Roby Stancel
Partner for Europe and Innovation, VCI
Roby brings two decades of uniquely broad experience in innovation, and helped create hundreds of products, services, strategies, roadmaps and cultural transformations for clients such as Apple, BMW, Nestle, P&G, or Siemens. He manages the strategy for the world’s largest technology innovation consortium in mining with 150 partner companies. He created technology roadmaps for mining houses totaling a market cap of $ 300 bn.
He is a Partner at the global innovation and strategy consultancy VCI, offering a unique combination of bottom up design thinking innovation and top down business strategy. Roby headed product development at Nanosolar, with $0.5 bn the best funded startup of its time with 300 patents around roll-printed thin film solar cells.
As part of IDEO’s global executive team, he was part of the small group that developed Design Thinking. He was founder and CEO of IDEO Germany, and co-founded IDEO's transformation practice, teaching organizations how to innovate themselves.
Roby taught at Stanford for several years, as well as at Carnegie Mellon, TU Munich and others. Rocket scientist and product designer by training, he advises startups and VCs, and has numerous patents in various industries.
He lives in Silicon Valley since 25 years, commutes between Germany and South Africa and still loves to travel.