Managing Partner

Andreas Neef

Andreas Neef is managing partner of Z_punkt. As one of the pioneers in the field of strategic future consulting, he has 25 years of experience in designing and managing sophisticated foresight projects for large corporations and public institutions. As a process designer and moderator, he creates situations of openness to the future, clarity and creativity even in complex stakeholder constellations. His passion is the development of strategic objectives for the orientation of long-term transformation processes.  In addition, Andreas advises management on building foresight competencies and on future-oriented organizational development.

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Managing Partner

Holger Glockner

Holger Glockner is managing partner of Z_punkt. He is passionate about a sustainable, equitable and people-centered transformation of the economy and society. 
For Holger, the future is a multidimensional design space. For two decades, decision-makers from companies, associations and politics have valued him as a content-rich initiator, designer and moderator of strategic dialogues on the future. In his projects, he leads the stakeholders and organizations involved to networked, future-open thinking, initiates processes of realignment and creates clarity on the relevant future issues. He is the author of numerous articles on content-related and methodological future topics and lectures on strategic challenges and new approaches to solutions for organizations, business and society. In addition, he was involved as a lecturer in the faculty of art and design at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and in the master's program in futurology at the Free University of Berlin in the training of the next generation of foresight experts.

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Scientific Director

Dr. Karlheinz Steinmüller

As Scientific Director, Dr Karlheinz Steinmüller is responsible for the methodological excellence and scientific basis of Z_punkt’s work. Karlheinz Steinmüller is a specialist in methodology and a generalist for questions about the future. He has a degree in Physics and a doctorate in philosophy. As an expert in history and the fundamentals of future studies, he teaches on the Master’s course in Future Studies at the Free University of Berlin. Together with his wife Angela, Karlheinz Steinmüller has written several textbooks and science fiction novels.

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Foresight Director

Kai Jannek

Kai Jannek has more than fifteen years of experience as a future consultant. He designs and manages foresight processes for clients from various industries and coaches decision-makers on content-related and process-related future issues. From trend architectures to scenario-based target images, from transformative growth areas to KPI-based monitoring systems, he has mastered the entire range of approaches to strategic foresight. He is passionate about how "the new" enters the world and what life looks like in the "Biological Age". Kai is an experienced speaker and gives talks on the future at various professional conferences and events. Kai studied economics with a focus on strategic marketing and development economics at the University of Witten/Herdecke and Stellenbosch University. For more than ten years he also wrote the science fiction column in the philosophical business magazine agora42.

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Foresight Director

Dr. Christian Grünwald

Christian Grünwald is head of the Public Foresight department at Z_punkt. His work focuses on scenario and narrative development in the public sector as well as the customer-centric further development of foresight methods. In this context, Christian is particularly concerned with the complex interactions of technological, social and political change as well as the transformation of organizations, economy and society. He is a guest author in various media and magazines, a keynote speaker at future conferences and a trainer for foresight methods. Christian studied Political Science, Comparative Religious Studies and Modern History at the LMU Munich and at the IEP Aix-en-Provence and received his PhD from the University of Vienna. Before joining Z_punkt, he worked for several years in a large German communications agency. In addition to his work for Z_punkt, Christian is also a lecturer and guest lecturer for futurology at various universities, including Leuphana University Lüneburg and Università Ca'Foscari in Venice.

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Foresight Director

Sivert von Saldern

Sivert von Saldern is Foresight Director at Z_punkt. He oversees innovation and strategy projects for large and medium-sized companies as well as public clients from both domestic and international backgrounds. Together with them, he develops future scenarios, defines strategic visions, and creates roadmaps. Above all, he identifies new growth areas and lays the foundation for future product and service concepts with great creativity. Additionally, Sivert is particularly distinguished by his passion and expertise in technology and innovation management, a focus that emerged during his studies in Business Administration at RWTH Aachen University. His knowledge is incorporated also into regular guest articles for magazines, industry platforms, and podcasts. Sivert's other areas of expertise include the future of mobility and the development of "future personas." With a holistic perspective, he anticipates the needs of tomorrow's consumers and outlines their individual life situations and contextual requirements.

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Foresight Manager

Thomas Hufnagl

Thomas Hufnagl deals, in particular, with the question of what our clients’ new, disruptive business models will look like in promising growth areas. In doing so, he draws on more than ten years of professional experience. Before joining Z_punkt, he helped develop an electric vehicle from scratch and held the roles of CEO and CTO in a start-up for six years. For a few years now, his work has focused on autonomous driving and the city–energy ecosystem. His whole approach looks at links between disruptive technologies through to behavioural research.

