Manu Vollens

numo

30-day microSaaS sprint

ImpactGenie

Co-Founder

Kill the Dinosaur

Helping mission-driven founders in launching & growing new business opportunities.

Founder

Airborn

We’re on a mission to support and fund impact driven startup founders.
Rome wasn’t built in a day… expected to launch soon

Co-Founder & Venture Partner

ClimateCamp - hiring!

Decarbonising the food industry and its supply chains by making it easier for companies & their suppliers to exchange carbon data.

Member of The Board of Advisors

Dripl

Venture Coach

Aquafin

New Business Developer - Riothermie

switchrs

Switchrs is a multidisciplinary innovation collective that focuses on social-circular economy.

At switchrs we believe in sustainability as a positive story. That's why our focus is on designing positive impact. We make, show, facilitate and talk about things that regenerate our planet, society and economy.

bundl

Long term collaboration as a Strategy Designer for the Bundl team and its network of clients.

(*) via Kill the Dinosaur

Sr. Corporate Venture Builder (*)

Thea Swing

Thea swing is a design product that gives children with a disability the chance to experience swinging in a safe way, mountable on any classic swing! To swing in a free, safe and comfortable way; that's what the Thea swing stands for.

www.theaswing.com

Co-founder

Launching Impactful Micro-Businesses 🌱🌎 I Venture Building👷 I Circular Economy ♻️ I AI for Good 🤖 I Angel Investing 💸

I’m not a productivity guru.
I’ve launched 10+ ventures, started 100+ side projects, and abandoned at least as many.

Like many creative generalists, I live between sticky notes, Notion docs, WhatsApp reminders, and new startup ideas that always feel more exciting than the last.

So I’m doing what I do best: building for the mess I live in.

For the next 30 days, I’m building a micro-SaaS focused on one core challenge:
Helping creative generalists (like me) stay focused without feeling boxed in.

I’ll be building and sharing in public.

Follow me for transparent updates, lessons learned, and real progress from someone who’s deep in the chaos (and finally doing something about it).

Board of Innovation

We are a global collective of strategists, designers, and entrepreneurs, joining forces with the world's most ambitious businesses.

Together, we imagine tomorrow's products, services & businesses — and create them today.

Cutting through the noise and bringing new perspectives.
Backing up big ideas with deep research.
Transforming opportunities into prototypes.
Leading with empathy and delivering on impact.

We’re many voices with a single vision: To make what life needs next.

Partner I Director

Giving inspiring lectures and keynotes about: 
- Making corporates innovate like startups (lean startup for enterprises)
- Disrupting business models (business model innovation)
- Intrapreneurship in big organizations

Talks include: Coparmex Advisory Board and 'Day of the Entrepreneur' (Guadelajara, Mexico), Lund University (Lund, Sweden), Vlerick Business School (Belgium), GDF Suez Shareholders Business School (Belgium)

International Speaker

Guiding teams of intrapreneurs from the first ideation phase to an executive pitch in cocncrete projects and making sure disruptive business cases get funded. Once that’s the case, we go all-in and participate in corporate startups to speed up time-to-market.

I work on 3-4 client projects in different industries simultaneously and roles are diverse according to the stage of the project and the type of client (Most often in B2B Tech and B2B industrial).

Proud to have been in the lead for innovation projects at the following companies: Volkswagen, VAB, Elia, Carglass, Telenet, Sappi, ING Group, Suez Environment, Bpost, Vlerick Business School, Uralita, Volkswagen Financial Services, BNP Paribas Fortis, Exellys, Resmed, Coparmex, NMC and SD Worx.

