Entering the world of corporate innovation management

I joined Invacare in January 2018 as the first Innovation & Business Design Coach in a newly established innovation department.

The mandate was simple on paper and hard in practice: introduce user-centred innovation into a global medical device company that hadn’t systematically done product innovation in years.

I came from creative agencies and a start-up environment where everyone fits in one room. Invacare was the opposite: thousands of employees, strong legacy products, long-tenured teams, and deeply embedded ways of working.

There was no gradual onboarding. I jumped straight into:

• Building the Innovation Playbook
• Training employees in design thinking and business model innovation
• Coaching sprint teams across functions and countries

I learned to coach by coaching and shadowing experts. I studied the theory while applying it.

What made this possible was explicit top-level support: the innovation function was sponsored directly by senior leadership, which gave the work legitimacy from day one.

Over my almost 5 years at Invacare, I:

• Trained hundreds of employees from associates to C-level
• Coached dozens of 10-week innovation sprints, each reviewed by an Innovation Council of senior leaders
• Worked across R\&D, Marketing, Operations, Supply Chain, and Leadership

During and after COVID, when product innovation paused, my role shifted. I applied my coaching and facilitation skills to business-critical internal challenges, including:

• Supporting the restart of operations at a Central Distribution Centre
• Redesigning the Global Product Portfolio Strategy process
• Leading complex, cross-functional work fully online, introducing new visual tools and collaboration formats

Post-COVID, I was promoted to Head of Continuous Improvement (EMEA). While the title changed, the core of the work remained the same: helping teams tackle real business problems with structure, clarity, and momentum.

I reported directly to the Managing Director EMEA, who later became CEO of the global company, and worked closely with leadership across levels.

Invacare gave me a deep, practical understanding of:

• European healthcare systems and reimbursement models
• The reality that in healthcare, the user is often neither the buyer nor the decision-maker
• How innovation intersects with regulation, legacy portfolios, and operational constraints

I coached innovation sprint teams that uncovered white spots in the market, leading to new business models and later spin-offs.

Just as importantly, I saw where innovation stalls: not because of ideas, but because of incentives, language, and decision structures.