“Innovation Management offers methods and approaches to motivate employees and equip them to innovate”

Sabrina, Michael, please tell us a little bit about yourselves. What was your career path and what do you appreciate about your work at MD ELEKTRONIK?

Sabrina:

My name is Sabrina. I’m happily married – soon to be a proud mother of three – and I have a doctorate in IT business engineering. Over the last 15 years I have held various positions in the field of innovation. I have been working in Innovation Management at MD in the Product Management – Markets – R&D department since 2019. I particularly appreciate the collaboration with innovators from different areas and the freedom to try out new approaches.

Michael:

Hello, I’m Michael. I’m married with two children and I recently joined MD and Sabrina’s team in January 2024. My background consists of a varied mixture of tech startup management, Amazon and mid-tier innovation management. At MD, I’m surrounded by a variety of technical specialists which I greatly value.

What does Innovation Management mean in general and what role does it play in particular for the automotive supplier industry?

Sabrina:

Innovation Management has many facets and takes various forms depending on the company. At MD for example, the aim of Innovation Management is to promote corporate intrapreneurship in the technical departments. It offers formats, methods and procedures to support innovators in the early stages of complex problem solving, in the development of new ideas and in the implementation of innovation projects.   

Increasing customer demands, technological progress, new players on the market, shorter development cycles and the issue of sustainability place high demands on the innovative capacity of the automotive industry – and both manufacturers and suppliers are facing many challenges. Products need to be more powerful, cheaper and more sustainable. Processes need to be fast, slick and preferably digital, and technologies must of course be up-to-date. The aim of Innovation Management is to address these challenges by enabling employees to drive innovation forward in a systematic, customer-oriented manner.

Michael:

Sabrina has already answered the question but I would like to emphasize once again the significant impact that Innovation Management can also have on a company’s culture. The automotive industry in particular is currently having to reinvent itself and is questioning many established structures. And this is where we come into play: we work on enabling all employees to tackle these issues in the best possible way so that we always stay one step ahead of the rest.

What advantages does running an Innovation Management department have for the company?      

Sabrina:

If innovation is to be understood both as the result itself and as the means to achieve the result, Innovation Management has the potential to rethink and redesign the organization at different levels. A central role is played here by each and every colleague without whom innovation would not be possible. Innovation Management offers methods and approaches to motivate employees and equip them to innovate. In addition, Innovation Management always keeps future-oriented products, processes and technologies in sight, and supports the organization in becoming fit for the future.

Michael:

Many prominent examples show that, at some point, without innovation or with only incremental innovation*, a company cannot get any further. Or do you still see people using smartphones with physical buttons or analog cameras today? So, innovation is essential to long-term success, however, there is no guarantee that ideas are or will become successful in a company. In Innovation Management, we try to eliminate this uncertainty as far as possible by strengthening focus and individual responsibility with the methods mentioned. In this way, an effective Innovation Management department contributes substantially to strengthening competitiveness in the long term.  

Can you give us some concrete examples of the work of Innovation Management at MD?

Sabrina:

Since 2019, Innovation Management has developed and piloted various innovation formats such as the Innovation Accelerator or the Innovation Incubator. The aim of all formats is to give employees the freedom to innovate, and to support them methodically and systematically when working on the challenges of the future. Our formats enable us to develop a motivating innovation mindset within a very short space of time. In the process, it’s important for us to bring very different types of people together in teams who work collaboratively on ideas.  

For example, in 2022, with the Innovation Incubator, we developed a new, customer-focused and “lean” innovation format in order to support the exploration of very promising concepts and ideas. We successfully piloted this format in the area of optical data transmission with a highly motivated team of innovators. Thanks to the tried and tested Business Design approach, we were able to create a secure and agile framework for innovation. 

Michael:

In the brief amount of time that I have been working at MD, I have been directly involved in several projects in different areas. There is a lot of cross-departmental interest which has also been reflected in the innovation team’s success in recent years. As someone who is enthusiastic about technology, the highly automated production machines which the company developed itself were a new and exciting discovery for me. I was really impressed by them.

Thank you very much for this very interesting interview!

 * Incremental innovation refers to gradual improvements to, or adaptations of, existing products, services or processes in order to increase efficiency, reduce costs or improve customer satisfaction without introducing radically new market or technology concepts in the process.