andreas erbe
Focus
Andreas is the founder and managing director of launchlabs Switzerland and has accompanied/overseen a large number of change projects and created a variety of innovative premises. As a consultant and coach, Andreas has trained people worldwide in agile working methods, service design and design thinking.
Background
Prior to launching launchlabs, Andreas played a key role in setting up the internationally renowned Swisscom BrandGym - a creative work environment promoting customer-driven projects. Multiple years of experience in leadership and corporate development have allowed Andreas to develop a deep understanding and specialist knowledge in the areas of change management, design thinking and innovative work environments. In addition to an MBA from the University of St. Gallen (HSG) and a Master in Workspace Design from the University of Madrid and the Royal College of Arts in London, Andreas is a certified SCRUM Master, HBDI Coach and lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. His infectious joy in multidisciplinary work is spread equally to launchlab's employees as to partners and customers.
Personal
Andreas likes to travel to distant lands, but also likes local customs such as the Basel Fasnacht and enjoys exploring the mountains on skis with his daughter.
jessica schmid
Focus
Jessica works as an innovation consultant and collaborates with our clients to plan and implement projects at the sweet spot of organizational development, design thinking and workspace design. She also develops tailored training programs and supports project teams as a facilitator.
Background
Jessica has both a degree in Master of Science in Business Administration – Business Development & Promotion as well as a Bachelor of Arts in Design Management, International from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences. She has gained professional experience before and during her studies, working for a renowned producer of classic furniture and for creative agencies both in Switzerland and abroad. She subsequently set up her own consultancy advising national and international companies in the areas of design thinking, innovation development and marketing. She now applies this know-how for our clients like ABB, Accenture, Endress + Hauser, Roche and V-Zug in the projectlabs, learninglabs as well as for solutions in workenvironments.
Personal
Jessica speaks fluent German, English and French, loves sophisticated furniture design and is inspired by scuba diving in remote locations.
kareem asfahani
Focus
Kareem is part of the workspace design team. As a designer, he transforms concepts and ideas into workable workspace solutions and genuinely enjoys the process of creative -and sometimes radical- ideas blossoming into exceptional results.
Background
Kareem has a Bachelor’s degree in Interior Design and a Master’s degree in Strategic Design of Spaces from IE University in Madrid and the Royal College of Arts in London. As an enthusiast of using interdisciplinary design as a problem-solving tool, he has been shortlisted and awarded several international design competition awards. Professionally, he has continued to gain experience by working as a project manager in both interior and workspace design fields.
Personal
Kareem loves to immerse himself in faraway lands and cultures. But regardless of where he is, he always carries a fork around in case there’s cake.
cora hanquet
Focus
Cora specialised in the design of new work environments and works as a workspace designer for launchlabs. She develops creative and individual ideas to satisfy user needs in regard to modern work settings.
Background
Cora obtained her bachelor's degree of arts in interior architecture from Peter Behrens School of Architecture and completed a master program in design with the focus on ‘integrative design’ from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. In between her studies she gained professional experience as an interior architect for an office for architecture and design working on exhibition designs. As part of her master's degree Cora learnt about Design Thinking and started focusing on the development of new concepts for work environments.
Personal
Be it an old wardrobe found on the side of the streets or a radically designed building from the 70s – Cora sees the potential in many things and highlights history and uniqueness in the individual object through her designs. She loves spending time in the mountains, no matter if in the snow, on her laptop or just to seek new inspiration.
andrea berset
Focus
Andrea has been working independently with her company “Kimia - visual guiding” and is part of launchlabs’ freelancer network. She supports teams in integrating visualisation into their daily (working) lives and accompanies people in change processes.
Background
Andrea’s career lead her from being a post office employee to becoming a marketing specialist and training manager towards customer experience management. People with whom she worked remained the invariable factor. Today she supports individuals and teams through tailored coaching and facilitation in order to help them define and implement new ways of collaboration. She backs her neutral, structured and holistic way of working with different visualisation methods, which she contributes on client projects to faster achieve better results.
Personal
Andrea recharges her batteries spending time with her husband and daughters: No matter if on a camping site in Europe, with her bike, walking or skiing in the forests, mountains and rivers or simply playing beach volleyball in the sand.
raphael furrer
Focus
Raphael is working for launchlabs as a freelancer. As a federally certified trainer he designs and moderates training modules on Design Thinking and the systematic design of customer experience.
