Innovation requires the courage to make mistakes Senior Vice President Marianne Thellersen is DTU’s new Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She sees curiosity and risk willingness as vital prerequisites for innovation to thrive. portrait “We must not be afraid of start-up businesses and innovation projects that fail. We learn from our mistakes, especially if we apply a different approach the next time”. Marianne Thellersen is being interviewed by DTU Avisen on her second day at work at DTU. The book shelves in her office are still empty, and the flowers in her welcome bouquet still fresh. But even though DTU’s new Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship is a new arrival at the university, it is 22 years ago she started working with these areas, which are moving higher and higher up the political agenda. Because according to our politicians, innovation and entrepreneurship must be the driver for growth in Denmark. And Marianne Thellersen could not agree more. But if innovation is the answer to all prayers, why don’t we just innovate instead of talking so much about it? “Innovation requires that you are good at testing new ideas and continuously assess and correct them. You need to be able to accept unpredictability to nurture innovation. The Danes have a tendency to pursue a ‘no mistake’ culture”, says Marianne Thellersen. “To us, it smells of failure if a CV reveals that a person has spent two years on a start-up business that never took flight. In the USA, it is just the opposite – over there they almost say: the more start-up failures, the better. In the sense that, the more you have tried, the more competent you are, because you learn from your mistakes”. “We can learn a lot from that mindset, because it is a characteristic of innovation that the chance of success is never guaranteed. There will always be projects that never get off the ground,” says the new senior vice president. Helping innovation flourish Fortunately, we can do a lot to make innovation thrive. Experience has taught Marianne Thellersen that innovation thrives in an atmosphere of curiosity, knowledge, perseverance, risk willingness and resources. She stresses that curiosity leads to wondering: “If you never come across things that make you think: ‘this could be done better or smarter’, you will never create anything new”. According to Marianne Thellersen, curiosity is typically a human characteristic, which can, however, also be transferred to a university or a business. Here, curiosity manifests itself in that the organisation meets the outside world with openness and elaborating questions, she says. The reason why innovation requires knowledge to thrive is that we can do something about our wondering. And, in Marianne Thellersen’s opinion, perseverance must help overcome the obstacles and the resistance which an innovative process will always meet. “Perseverance enables you to overcome resistance, because there will be many voices telling you that your project is destined to fail”. Both the individual innovator and the organisation must be willing to take risks, says Marianne Thellersen, and continues: “There is very little guarantee that an innovation project will succeed. As individuals, we must therefore be willing to take the risk of working with innovation instead of opting for more certain careers in research and teaching. The willingness to take risks in an organisation is about venturing into projects with the risk of never generating a return on the resources invested”. Even though it takes resources innovation can easily succeed with limited resources: “It makes you more inventive. You are forced to prioritise and be critical to your own idea, and you have to make choices and decisions, which is not a bad thing”. Partnerships boost success rate From her work with innovation at Novozymes, Marianne Thellersen knows that partnerships are useful. “The more you collaborate with, e.g., the future users of your work, the higher the success rate for your innovation project. The way I see it, innovation is not tangible before it can be applied in practice”, says Marianne Thellersen, who adds, however, that partnerships may also come at a price, e.g. if you grant your partners exclusive use of the invention for the first couple of years. Marianne Thellersen would like talk about how DTU can speed up innovation and entrepreneurship, but not until she has been in the job for a while. “My first major task at DTU will be to prepare a development plan for innovation at DTU. A lot of work has already gone into this, which will serve as the foundation for one overall plan”, says Marianne Thellersen. The newly created position as Senior Vice President, Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, is a fixed-term 5-year appointment – with the option to extend for up to three years. Marianne Thellersen hopes that she will be able to boost DTU’s interest in innovation and entrepreneurship, and that it will result in more business partnerships and start-up businesses. “And then I dream of having a simmering pot of students bubbling with ideas – even crazy ideas”, she says and adds: “Because if there are a lot of initiatives, there are bound to be some good ones among them …” - Lotte Krul Photo: Kaare Smith CV Marianne Thellersen, born in 1963, has a 20 year old son and a 17 year old daughter. 2012-: Senior Vice President, Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, DTU. 2010-2012: Program Director, CBS-SIMI Executive. 1989-2010: Novo Nordisk, then Novozymes, most recently holding the position of Marketing and Business Development Director. 1989: M Sc Eng, DTU. Additional educational background: Marianne Thellersen holds a Graduate Diploma in Business Administration (Strategy and Organisation) from CBS (1993), an eMBA from SIMI (2007), and has completed a Leading Corporate Entrepreneurship programme from DTU Business/Stanford University (2008). Learn more Marianne Thellersen Senior Vice President, Director for Innovation and Entrepreneurship marith@adm.dtu.dk The way I see it, innovation is not tangible before it can be applied in practice. Mariane Thelersen , Senior Vice President , Director for Inovati on and Entre preneurship at DTU. 3
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