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Foresight Manager

Daniel Bonin

The economist Daniel Bonin is involved in trend and scenario projects for global companies, especially those operating in the energy and automotive sectors, and also works in the field of public foresight. Daniel Bonin spends his time analysing social and technological upheavals and their implications for our clients. Prior to joining Z_punkt, he completed a Master’s degree in economics at the University of Cologne, which involved spending a semester in Hungary focusing on business futures studies.

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Foresight Manager/ Innovation Coach

Birgit Schaldecker

More than 25 years of experience in product development, product management, strategic marketing and innovation management helped Birgit Schaldecker to build her broad-based methodical expertise for strategic innovation processes.

She is an expert in creative processes that really work and produce the results desired. She is particularly interested in consulting and implementing sustainable innovation cultures, healthy team processes and integrating lateral thinkers.

Building a base of thorough trend research and in-depth market analysis, the engineer focusses always on the customers needs and sets her priorities in product and strategy concept development and the development of valid business models and diverse business cases.

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Foresight Consultant

Julian Menninger

Julian Menninger is active in scenario and trend projects for our clients from the political, educational and health sectors as well as globally active companies. As an expert in future narratives and strategic storytelling, he also supports our clients in making the implications of social, political, and technological developments tangible and thereby extending or renewing perspectives.
Before joining Z_punkt, he was a research assistant at the University of Freiburg. He is co-editor of anthologies on the subject of narratology and has taught on the medial representation of scenarios.
 

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Foresight Consultant

Clarissa Schmitt

Clarissa Schmitt is a Foresight Consultant at Z_punkt. She is particularly interested in sustainable, social change and the societal impact of innovations. She is passionate about creative and interactive formats to open up new perspectives on futures and make them tangible and usable in foresight processes. In doing so, she draws on her experience at the intersection of design, innovation, philosophy and entrepreneurship gained during her Master's degree in Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology.

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Foresight Consultant

Pallavi Rao

Pallavi Rao works at Z_punkt as a Foresight Consultant especially on urban and natural habitat issues. As a consultant, Pallavi works on projects for international companies and public organizations. She contributes to research, content and conceptual design, planning and implementation of foresight processes. In particular, she is involved in the development of insights that guide organizations' focus on regenerative business models, sustainable development, and circular economy. These methods and processes are used to help organizations plan strategically and sustainably for their long-term future.
 
She is an urban developer with a background in design and development economics. She is interested in the sustainable and social impacts of urbanization processes. During her interdisciplinary master studies at the Technical University of Darmstadt and the University di Roma Tor Vergata, she worked on projects related to nature-based urban solutions and participatory planning processes.

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Foresight Consultant

Lena Irmler

Lena Irmler works at Z_punkt as a Foresight Consultant with focus on innovation and technology management. Her passion lies in preparing companies for the future with the help of technology and innovation analyses.

Within her master studies in innovation management, she gained in particular insights and competencies for future technologies and their input into innovation and business strategies.

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Foresight Manager

Max Irmer

As a Foresight Analyst, Max Irmer works on projects in the field of strategic and public foresight. He mainly focuses on investigating cross-disciplinary trends and their effects on the future strategic directions of our clients. Max Irmer read cultural studies at the Leuphana University in Lüneburg before going on to study urbanism at the Bauhaus University in Weimar. When not working for Z_punkt, he spends his time as a lecturer, imparting his knowledge about cities of the future to students at various universities.

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Foresight Design Associate

Julia Ochsenhirt

Julia Ochsenhirt is Z_punkt's artistic soul. She visualises scenarios, visions of the future and innovation ideas and has played a decisive role in shaping the company's corporate design. Her work has won numerous awards in creative competitions.  The communication designer trained at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen and was Head of Design at the renowned creative agency Strichpunkt in Stuttgart and Berlin for many years. She works as a freelance art director and illustrator for clients from Europe and Asia.

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Accounting and Administration Manager

Anne Driever

Anne Driever is Accounting and Administration Manager at Z_punkt. As a trained Assistant for International Office Management with an additional qualification in languages, she has comprehensive business knowledge, foreign language skills and methodological competencies. Anne is the contact person for all administrative issues as well as questions regarding finance. 

She has many years of experience in sales and in the hotel industry which makes her an expert in managing a diverse environment with varied subject matter.

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