Background
Raphael is a trained media technologist and has earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a focus on marketing and communication from the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences in 2009. After a 1.5-year trainee program at Swiss Post, he gained several years of operational and conceptual experience in sales and marketing for financial services. In 2015, he found his passion for customer centricity and design thinking and then completed a CAS in Innovation, Service Design & Customer Experience Management at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. As a customer experience manager for a financial institute he is responsible for both the cultural embedding of customer orientation and, as a trainer and coach in workshops as well as individual and group coaching, for conveying knowledge and methodologies about customer-centric ways of working. In addition, he lectures in a Bernese education institute on the subject of education marketing, prototyping and pitching.
Personal
Raphael is a realistic and yet creative thinker with many ideas and a sense for his counterpart. In his free time, he loves walking or mountain biking the great outdoors, traveling to Asia and South America and sharing and exchanging views on all the interesting things in life.
natalie breitschmid
Focus
Natalie is a passionate and creative leader in the area of Experience Design. Paired with her sound project management skills she explores as a freelancer for launchlabs the boundaries outside of the comfort zone.
Background
After her education in marketing and human resource management Natalie started to become interested in agile work methods and completed her further education as a workshop moderator at the FlowTeam Academy. She added onto her many years of practical experience in project management (which she particularly made use of while working for the market leader in telecommunications “Swisscom”) by acquiring a master’s degree from the University of Applied Sciences in Zurich (HWZ). Through co-founding a start-up for systemic capability development and having worked in several different projects and line management functions Natalie eventually go to her pet topic human-centred design. She lectures at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and shares her knowledge in design thinking, customer experience design and prototyping.
Personal
Natalie loves foreign cultures and prefers the “learning zone”. She gets inspired by design and art and uses her spare time to eat healthily, do some yoga and spend time with her family and the three kids.
lars diener-kimmich
Focus
Lars is a passionate coach for innovation (Design Thinking, Running Lean) and has a “black belt” in Lean Leadership. As a freelancer for launchlabs he accompanies people and their firms in developing innovation competency.
Background
Lars pioneered as an innovation specialist and head of innovation programs at Swisscom, ABB, Nokia and a startup. At Swisscom he developed and lead the design thinking program for the B2B division. Subsequently, Lars was responsible for the lean/continuous improvement program across the group and reported directly to the CEO. As part of his self-employment with the company LUDENSFABER he co-founded a cleantech startup in Hong Kong. He publishes practical knowledge in his blog, fosters the development of “INNOROOKIE – Innovation training for apprentices” in its 4th year and teaches “lead leadership” as a guest lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Berne. He also is co-initiator of the Moonshine Labs in Berne. Since September 2017 he is head of the Bernese Innovation agency “be-advanced” to support Berne’s entrepreneurs with targeted impulses on innovation – closely linked to the economy, research and politics.
Personal
Lars studied at ETH Zurich, speaks 4.2 languages and has lived and worked already in Switzerland, the United States, Mexico and Finland. He now lives with his family (3 teenagers) in Belp. When it’s windy, one finds him on the water.
julia kuhn
Focus
Julia Kuhn is an Industrial Designer and Human-Centred Design expert. She works as an innovation curator at "Design & Innovation". As a freelancer for Launchlabs she supports teams and individuals in generating ideas and taking in a customer perspective to find innovative solutions. She is a specialist in Design Thinking, User-Centred Design, Co-Creation and systematic idea generation processes.
Background
Julia turns 39 soon and lives in Biel, Switzerland. She studied Industrial Design at the University of Duisburg in Essen and the Ravensbourne College in London. At BASF she worked as a design consultant for engineers and was involved in over 250 idea projects as an idea producer at BrainStore. For Swisscom she worked as a Human-Centred Design consultant in the private customer division. Prior to this she was employed as a designer for several upcycling products. Today Julia works as a self-employed innovation curator.
Personal
Julia loves the bilingual city of Biel, bicycles and backpacks. She sews and helps customers to produce ideas at the touch of a button. Years ago she happened to have a bag factory in her living room. Before that she considered becoming a detective or writer.
matthias gölitz
Focus
Matthias Gölitz is a facilitator at launchlabs and assists companies in innovation processes. He supports teams in the development of human-centered design solutions using agile methods.
Background
Matthias is an Industrial Designer by training and has developed numerous products for companies in Germany and abroad. As an accredited efficiency consultant at DEMEA, he accompanies manufacturing SMEs through the topic of process optimization. Together with design students from the University of Wuppertal and the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences, he has worked for the previous ten years on third-party financing projects within industry.
Personal
Matthias is an avid sailor and takes every opportunity to leave solid ground.
berit blake
Focus
As a business development consultant, Berit’s focus in on advancing both internal and external launchlabs projects.
