Christian Kreutz is an author, speaker, strategic advisor and expert in open and social innovation. He has been advising for over 10 years organizations such as the World Bank, GIZ, UNDP, Nesta, Deutsche Welle and the Bertelsmann Foundation, providing them with the necessary insights and tools to build their corporate innovation capabilities. As the director of Crisscrossed GmbH, he has developed various projects such as WE THINQ – a social software for change makers to empower citizens, employees and stakeholders to asses challenges and find creative solutions through new forms of cooperation. He believes in the power of transparency and holds the potential of open and shared knowledge as the foundation for sustainable innovation. He writes about his journeys on social innovation and the use of information and communication technologies centered on people on his widely cited blog.

Dr Jan Schwaab is manager, advisor and trainer in international cooperation, knowledge management and organizational learning. In addition to his academic background in business administration and economics at the University of Mainz, he has worked for several years as a researcher and lecturer in ecological economics and international economic relations.

Since 2011, Dr Schwaab has been head of “Global Knowledge Sharing & Learning” at the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH. With his team, he is responsible for methodologies, training and consulting on network & community management, social media, alumni cooperation, e-learning and open innovation. From 2004 to 2011 he was “Chief Knowledge Officer” and head of corporate “Knowledge and Information Management”. In 2005, he was awarded the German prize “Knowledge Manager of the Year”. Prior to this, he worked for GIZ in the fields of transport policy advisory services, urban air quality management and renewable energy promotion.

Dr Jan Schwaab is Associate Fellow at the Potsdam Centre of Public Management, Member of the Advisory Board at Yale’s Governance, Environment and Markets Initiative, and hosts several partnerships with Universities under the umbrella initiative “Between Lecture Hall and Project”.

Balthas Seibold is a senior project manager for ‚Global Knowledge Sharing & Learning’ at GIZ, the ‘Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH’. He focuses on open knowledge cooperation to foster the freedom to learn and innovate in developing countries. Balthas has a special interest in the knowledge commons and social networks and their potential to build human capacities, link up people and foster open learning worldwide. Before 2012 he led capacity building programs with GIZ that promote the open source IT-sector in Asia and Africa such as ict@innovation. Balthas has also worked at InWent –Capacity Building International, UNESCO’s bureau of strategic planning, the GTZ and the UNDP.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to GIZ or any other affiliation.

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