Maks Giordano

Maks Giordano is a global award-winning digital strategist, innovator and creative with nearly 30 years of experience in innovative digital projects. Maks is considered an innovation thought leader in dealing with exponential technologies and counts iconic brands such as Apple, Lego, Red Bull, Mercedes, Jägermeister among his clients.

Maks Giordano started his career in the digital stone age in the mid-nineties at ID Media AG and has been involved in numerous internationally awarded digital projects such as the digital launch campaign for Volkswagen’s New Beetle, the online launch of „Wallpaper“ magazine, Sony-Europe and Swatch.

He played a crucial role in establishing „Cycosmos“, the leading social network in the UK and Germany at the time and one of the world’s first avatar communities, 20 years before the metaverse became a hype topic.

In 2000, Maks in was appointed to the management team of MetaDesign AG as Digital Chief. He was subsequently involved in the first mobile projects in Europe for clients such as NTT DoCoMo’s iMode and Telefonica, and Maks became an evangelist for mobile services long before the iPhone was even launched.

Maks Giordano presentation topics

• The future of Mobility: What will the inner cities of the future look like?
• Desirable Futures: How exponential technologies are giving us desirable futures
• Exponential technologies and their impact on healthcare
• Innovation management – what are the key success factors for sustainable innovation for companies?
• Beyond the Hype: Web3. What will endure after the metaverse hype ends?
• Futurize your Business: When the future talks to us
• The future of mobility: What will the inner cities of the future look like and what do we hope mobility will be like in 2035?
• Me, Myself and AI: ChatGPT & Midjourney: How to use AI for innovation & creativity?
• ClimaTech: Climate change, sustainability & technology challenges.

Web3 is the buzzword of the hour. But what is hype and what is hip? In his talk, Maks Giordano explores this very question and explains why Industrial Metaverse, Blockchain, DAOs and NFT ecosystems are not dreams of the future, but will soon be part of everyday life. Using various examples, he also shows how companies can already make good use of Web3 today.

Maks Giordano has a super intuition for relevant trends and what positive impact these trends will have on industries. Since he specializes in „Co-Creation“ and has the years of professional experience, there probably isn’t an industry or challenge that Maks hasn’t had an innovation project on. Accordingly, Maks speaks from the PRACTICE and can always come up with Best Practice / Lessons Learned as well as inspiring examples from other industries.

A typical question to him at the moment: „Maks, we are a company in the area XYZ and are currently dealing with AI. Can you come over and give us the range of possibilities, inspiration and your assessment?“.

His early passion for mobile services led him to become a co-founder and partner of Iconmobile Group in 2003, one of the first agencies in the world to specialize in mobile services. Maks helped grow the company from four founders to more than 200 employees with offices in Berlin, Tokyo, Sydney, London and New York. As head of product in 2004, Maks was responsible for one of the world’s first mobile ad servers and developed mobile marketing and advertising formats for companies such as MSN, o2 and Yahoo. He advised leading European mobile operators such as Vodafone, o2, Orange and T-Mobile and helped several brands such as Mini, BMW etc with their very first mobile projects.

After selling the company to WPP in 2007, the world’s largest agency network, Maks Giordano became a member of the Executive Board at ProSiebenSat.1Digital, responsible for Innovation, Mobile & Games. Among other things, he successfully launched the first iOS apps for the Group, created new advertising formats, developed UGC campaigns for the network and launched a highly profitable Data Access product. Since his time at ProSieben, corporate innovation of companies has been one of his greatest passions.

In 2009, Maks Giordano joined San Francisco-based Kyte – an innovative live streaming platform funded by Disney, NTT DoCoMo and many others – as Managing Director for the European market, developing digital video strategies for mobile, social and online for companies such as MTV, Universal Music and others. Kyte worked with iconic artists like Lady Gaga and 50Cent on their video offerings and fan engagement.

Since 2011, Maks Giordano has been helping organizations in their digital transformation and in the field of „innovation“ with his Innovation Studio – from new digital business models, start-up collaborations, innovation hubs, company building, venture capital etc. to HR formats in the field of „digital upskilling“. Companies like Linde, Viessmann, Lufthansa, Volkswagen, Daimler, UEFA, Red Bull, Deutsche Telekom and eBay – just to name a few – rely on his advice.

Maks is an active business angel and mentor for startups, co-founded the consultancies „Nunatak“ and „kreait“, led the accelerator program „Founder Institute“ in Berlin and mentored startups at Axel Springer PlugNPlay, Telekom hub:raum, Pioneers Festival, hack.fwd and many more.

Maks Giordano holds an MBA in Media and Communication with distinction from the University of St. Gallen and has taught entrepreneurship and innovation management at Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen, HTW Berlin and FHV Dornbirn, among others.

He published the first German book on usability (Springer) and the first German book on mobile business (Gabler).

Among other things, Maks Giordano is a juror for the Lovies and Webby Awards, the „Oscars of the Internet“, has a very idiosyncratic taste in music, likes to travel and continues to practice yoga.