Daniela Marzavan

Daniela is a "pracademic": practitioner and academic in the field of Innovation and Design Thinking.

She teaches 'Design Thinking for Business Innovation' for the executive MBA program at the ESCP Business School Berlin and 'Design Research for Innovation' within the MIDI at ELISAVA Design School Barcelona. For seven years she was a Senior Lecturer at the HTW Berlin and the ELISAVA Barcelona bootstrapping interdisciplinary Design Thinking education.

For six-years she has conducted a self-initiated doctoral research at the Bauhaus University in Weimar with the title “Design Thinking and Innovation. A praxeological approach.” For her international empirical research she has been awarded various grants, publishing conference papers and moving the academic management conversation towards social sciences.

In 2015 he has funded a women-led innovation agency as a member of the Design Thinkers Group- a peer-network of global design innovation agencies.

With her team she has gathered extensive experience in fostering creativity and innovation for the public and private sector and infusing Design Thinking as a management practice with clients including: German Federal Agencies, Colombian or UK Government, USAID, VW, Audi, Freshfields, BCG, or P&G.

The pandemic has led her towards helping the global cities network 'Connective Cities' recover from the multiple crises with citizen-centered approaches, setting up hybrid LivingLabs and embracing creative bureaucracy, hacking processes to leverage positive change.

As an entrepreneur and coworking community shaper she advises NGOs, and grass-roots organisations on how to infuse coworking principles and entrepreneurial practices and within their communities.

Since 2022 she serves as Supervisory Board to the 'Global Innovation Gathering' made of grass-roots innovators and tech-activists from the Global South and North.