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Nico Marzian

Profile & Project Examples

Bringing Together People and Competencies for Collaboration

Always keen on seeing the bigger picture, also on understanding how most different and seemingly not at all connected aspects in it are indeed linked and complementary – even if often not on first or even second sight – I was substantially shaped by the strong interdisciplinary tradition of my alma mater, the Bauhaus University Weimar, and all the career stages I was allowed to experience and build upon after graduation.

Design-minded, the focus on interhuman aspects at all times, and believing in the power of good storytelling to deliver even most complex and yet also most relevant messages, I am driven by the spirit of collaboration beyond functional, disciplinary, organisational, cultural and other borders.

The concept of “thinking out of the box” for me always came naturally, and the passion for it made me systematically avoiding too straight lines and a life fully dedicated to just one specialisation. In me you will find a generalist out of conviction – one who is devoted to work closely with great experts in their fields and learn as much as possible from them to best support them jointly creating innovation. Because only generalists, willing and able to build up enough knowledge about detail levels and specialists committed to develop a much broader view and skillset, can become highly needed “People in the Middle” and on eye-level with the representatives of various disciplines bring those and their highly valuable contributions together, empowering progressive solutions benefitting all affected – for a greater (often common) good.

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Virtual and interdisciplinary collaboration between now closed silos are key to future innovation and progress. Without different kinds of stakeholders exchanging ideas and working together, the great topics of today and tomorrow cannot be addressed and managed successfully at a global level.

The visionary and design-minded expert that he is, Nico Marzian is in a unique category of people understanding the implications of digital and strategic collaboration to the fullest. With his conceptual work to-date he is one of the first strategists to have offered well thought out and exciting approaches for platform-based collaboration, novel ways to monetize assets and services, and not least the much needed co-creation of sustainable value.

Jason Aspiotis

Founder & CEO
Finsophy PBC / SpaceVault

Nico Marzian was responsible for setting up the Space Exploration Masters innovation competition, initiated by the European Space Agency. Airbus in cooperation with Merck is one of the founding partner consortiums.
With his broad knowledge about the space sector and various potentially related non-space fields, Nico helped us very much with formulating the scope for our ‘Sustainable Exploration Challenge’ and reaching out to our participants.

His creativity and sense for good storytelling were essential for the competition’s first edition’s success in 2017. Exceptional was his personal commitment, his service mentality, and that without hesitation he also worked countless of extra hours for the individual benefit of each party involved. It was a pleasure to work with Nico and to experience his strong dedication and hands-on mentality first hand. We wish him all the best for the future and would always be happy to work with him again.

Ulrich Kuebler

 Sales Director Space Exploration
Airbus Defence and Space

For Schuler Nico Marzian was the primary point of contact regarding questions around the ‘Minting Community’, initiated by us, and the underlying ‘VEworks’ platform. He understood very early how important virtual interconnection and collaboration was for the minting industry (state-owned and private mints and their suppliers). Nico Marzian, in a close and trusted partnership with us and other involved parties, energetically helped pushing the development forward.

As a representative for VEworks for many years and a returning speaker at the industry’s most important events he was a well-known face and a highly esteemed part of our community.

Dieter Merkle

Head of Corporate Minting Strategy, General Manager Minting & E-Mobility
Schuler Group

Member of the Board of Directors
International Currency Association

Nico Marzian filled his role as product owner and moderator of the “Minting Community VEworks” passionately and dedicatedly. He has shown a deep understanding of the minting industry and a very good sense for its needs and challenges. On this basis he was able to confidently further develop and manage the solution and also offer services with the best benefits for its users always in mind.

That is why for us community members Nico was the “Man in the Middle” to trustfully reach out to and gladly work together with.

Thomas Hogenkamp

Sales Director Mint Applications
Spaleck Oberflächentechnik GmbH & Co. KG

Proven Set of Competencies

(hover/tap for details)

Answers to the questions: What is the bigger picture? Who are the actors? Whom to involve and how? Where are connections to be made? What are the potential benefits for each stakeholder involved? How to enable and drive collaboration? What kind of principles and tools to utilise?

