Background and Expertise
Focus Areas
- Service Design – Design of Product-Service Systems
- Co-Creation, Design Thinking – Developing & testing ideas for target groups together with empathy
- Innovation Management – Developing sustainable business models
Work Experience
- 2019 Creative Consultant at Mes Amis, self-employed
- 2010 Art Director, self-employed
- 2002–2010 Graphic Designer & Art Director at Wunderman, CCP & DDF
- 2001 Sales Manager, Boomerang Cards
- 2000 Barista Shift Leader, Caffè Nero London
Education and Training
- Innovation Management, Universität für Weiterbildung Krems
- Service Design Master Class with Clive Grinyer, Royal College of Arts, London
- Design Sprint 2.0 Facilitator, AJ&Smart, Berlin
- Design Thinking, Gerstbach Design Thinking, Vienna
- Design Thinking, Brainbirds, Munich
- Media Studies, Karl-Franzens-Universität, Graz
Five Questions for Georg Zechner
What combination of your expertise makes you special?
The combination of design and innovation management connects over 20 years of creativity with structured processes and methods.
What are you currently working on and what makes the project exciting?
I am currently working on my master's thesis on "Opportunities & Challenges in Implementing a Circular Product-as-a-Service Business Model in Austria." The empirical research will be particularly exciting, from which I will derive recommendations for future entrepreneurs.
What have you recently learned about sustainability that surprised you?
"Pushing the boundaries" is a commonly used phrase. How far boundaries can be pushed was demonstrated by Douglas McMaster with his "Silo" in London, the world's first zero-waste restaurant. His design challenge was: What if we have no bin?
What do you value about working in an interdisciplinary team?
I value working in an interdisciplinary team because such diversity of explicit and implicit knowledge enables a variety of perspectives.
How do you envision sustainable business in 10 years?
Sustainable business means living the R-strategies and no longer assigning recycling to waste management but to resource management.
Contact
Interested in discussing your project? An initial, non-binding meeting or a sparring session to explore possible approaches?