Systematic Innovation in a 150-Year-Old Company

I led the development and implementation of group-wide innovation management systems at Gerresheimer, building frameworks for innovation strategy, processes, and culture change across the organisation. My work focused on enabling cross-divisional collaboration, providing strategic guidance to innovation projects, and establishing measurement systems to ensure alignment with business objectives.

Expanded beyond product innovation to serve Key Account Management, Connected Packaging, Medical & Patient Affairs, and IP departments. Leaders started calling me when they only had rough ideas, which meant we'd built trust.

Organised Gerresheimer's first global hackathon. 90 idea submissions, 30 participants from 15 locations, 5 follow-up projects funded.

More importantly: teams discovered they were solving the same problems in parallel. Some participants later joined the global talent program.

Took the existing innovation funnel and gave it clear time boundaries (max 6 months, then re-evaluate).

Designed and facilitated 10+ problem-exploration sessions that turned into funded projects.

What I learned at Gerresheimer is that innovation doesn’t fail because people resist change.

It fails because the organisation is doing exactly what it was designed to do:

• protect quality,
• predictability,
• and control.

In a regulated environment, that’s not a flaw. It’s survival.

The real work was never coming up with ideas.

It was creating just enough safety for unfinished thinking to exist without getting killed by process, politics, or good intentions.

Most days, my job looked less like “innovation” and more like translation, containment, and quiet negotiation.

That’s where progress actually happened.

Making progress visible while it is still in motion.

Earlier in my career, I assumed that strong work would naturally travel to the right conversations. In complex organisations, that’s rarely automatic.

This role sharpened my understanding of how important it is to give work context as it unfolds. Not because the work isn’t strong, but because attention is finite and decisions compete.

If I were doing this again, I would invest more consistently in narrating progress in real time. Not to promote myself, but to help the work stay understood, supported, and carried forward.

Visibility isn’t ego.

It’s how work stays connected to decisions.