Strategy & Approaches

Organising exchange and collaboration. Establishing communication processes. Making best use of digital platforms. Defining what user interfaces and experiences will look like. Getting the most out of supportive media. Creating clear value for all stakeholders involved.

Conception & Benefit Design

Reaching out to different actors and cultivating relationships with them. Connecting with people of various roles, disciplines, organisations, backgrounds, locations and learning about their individual scopes, challenges, solutions, and needs.

Communication & Relations

Identifying complementary contributors for cooperation and introducing them to each other. Setting up the right groups of people for particular goals.

Networks & Match Making

Initiating and accompanying collaboration projects. Proactively supporting communication between collaborators. Assuring that collaboration is on track and progressing.

Process Moderation

Giving advice and support to collaborating teams. Informing about the project's status and demands. Facilitating ideation, conception, realisation and pursuit of positive outcomes. Helping with finding most effective and efficient solutions for difficult challenges. Bringing the stakeholders' aims and the bigger picture into alignment.

Steering & Guidance

Together with all contributors involved outlining, formulating and styling stories of success and lessons learned to tell about. Translating complex issues into comprehensive, attractive, catchy and plausible, also realistic messages. Helping with driving collaboration's success and transparently informing the current and potential future stakeholders about the progress and achievements accomplished.

Storytelling & Messages

Key Areas of Application

(alphabetical order, hover/tap for details)

Helping to digitally connect companies with their customers, suppliers, partners, their and other industries, associations, academia, government, society etc. to jointly work on common interests and goals and for better outcomes, benefitting all alike.

Digital Industries

Bringing together all citizens, "users" and other stakeholders to co-design, co-plan, co-create and co-manage the cities of the future, making those smarter, more liveable, efficient, resilient, and responsive.

Future Cities Development

For efficiency, reliability, safety, and convenience of multimodal, seamless, on-demand transport of people and goods, wiring all involved infrastructure, systems, services and other kinds of contributors. To master the great complexity of mobility in vast and increasingly growing and dense, fast-paced urban areas of the coming decades.

Future Mobility & Logistics

Utilising digital networks, platforms, and applications to empower interconnectivity for exchange and collaboration beyond functional, organisational, geographic and other borders. Creating a novel framework and ecosystem to unify diverse but complementary systems, combined providing a solution being greater than the sum of its parts. Defining new ways of value exchange and monetisation, aside from ubiquitous advertisements and often intransparent and unwanted personalised data exploitation.

IT-Based Collaboration

In an accelerating, ever-changing world, demanding people to adapt much quicker and more often in a lifetime than ever before, assuring democratised access to knowledge and educational sources. Teaching highly needed generalists that also grow significant understanding of the detail levels, to make connections and act as intermediaries, advocates, catalysers. Strengthening and enhancing unique selling propositions of the human workforce, building on creativity, ingenuity, artisanship, fine motor skills, vision, passion, empathy, curiosity etc.

Lifelong Learning

Supporting all kinds of fields, disciplines, and actors to work together on taking pressure of the environment, saving resources and preventing waste, increasing efficiency, lowering negative impact, creating positive synergies instead of trade-offs. Making the economy circular, thinking in closed loops. Strengthening ecosystem services provided by the places people and other species live in. Building on the nexus of water, energy, food, and land.

Regenerative Sustainability

Taking advantage of the digitalisation of society. Broader than ever informing citizens on most relevant issues. Empowering people to better understand coherencies, approaches, and opportunities for positive change. Tapping the full potential of a large interconnected community, opening access to decision-making levels, and allowing quicker, science-based, reasonable, more reliable, responsible, anticipatory, and yet also human-centred, activities and reactions in most complex scenarios.

