Veldhoven, The Netherlands. I am fairly regularly in Russia, few times a year, but mostly in Moscow and St.Petersburg
I am a managing director (and a co-founder) of Summ( )n http://summn.com/, Netherlands-based research consultancy.
The reason I live in the in the Netherlands is that I worked for more than ten years with Philips, with a strategic innovation team of its design branch. In this capacity I was involved in numerous innovation projects, for very diverse types of businesses. Last five years I am heading my own company that helps its clients to innovate, based in in-depth understanding of people's activities today, and also exploring possible future developments of societies and cultures (in some sense, our company is also a start-up). Our works also includes working with various startup accelerator projects, here in the Netherlands but also in Italy and India.
I run multiple blogs, including a very visual one (I am an active photographer) where I share my observations of the 'signals of the future' - http://centralasian.tumblr.com/ But in this case I would provide our corporate blog, where we comment both on the projects we do ourselves, but also on the initiatives of our partners. http://summn.com/category/futures/
My nick in Philips was 'brug', the bridge. I like to connect - people with other people, but also with ideas and opportunities.
I am a psychologist and a social researchers by education, but most of my life I worked in, or with businesses, helping them to develop new products and services based on in-depth understanding of what (and why) people do now and this may change in the future. Basically, there are three interconnected competences that I bring to innovation process: understanding people (which may include not only customers, but also partners and other stakeholders), exploring the futures, and 'transforming minds', so to speak. The last one is essential, because one can non innovate with the 'old mind', and has to make sure that the mindsets - of both innovators and their audiences - are transformed. We actively use various gamification tools to achieve these goals; as the slogan of our company says, We summon the futures, for you to play with them now.
I admire to see how new things emerge, technologically and socially, and always try to make sure that these 'new things' are meaningful for people. I would like to share my professional expertise with the proteges, and basically expect them to work (even) harder, and to take into account what I share with them. I am obviously also keen to participate in the material/financial rewards that successful innovation can generate.
Technology-wise, I am leaning towards 'digital' start-ups, but thus includes more than merely web/app; I am very knowledgeable in IoT, for example, but also in some hardware areas (I used to study math in the math school, and have few years of studies in the Moscow U's Dept of Math, and have affinity to 'hard-core science', so to speak. But I am also keen to participate in new materials and bio-tech. Industry-wise, my expertise is quite wide, and includes not only classical consumer products ('gadgets'), but also healthcare, urban infrastructure, financial services, and education.