Building a culture of innovation | MHP – a new.New Festival Partner

MHP, a subsidiary of Porsche, is a leading consulting company shaping the future of mobility and manufacturing. With central topics such as “Digitalization” and “Digital Transformation”, MHP recently became a partner of this year’s new.New Festival, which revolves around the theme of “Intelligence X.0”. Bringing in a whole host of experts in the fields of new mobility concepts, smart city, AR/VR, AI/analytics, blockchain and security, MHP is looking forward to connecting with the lively tech enthusiasts joining the new.New Festival. We sat down with Dr. Jan Wehinger and Marcus Willand, Associated Partners at MHP to discuss about the opportunities and challenges in the Digital Age, what they are doing to encourage innovation within the company and their plans for this year’s new.New Festival. 

Iulia: What are your main motivations for entering into a collaboration with CODE_n and co-creating the new.New Festival 2018?

MHP: CODE_n and MHP have a lot in common, so it was perfectly clear to us that we can work hand in hand to encourage and build a culture of innovation. Being part of the new.New Festival and working with a global cross-industry innovation hub such as CODE_n is an amazing opportunity to get in touch with individuals who are on the same wavelength as us – people who are passionate about new technology and share an affinity for digital change. The new.New Festival is a unique chance to interact and exchange views and ideas with digital talents, thought-leaders, and global tech influencers. We invite everyone who’s interested in digital transformation to join the MHP network, take part in the exciting tech talks, and come to the workshops we’ll be running at the new.New Festival and meet our MHP experts to jointly envision the future of mobility and manufacturing.

Iulia: At this year’s new.New Festival, we’ll be focusing on Intelligence X.0 – AI for industry and humans and, more specifically, the following categories: Machine Intelligence, Beyond Reality, and Cryptographic Trust. How does your company relate to these tech fields and the underlying pioneering technologies?

Marcus Willand, Associated Partner at MHP

MHP: This year’s festival motto reflects the activities that lie at the heart of MHP’s work. The topic of Intelligence X.0 is at the center of our research and we try to make artificial intelligence accessible through products and services. MHP achieves this by offering in-depth knowledge on a theoretical level as well as using practical methods to research the potential of new technologies through MVPs, design thinking, rapid prototyping, and a lot more.  Among others, MHP creates solutions based on artificial intelligence, mostly for use in urban public transportation, global supply chains, and in-house logistics.We strongly believe that the technological change currently happening through digitalization will help businesses to be more successful and make people’s lives better. Consequently, we interpret digitalization as a strong tool to achieve those goals but do not see it as an end in itself. Digitalization creates networks of businesses as well as of individuals. Combined, they create platforms which attract a whole ecosystem of service providers to offer novel cross-industry solutions. In those ecosystems of emerging  topics like mobility, smart city and manufacturing, MHP sees itself as a central player who orchestrates the creation of innovative services with corporates, startups and individuals. MHP ensures that technologies such as AI, Blockchain, VR and AR come to life and evolve into networks with the potential to expand in the long term. We create solutions by pulling together and coordinating tech modules with equal relevance to different or new fields of application. By the way, if you’re interested in finding out more, maybe drop by and pose a question at one of our panel discussions or come to a tour of the MHPLab.

Iulia: How would you describe your contribution to the new.New Festival? In what areas do you see your company sharing knowledge and expertise?

MHP: The new.New Festival is perfect for bringing all the right players around a big table – because disruption isn’t just about having the right know-how. We apply our expertise to the realms of new mobility concepts, smart cities and the manufacturing ecosystem with the aim of moving beyond the boundaries of specific sectors of industry. The new.New Festival is an opportunity for us to rub shoulders with clients and customers and introduce them to a new world of consulting, an approach to consulting that overlaps with different ecosystems.

Iulia: How do you boost innovation?

MHP: We promote innovation in a number of ways. First of all, we attract talented, out-of-the-box thinkers, secondly we engage with an ecosystem of startups around our MHP Labs and different locations like Berlin, Tel Aviv or Ludwigsburg. Thirdly, we foster an innovation culture by organizing ourselves in an agile and not hierarchical manner. Last but not least, we have an incubator to give our experts the right environment to help them transfer their innovative thinking in concrete new products and services. We gain early client and user buy-in right from the very beginning. Our approach to co-creation and interdisciplinary teams forms a cornerstone for tackling the different challenges posed by technology. We offer a number of different platforms for stakeholders from different fields of expertise to work and learn together, and identify innovative solutions for intersecting problems.

Iulia: Have you already worked with startups or entrepreneurs? If so, how? And do you have a success story to share with us?

Dr. Jan Wehinger, Associated Partner at MHP

MHP: Yes, MHP has an in-depth understanding of and experience with startups and entrepreneurs. Corporates, established companies and medium-sized enterprises have excellent practices for manufacturing products as well as marketing them. When it comes to fostering an environment of creativity and innovation, these enterprises often fall short. Startups are the polar opposite. Their teams are creative and consist of out-of-the-box thinkers to generate innovative solutions and develop new business models. The biggest challenge in their case is to successfully scale their business. For this reason, MHP established the MHPLab which serves as a platform in order to bring different topics as well as different people together. The purpose is to work together in mixed teams consisting of different industries, different companies and, thus, different experts. Doing so, we generate new ideas and test them with real users as well as with real customers to build, measure and learn. This process covers all aspects from ideation to first hypothesis testing and to a later-on full implementation into target organizations.

Many of the interesting things that are happening are shared at monthly meetups called FIRST TUESDAY – open source of course. FIRST TUESDAY is a hub that allows MHP to bring together a variety of creative thinkers and ingenious doers. It’s where Berlin’s startup scene shares knowledge and inspires others to go one step further.

Iulia: Why are you interested in working with startups?

MHP: We always listen out for new ideas and inspiration. Connecting with the right people is often the best way to do this, because taking on challenges on your own just doesn’t make sense if you can achieve more in a team with the right skills. We want to share what we live for at MHP with the outside world, and there’s a simple reason for this: We also want them to be more successful. This is why we consider ourselves the ideal catalyst for startups and their innovations.

Iulia: We’re looking forward to catching up with you in October, at the new.New Festival 2018 and experience the latest innovations at MHP!