Tobias Gutmann Prof. Dr.
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Tobias Gutmann on stage
Professor of Technology and Innovation Management · Keynote Speaker · Advisor

Helping leaders drive innovation.

I study how companies create value with startups and new technologies, and then I help them do it. A decade of research, ten years in industry, and more than fifty companies I have worked with directly.

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650+
companies in the Venture Client Roundtable
25
peer-reviewed papers, four in FT50 journals
50+
companies worked with directly
10
years in industry before the chair
Featured in, honored by, affiliated with
Capital, Deutschlands Top 40 unter 40 The Economist Handelsblatt EBS Universität Berkeley Haas Copenhagen Business School Academy of Management Stifterverband · Hochschulperle
Four ways to work together

Research, in the room where it has to hold up.

Most advice on corporate innovation is opinion with a slide deck. Mine rests on three things: the studies I run, the ten years I spent inside a large industrial group, and the more than fifty companies I have worked with directly.

01

Keynotes and workshops

Talks built on studies, not on slides.

For conferences, leadership offsites and innovation events, in German or English, as a 30 to 60 minute keynote or a half-day workshop. Every talk draws on my own studies, my years in industry and the companies I work with, so your audience leaves with evidence and a next step, not slogans.
02

Advisory

From “we should do something with startups” to a unit that works.

Through Pexus Ventures, the venture clienting consultancy I co-founded with one of the architects of Open Bosch, I help companies build their venture client capability, run pilots and scoutings, and scale the unit across the organization. Where the work is long-term, I take a seat on the advisory board.
03

Executive education

Programs built around your strategy, not a catalog.

Tailor-made programs for leadership teams and high-potentials, delivered through EBS Business School at your site or on campus. Built around your strategy and your live challenges, taught through real cases, and designed to end in decisions rather than certificates.
04

Research and collaboration

Independent research on the questions your strategy depends on.

Funded research partnerships, teaching cases, white papers and benchmark studies, so far with global industrial and healthcare groups and the German Research Foundation. If nobody has answered the question yet, that is a research project.
Signature talks

Three talks I get asked for most.

Keynote 01

The Emerging Landscape of Corporate Venturing

Corporate venture capital, accelerators, venture client units, company builders: what the map looks like now, which models deliver, and where it is heading.

Keynote 02

The Why, What and How of Open Innovation

Why no company innovates alone anymore, what actually crosses the boundary in both directions, and how to organize for it.

Keynote 03

How to Partner with Startups to Create Value

From first contact to a scaled solution: the playbook behind the book, with the failure points most companies walk straight into.

My field: Technology and Innovation Management

How do companies accelerate innovation and new business creation with technology?

That is the question behind my research, my teaching and my advisory work. Startups, corporate venturing, ecosystems and AI are the ways in. Five angles I keep coming back to:

01

How do large companies actually build new businesses with startups?

Corporate venture capital, accelerators, venture client units: which structures create value, which ones only create activity, and why.

02

Why do most pilots never make it past the pilot?

What happens between a promising proof of concept and a scaled solution, and what the companies that get through do differently.

03

Venture clienting: buying from startups as a strategy.

The model that turns a company into the startup’s first customer instead of its investor. I wrote the book on it and help build the units that run it.

04

How do ecosystems carry innovation across company walls?

Open innovation, platforms and partnerships, and the quiet work of keeping knowledge moving in both directions.

05

What does AI really change inside an organization?

Beyond the demo: how established firms build the capabilities, labs and decisions that make a new technology stick.

People call me when they want to do something with startups, don’t yet know how, and need evidence rather than opinion.
Tobias Gutmann
Tobias Gutmann
About

I spent ten years building things inside a large industrial group before I started studying why so much of it goes wrong.

Today I hold the chair for Technology and Innovation Management at EBS Business School and co-direct the Institute for Technology, Innovation & Customer Centricity. My research asks how established companies build new businesses with startups, how corporate venture capital and venture client units actually work, how ecosystems carry innovation across company boundaries, and what emerging technology, AI above all, really changes inside an organization.

That work has produced twenty-five peer-reviewed papers, four of them in FT50 journals: the Journal of Business Venturing, the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Research Policy and Human Relations. I have been a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley with Henry Chesbrough and at Copenhagen Business School.

Before the chair came ten years in industry: engineering, business development and corporate venturing across Germany, the UK, the USA and Israel. I co-wrote Venture Clienting (Kogan Page, 2024), sit on the advisory board of Mahle New Ventures, and was named one of Germany’s “Top 40 under 40” by Capital. I live in Mainz with my wife and our two kids.

Research and teachingEBS Business SchoolChair for Technology and Innovation Management. Research, teaching and tailor-made executive education. AdvisoryPexus VenturesCo-founder and partner. The strategy consultancy for venture clienting: from the first pain point to a scaled unit.
Latest

Recent work.

Selected books, papers, talks and press. All 25 peer-reviewed papers are on Google Scholar.

Book2024
The book on venture clienting

Venture Clienting

How to Partner With Startups to Create Value

Kogan Page, LondonWith Sebastian Greiss and Christian Hüttenhein
Venture Clienting, book cover
Journal of Business Venturing Design2026 · Article

Translational Research in Management: Bridging the Gap Between Theory and Practice

With Benedikt Unger and David Teece
Strategic Entrepreneurship JournalFT502024 · Article

Heterogeneity in Organizational Search Behaviors: The Case of Corporate Venture Capital Units

Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, with Raj Krishnan Shankar and Magnus Schückes
Handelsblatt2024 · Commentary

Fernrohr in die Zukunft: So nutzen Unternehmen Start-up-Technologien schnell und flexibel

Handelsblatt
Tobias Gutmann
By invitation

The Venture Client Roundtable.

Innovation leaders from 650+ companies compare notes on what actually works with startups. Off the record, no vendors, no pitches. Organized by Pexus Ventures and hosted each time by a member company, with more than a dozen editions since 2022.

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Let’s talk.

A keynote, a venture client unit, an executive program or a research project: tell me the problem and we start with a 30-minute conversation.