Session description: As companies struggle to adapt to the fallout of the Covid-19 crisis, many have turned to Open Innovation — a collaborative approach through which multinationals invest in start-ups and scale-ups. For example, the German multinational Siemens opened up its Additive Manufacturing division to anyone who needs help in medical device design. The approach of Open Innovation requires a mindset and skillset which more importantly calls for leadership readiness towards Open Innovation.

Bio:  Mansoor Soomro is a researcher, executive educator, and corporate trainer. He holds a PhD in Management from the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (National University of Malaysia). He has a unique blend of work experience drawing from his work in the corporate industry and academia. In the past, he served in various international leadership roles with the global engineering giant- SIEMENS. Dr. Mansoor has published seven refereed journal articles, one conference proceeding article, 1 book chapter and has contributed to several international industry reports. His research interests are in the areas of Open Innovation, Leadership, Strategy, Industry 4.0, Fourth Industrial Revolution, Digitalization, Digital Transformation, and Digital Readiness Models. He with his team at the National University of Malaysia won a research grant from Malaysian Technology Development Corporation (MTDC) on his PhD research area amounting to MYR 126,034 to develop ‘Industry 4.0 Readiness Model for Technology Companies in Malaysia’. He also received the Best Paper Award during PhD for the paper ‘Top-Down Orientation on Fourth Industrial Revolution: A Literature Review’ at the 8th International Conference on Global Optimization and its Application in Malaysia. He is a certified HRDF Trainer (Malaysia), certified LDP Trainer (Australia), and certified Business Edge-IFC Trainer (World Bank). Dr. Mansoor lives in Kuala Lumpur, with his beautiful wife and two amazing kids.