Facing the Future: Two New Professorships at the Faculty of Engineering and Management in the Winter Semester 2021/22

Our new Master's programme Global Foresight and Technology Management for German and international students teaches interdisciplinary skills at the interface of technology, economics and sociology with a strong foresight focus. The teaching activities starting with winter semester 2021/22 will be taken over by the two professors, Prof. Dr. Jan Oliver Schwarz and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alexander Schönmann, who have recently joined the THI in the Faculty of Engineering and Management.

Prof. Dr. Jan Oliver Schwarz takes over the research professorship for Strategic Foresight and Trend Analysis at the Faculty of Engineering and Management and teaches in the Master's programme Global Foresight and Technology Management. He studied Economics at the Universities of Cologne and Witten/Herdecke, Futures Studies at the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa and received his PhD from the Berlin University of the Arts. Prior to his appointment at THI, he was a Professor of Strategic Management and Corporate Governance at the ESB Business School of Reutlingen University and Professor of General Management at the Design Department of Fresenius University in Munich. Schwarz gained practical experience as a management consultant and in the strategy department of Allianz SE in Munich. His research focuses in particular on strategic foresight, the implementation of strategic foresight processes in organizations, the application of foresight methods such as scenario planning and business wargaming, and the use of science fiction for innovation and strategy. Schwarz has published numerous articles and books on these research areas. His most recent book is "Winning the Uncertainty Game: Turning Strategic Intent into Results with Wargaming" and was published this year (2021).

Since winter semester 2021/22, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Alexander Schönmann is director and course advisor of the Master's programme Global Foresight and Technology Management and research professor for Technology Design and Application at the Faculty of Engineering and Management. Prior to his appointment at THI, Schönmann worked as a specialist and manager for several years in various areas of the production and logistics environment in the commercial vehicle industry, most recently as a project manager in the field of e-mobility and fuel cells. Schönmann wrote his dissertation as a research assistant at the Institute for Machine Tools and Industrial Management (iwb) at the Technical University of Munich as part of the Collaborative Research Center 768 "Cycle Management of Innovation Processes - Interlocked Development of Performance Bundles Based on Technical Products." There he was, among other things, head of the research field Technology and Innovation Management in Production.