashna Mudaffer Andreas Hosiner Eva-Maria Weidenthaler Jasmine Yvonne Schweitzer
#climateinnovation #sustainability #climatetech #innovation
