Guest lecture by Mr. Julian Fieres 

As part of the "Innovation Management" lecture in the BSc program, we welcomed Mr. Julian Fieres (Senior Manager E-Mobility; Head of Business Development / Strategy / M&A – Division E-Mobility, ZF Friedrichshafen AG) who held the lecture titled “100 years and rolling – How ZF is reinventing itself with Digitalization & Innovation”. 

After giving a short overview of the company’s long-standing history in the automotive industry, Mr. Fieres outlined four major trends that are shaping the future of mobility: connectivity, autonomous driving, sharing solutions, and electrification.  

In particular, Mr. Fieres explained how digital disruption offers both opportunities (e.g., as-a-service business models) and poses challenges (e.g., driving corporate change) at the same time. 

By providing various practical examples, Mr. Fieres emphasized the importance of a proactive management of this disruptive change via agile methods, open innovation projects and the promotion of entrepreneurial thinking within the organization. As a part of its digital strategy, ZF already successfully leverages its cloud-based IoT platform to offer its customers a wide range of innovative and intelligent solutions including predictive maintenance and blockchain-based payment services.  

We would like to thank Mr. Julian Fieres for his impressive presentation and look forward to a reunion at WHU.