Welcome human, to the online identity of
Klara Lindner
About
Between 2011-2018, I led the customer experience unit of Mobisol. We received numerous awards for our innovative and user-centered business model and enabled hundreds of thousands of East Africans to power their households and businesses with clean energy.
Today, I am consulting agencies, intrapreneurs and start-ups on consumer research, product strategy and agile practices, either on my own or with Lovolab.
I also design and facilitate learning spaces around the topics of Entrepreneurship, Service Design, Human-centered Design and Social Impact, or advocate for these topics as speaker, author and workshop organizer.
I received a full grant scholarship to join the research group Microenergy Systems and currently finish my PhD thesis on how to implement service design in the Global South.
Areas of Expertise
Service Design
I investigate and visualize how people experience products or services. I plan, conduct and synthesize user research, map pain points and gaps. I translate key insights into requirements, create and test alternative approaches and help build a business strategy around it.
Lean & Agile
New (business) concepts need to be validated before launching. I help define critical assumptions, formulate hypotheses and carry out low-budget experiments so that you focus on what matters and not what feels comfortable.
The agile universe entails a lot of useful practices. I can support you on topics like decision-making and communication in flat hierarchies or plan and execute team formation, design sprints and retrospectives.
Experiential Learning
I advocate for learner-centered education. I love to design and facilitate creative learning spaces, in which playfulness, psychological safety and connection are as important as the content.
Case Studies
Too many buzzwords? I also cringed when squeezing my competences in the offer above. So I decided to write some case studies that detail what these overworked phrases mean to me.
Service Design
How might we improve (broken) touchpoints between Mobisol and its customers from first interest till end-of-use?
Lean & Agile
How might we validate the business idea of Crop Insurance, a promising spin-off from academia, within three months?
Experiential Learning
How might the Femtec Innovation Lab turn into an empowering project for stipends and case contributors alike?
If you are interested in my full project portfolio, get in touch.
Recent Publications
Besides actual project work, reading and writing about stuff is my second passion. Here is a repository of published articles and book chapters:
(A list of current good-reads will follow soon.)
Contact
Now
Curious what I have been up to recently? Have a look at my logbook of latest engagements:
June 2022
Planned and executed a new lecture series for Helmholtz researchers interested in entrepreneurship. First lecture online on June 22.
Got invited as a speaker for the 10-year anniversary of launchlabs. Spoke about the early days of Mobisol and aimed to inspire others to found, too.
May 2022
Co-coached a Design Thinking Introduction at the HPI Academy.
March 2022
Organized kick-off week and will guide a team of 22 as project coach through Femtec Innovation Lab with ABB until July 2022.
Feb 2022
Facilitated Yearly Strategy Convention of Bündnis Freie Bildung.
Jan 2022
Started mentorship of the science start-up Crop Insurance as part of Helmholtz Fieldstudy Fellowship until April 2022.
Completed a 6-week hands-on training on how to run Design Sprints for gsub GmbH that started in Dec 2021.
Took care of my daughter at home due to Omicron / Pandemic situation from mid-Dec until mid-March.
Dec 2021
Ran a second workshop prototype on Ethical Ideation with Service Design students at KISD
Nov 2021
Facilitated the yearly strategy convention of Conpolicy.
Trained coordinators of the EU program EIP-Agri how to run effective team retrospectives.
Oct 2021
Trained staff of German energy utility on how to apply Design Thinking at work for HPI Academy across 4 workshop days.
Sep 2021
Organized the kick-off week and guided teams as project coach through Femtec Innovation Lab with Pall / Danaher Corp that ran until Feb 2022.
Aug 2021
Ran a customized version of the discover-complexity workshop format with a team of SPACE 10.
Collaboration
PS: You may by now be wondering how we could work together. Below are four models of collaboration I have used in the past. They range from a loose cooperation to closely working together. (And we might end up with a mix.) Let’s get in touch to see what would suit us best.
Author / Speaker
$
- You tell me about your planned the event or publication.
- I make a proposal about what to share verbally or in writing.
- Based on your feedback I improve my proposal.
- I sit down on my own and prepare the thing.
- Ex. 1: Talk about my experience of and vision for service design in the Global South
- Ex 2: Book chapter for This is Service Design Doing on Prototyping in Service Design
- Ex. 3: German Article for bpb on Effective Virtual Collaboration
Teacher / Instructor
$$
- You tell me what of my competences intrigued you and about the envisioned participants of the curriculum, lecture or workshop.
- I make a proposal about the intention, desired outcomes and rough outline.
- Based on your feedback I improve my proposal.
- I sit down on my own and prepare the thing.
- Ex 1: 3-day Design Thinking workshop with master students on a business-related challenge of the collaborator
- Ex. 2: 90 min workshop on Service Design in the Global South for participants of the SDN Global Conference
- Ex. 3: 3 hr remote workshop on Ethical Ideation for KISD students
Coach / Facilitator
$$
- You tell me about your challenges or open questions.
- We define together how we could collaborate on them.
- We have set sessions or events during which we collaborate over a pretty defined period of time.
- Ex. 1: Guiding the team “Follow the Vote” through the 3-month accelerator program UNLOCK
- Ex. 2: Customized version of the discover complexity workshop for a team of 5 of SPACE 10
- Ex. 3: Remote Design Sprint over the course of 6 weeks with a team of 10 within the gsub mbH
Consultant
$$$
- You tell me about your challenges or open questions.
- We do a small and short collaborative thing to assess our chemistry and gain trust in each other.
- We settle on a rough outline of how I could support you.
- We define an initial timeframe for our collaboration.
- We are working and communication together quite intensely.
- Ex. 1: Helping Wikimedia define and set up the UNLOCK Accelerator program
Beware
You caught me in the middle of a homepage revamp. I am still adding content and improving my WordPress skills, so it’s not perfect yet. Hold on 🙂
