Dr. Christian Plenge

Summary

Over the years my profession always was: Find areas of strategic innovation, develop applicable (IT-) solutions out of it, establish a business model based on it and drive the necessary change processes throughout the organisation. What do I stand for: • Experienced manager (i.e. IT, Digital Platforms, Marketing, Communication and Innovation) having dealt with heterogenous teams (up to 150 employees) in large as well as small organisations - often with distributed locations. • Sound business knowledge in several industries: trade fairs, retail, wholesale, e-commerce, logistics, technology and telecommunication • Broad functional experience in several (IT-)domains: Digital Platforms, Online Marketing, Product Development, Demand Management, Project Management, Portfolio Management, Enterprise Architecture Management, Test Factory, Quality Assurance and Development • Strong analytical skills as well as strategic competence, trained at one of the leading strategy consulting firms, paired with hand-on implementation capabilities • Strong communication skill on all levels, internally and external. At the moment the home of this profession is Messe Düsseldorf. As Executive Director Digital Strategy & Communication I lead 4 cross-functional teams (Marketing, Digital Channels, IT, Customer Service and Press > 150 colleagues) as the spearheads of the digital transformation in Messe Düsseldorf. Before that, I was Director IT Planning, Demand & Delivery Management at Telefonica Germany where my team were both, the interface between business and IT as well as the project organisation to deliver all IT topics within Telefonica, regardless if via releases or agile approaches. In this function we were in the heart of the merger of Telefonica and E-Plus. Before that, I was innovation manager at METRO Group. Here I lead the Future Store Initiative the open innovation platform and network and built the Real Future Store in Tönisvorst as the innovation testbed. Innovation covered the entire range from sourcing, supply chain, store and consumers' life. Focus areas were mobile commerce and mobile payment, food safety, customer experience and RFID.