Corporate Accelerator

Building innovation capabilities around Business modelling, design thinking, lean startup & agile:
- Setting up and training an innovation transformation team
- Initiate real projects to test new ways of working, tools, techniques. Measure impact from the start!  
- Aligning innovation methodologies with the strategic goals of the company
- Creating awareness amongst all employees of the company
- Reporting progress to Innovation capability lead and C-suite.
- Getting executive committee up to speed on how to evaluate new innovative projects.
- Setting up key metrics to follow up progress on innovation capability (aka. innovation accounting)
- Making playbooks and innovation tool-kits to be used company wide

Our main goal: creating a sustainable innovation team, while making ourself dispensable asap.

Innovation Capability Expert

The Board of Innovations tools library is one of our company's biggest differentiators. 

Some activities linked to his responsibility:
- Keeping existing library structured and up-to-date
- Challenging our team on the relevance of new tools
- Creation of tool kits and playbooks to allow our clients to scale innovation best practices
- Preparing tools to be shared on our website

Master of Innovation Tools

Innovation is driven by people, not by corporate processes. That is why I organize training sessions on various topics: creativity, innovation, business models, prototyping, lean startup in B2B, etc. Often these trainings are part of a bigger picture: an Innovation Bootcamp - giving corporate teams a platform to develop new business ideas that they are passionate about. Through intensive coaching the teams go from ideas to an executive pitch in just 5 days. It’s very much similar to how start-up teams develop their ideas, and pitch them to investors.

Lean startup coach and innovation trainer

Leadership is about being an inspiration to  the people around you.
About leveraging problems as opportunities and building sustainable processes to support growth of  your organization  and  its people. That is why we designed a talent development program for potential  leaders based on the principles of launching your own startup. We guide you through an enriching & methodologically structured experience which shifts the corporate mindset into a flexible, start-up minded and customer oriented innovation approach. Prepare your future leaders to succeed in a fast changing and challenging environment!

Lead Innovation Leadership Development

Visualizing and developing (new) business models to find the right revenue streams for a new product or service. As a strategy designer, I shape marketing, sales and growth strategies for new ventures. Giving advise to corporates (and everyone else that respects my opinion) on when, why and how to innovate like startups is also part of the deal.

Business Designer / Innovation Consultant

There are 2 main challenges that most first time corporate startups aren't prepared for: Firstly, they all fight a two-front war (staying alive within the company and getting the startup launched). 
Secondly, starting with market validation (selling your vision and first inferior product to clients) prior to massive R&D investments instead of the other way around. 

Every 6-8 months, I join a different corporate startup team for 1-2 days/week to give support in all ways possible: sharing what worked and didn't work at other companies, experimenting with new working methods, customer interviews, prototyping, stakeholder mapping, strategy design, recruiting team members, etc. 

Project 2014: Symbio by Sappi. http://www.forestplastics.com/
Challenge: Translating 'Lean Startup' principles to the B2B commodity industry of plastics.

Project 2015: ELLA by SD Worx
Challenge: Creating a virtual assistant to answer all your employees Legal & HR related questions.

Intrapreneur B2B

Movement Health 2030

Healthcare systems have never been more challenged. One in every three people is dying from preventable causes. There are rising numbers of patients with multiple chronic diseases. Many populations are ageing. Healthcare systems must reconcile these challenges against a backdrop of already stretched budgets, 20-40% of which are used inefficiently. We start from the basis that countries share 80% of healthcare challenges. This opens multiple opportunities to collaborate across borders, cross-pollinate learnings and share solutions adapting to local nuances. In order to accelerate the progress of new solution adoption across healthcare systems, Movement Health works with a range of healthcare stakeholders to discover big, bottleneck problems in healthcare services that if solved, will open the floodgates to improved patient outcomes and reduce the cost of care.

Board of Innovation is one of the founding partners of Movement Health 2030; together with Roche, Carlos Slim Foundation, and Copenhagen Insitute for Future Studies.

Movement Health 2030 is a movement with a vision to enable a paradigm shift to create more sustainable and inclusive healthcare systems all over the world. We launched in Latin America in 2020 and are kicking off in Europe, Africa, North America, Middle East, and Asia from 2021 onwards. 