Background
Berit has a background in science management with a focus on quality management. She was a contributor to a project awarded the "Queen's Awards for Sustainable Development" in the Marketing and Business Development Department of an English engineering firm and spent a research stay at the University of Toronto as part of her master's thesis.
Personal
Her Danish name reveals her northern roots. She enjoys cycling around Berlin or paddle boarding in the surrounding waterways.
harald gögl
Focus
Harry is part of the management team at launchlabs Berlin. As an innovation consultant he has several years of experience and is principally responsible for the Learninglab formats. Working closely with customers, he develops strategies for establishing innovative work cultures.
Background
Working in conjunction with Simon Blake, Harry helped develop the HPI School of Design Thinking program. He started out as a knowledge manager with a focus on the documentation of projects. In recent years, Harry has been a track manager and lead on the HPI student program. Following this he has developed an interest in how design thinking can be used in established companies.
Personal
As a native Austrian, he misses the mountains and will happily cycle around the lakes of Brandenburg. We can’t mention his other hobbies here!
kristine biegman
Focus
Dutch Design in the house! Kristine advises, designs and conducts workshops and trainings in agile, human-cantered methods with a lot of passion (and a charming accent). She aims to make the (working) world a bit more beautiful and innovative. She is passionate about creating a space and a drive for products, services and processes that truly have value.
Background
After studying communication and business administration in Nijmegen, Kristine worked for several years as a Change Management consultant during which she developed an in-depth understanding of the variety of challenges the different companies faced. She went on to further her development as a blended learning/project manager, always seeking to help people develop according to their strengths and work environment. After studying design thinking at the Design Thinkers Academy in Amsterdam she couldn’t stop! Her love for innovation and for the city of Berlin brought her to launchlabs.
Personal
Kristine has truly wide interests in various things and people. She likes to sing, improvise in theatre, loves nature and seeks to explore the world on long-distance journeys whenever she can.
josephine belke
Focus
Josephine supports the project teams through thick and thin. She advises companies on the development of innovative processes that allow them to experience cultural changes through tailor-made training programs.
Background
As a filmmaker, she has truly experienced agility in practice and worked with multidisciplinary teams on international films. She acquired her professional knowledge at the School of Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam and at the DT Academy in Amsterdam. She is an expert on qualitative social research and storytelling following her studies of social sciences at the University of Hamburg.
Personal
Josephine grew up in Holland and likes fries for breakfast and tulips on her window sill.
maria mulaj
Focus
Maria manages anything and everything with figures for launchlabs, and is the primary contact person.
Background
After initially training in the hotel industry in Germany she then furthered her training in the United Kingdom with a variety of hotels and positions, most recently as a wedding planner for an international hotel in London. She now organizes the team at launchlabs.
Personal
"Homemade" is her motto, whether eating or knitting and everything in between!
sarah georg
Focus
Sarah proactively supports launchlabs office management and ensures that everyone at the Innovations loft in Berlin has what they need.
Background
In addition to her training in hotel management, Sarah varied experience includes time spent in the social work field, in particular working "On An Adventure Playground” in the UK. For the moment she is happy contributing her varied experience to the corporate world.
Personal
Sarah loves to discover Berlin by bike and to leave her creativity at the kitchen door.
simon blake
Focus
As the founder and managing director of the launchlabs Berlin, Simon has designed and implemented a wide variety of method trainings, innovation projects and change processes.
Background
From 2007 to 2010, Simon played a major role in building the School of Design Thinking at the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) in Potsdam and from 2009 to 2012 was a manager of the design Thinking Executive Education Program. Prior to this, Simon developed crossmedia formats at the Institute of Electronic Business e.V. His background is in applied media science and social and economic communication at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
Personal
In addition to launchlabs, Simon supports other start-ups as mentor and angel investor. His daily rhythm is enhanced by playing drums in his Kreuzberg band.
simon springmann
Focus
Simon joined the management team at launchlabs in September 2016. He brings many years of experience spanning different industries and cultures as a strategy and innovation consultant. Together with customers he focuses on developing strategies through the implementation of a sustainable innovation culture. As a systemic coach, he specializes in the fields of training, leadership development and transformation.
Background
Simon has a background in strategic business consulting with a focus on innovative mobility. Over the past few years, Simon has trained and coached numerous managers from a wide range of companies in the areas of design, leadership, and innovative work culture. As a lecturer at the Leibniz University, Hannover, he has held seminars on new ways of working and meaningful working since 2012. He received his doctorate from Humboldt-University, Berlin with an interdisciplinary work on "power and organization". Simon is the founder of Pingplus, a network of systemic coaches.
Personal
Simon loves Berlin, especially in the summer. Dancing in the open air. Thinking out loud.