We encourage others to join the movement and co-create impactful and inclusive solutions at scale fostering healthier communities.

Innovation Strategist

Program design & delivery on an EU level of the operational framework to ensure all ING business units/business lines can adopt and run PACE, the ING way to innovate (design thinking and lean start up for global operating companies).

Supporting the implementation of ING's Global Innovation Transformation program 
🇳🇱  🇹🇩  🇩🇪 🇧🇪  🇮🇹 🇲🇨  🇪🇸 🇹🇷  🇱🇺
•	Coaching Accelerator teams with a H3 or Global H2 scope (Mc Kinsey Horizon scale)
•	Design, global rollout and support of ING's BU Accelerators (trainings, mentoring, etc.)
•	Delivering Lean startup Academy sessions for PACE Coaches in the EU Business Units 
•	Design, develop and delivery of Senior Sponsor & Leadership trainings
•	Coaching and mentoring of local PACE Coaches in different EU Business Units to support sustainable (and qualitative) growth of the methodology

PACE Expert - Innovation Transformation (via Board of Innovation)

Le Wine Agency

Belgian launch of a high quality, fair trade, rosé sparkling wine from Chile - Estelado Rosé. In cooperation with Miguel Torres Chile. This project was the In-company-project to finish my study at Vlerick Business School.

Business Consultant

BRIDEE

BRIDEE is a project that stands for
BRIDGING DESIGN, ENTREPRENEURSHIP and EDUCATION.
This co-creation platform unites creative creators, talented designers and Vlerick Business School students in multidisciplinary teams. Together they put the most attractive ideas into concrete and profitable business plans. Each team is coached through the project by start-up experts and leading designers. On the one hand, BRIDEE hopes to allow more creative projects to turn into viable businesses, on the other hand, to stir up the entrepreneurial spirit of design and business students. 

BRIDEE strives to integrate Design Thinking in new and existing companies. The organization enjoys the support of Agentschap Ondernemen and leading Belgian institutions and organizations that wish to foster the entrepreneurial spirit, such as Artesis Hogeschool Antwerpen, Flanders DC, Howest University College West Flanders, Voka and many others.

Manager business students

vzw PO-events

PO-Events exists out of a group of motivated students of the first master year of product development. To minimize the risk of organizing a big event I co-founded VZW PO-events. The organization existed already for 25 years, we were the first to take the responsibility to put a legal structure in place. As a board we coördinated the whole class of around 50 people.

Board member + co-founder

Sortie 2011 Music Festival

‘SORTIE’ is a party organized by the first master of Product Development to finance their study trip. The organization is changing every year, which makes it really hard to let it grow year by year. The tradition to organize it, already exists for 25 years. For 5 years, it was held in Petrol, a club in the South of Antwerp. The tradition to be innovative and do something new every year was lost.

The main goals were to built something new, something bigger than ever before and create a new standard for the years coming after us. It took a lot of organization throughout the year to transform a indoor party concept of 1000 visitors to a outdoor festival of 1800 people in the port of Antwerp.

Managing 100 employees before, during and after the event learned me to be organized in stressful situations and take responsible decisions when needed. Even tough not easy, I managed to keep the whole team motivated. The event was a great success!

Head Organizer

At age 4, I imposed myself on training my whistling skills for at least one hour a day—mostly in bed around 5–6 am. As a side effect of unhappy parents, I learned to read the clock. For the rest of my childhood, I enjoyed being outside: while building camps in the forest, I loved exploring places I was not allowed to go.

These days, I have the opportunity to venture into uncharted territories, seeking challenges and opportunities to define impactful solutions. As a global collective of strategists, designers, and entrepreneurs, we collaborate with the world’s most ambitious businesses to envision and build tomorrow’s products, services, and businesses today. By integrating cutting-edge AI technologies, I amplify human creativity and accelerate innovation, transforming visionary ideas into reality.

taplio

The Battle

Manu Vollens

Arne Van Balen

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