Societal Participation

Expanding already beneficial space-based services (satellite communication and networking, positioning and navigation, remote sensing and observation). Utilising resources, scarce on Earth but abundant in space. Taking pressure of Earth by overcoming the limitations of a finite system, redirecting growth momentum to places where they create higher value for lower environmental and socio-economic costs. New streams of spin-off and spin-in technology transfer, new opportunities for commercial space and non-space sectors. Expanding the knowledge of the world, the solar system, the universe, as well as life.

Space Opportunities

A Selection of Companies & Institutions I Have Worked With

Disclaimer: The logos are used for illustration purposes and are not to be seen as endorsements. The copyrights are held by the respective entities. In case a logo needed to be changed or removed, please send a short note.

Small Selection of Projects

CEO AG – Sales & Service CORE Program

CI and coaching package in English and Chinese language for a global sales & service program managed for a world leading industrial company in the area of automation, logistics systems, machine tools, pharma systems, tissue, paper, and tobacco (© Comline AG)

CEO AG – Integrated Customer Management

Awarded global marketing and communication campaign for the development and rollout of an SAP-based Integrated Customer Management platform, UI/UX and development of interactive guidelines and learning tools for a world leader for drive & control systems (© Comline AG)

CEO AG / Comline AG – REload for Real Estate

REload for the real estate sector – Interactive guidelines and learning tool, roll-out marketing approach, CI etc. (© Comline AG)

CEO AG / Comline AG – VEworks for Technical Industries

VEworks – Product ownership for a CRM/business community solution for technical industries (© Comline AG)

CEO AG / Comline AG / PixelPromenade – Minting Industry

Representation, business development & customer care in the minting industry

PixelPromenade – Farming Business

CI and marketing concept for a farming business

PixelPromenade – UI & UX

UI & UX development support

PixelPromenade – Collaboration Approach

Concept for a broad communications approach and systematics for IT-based collaboration beyond all kinds of borders

PixelPromenade – Lifelong Learning

Participation as learner or Community Teaching Assistant in various MOOCs to expand knowledge (bigger picture and details) about various topics relevant for work and at the same time a first-hand insight into online learning. (logo copyrights held by the respective entities)

PixelPromenade – IT-Based Customer Integration Concept

Consulting and conception for a customer integration platform at an iron foundry

PixelPromenade – Connecting the Supply Chain of Coins

The Minting Network – Establishment and moderation of a discussion group to connect the different stakeholders along the value chain of coin production

PixelPromenade – Collaboration Platform Concept & Prototyping

Conception and prototyping for a novel collaboration platform approach

PixelPromenade – Renmin Shouji

“Renmin Shouji”, translated as “People’s Smartphone”, was a conceptual take on foreseeing China’s “Internet Plus” initiative’s implications for the future of the online world, what risks but also which positive lessons to learn might be in it.

PixelPromenade – World in a Millet

“The World in a Millet” was based on the “Renmin Shouji” work and was aiming on the Chinese tech company Xiaomi (Chinese for millet) and a possible unifying approach to the “Internet Plus” initiative. (logo copyright: Xiaomi)

PixelPromenade – Articles

Publishing of articles for different types of online media

PixelPromenade – CoLab

In a joint effort with a provider of a talent relationship solution, a concept was formulated for a novel collaboration platform building on top of a combined approach. “CoLab” was the working title chosen.

PixelPromenade / New Worlds Institute – Space Development Matrix

Mission Statement / Executive Summary: Space Development Matrix (© PixelPromenade, New Worlds Institute, 2016)

PixelPromenade / New Worlds Institute – Space Development Matrix

Concept for and visualisation of a “Space Development Matrix” as a platform to empower collaboration between scientists, engineers, and movers & shakers of space and non-space to work on the steps towards human settlements in space (© PixelPromenade, New Worlds Institute, 2016)

PixelPromenade – Concept for a Space Exploration Innovation Competition

Accompanying talks leading to the later tenure at AZO, an outline for a new kind of innovation competition around space exploration was formulated. It became a guide for the project management of the “Space Exploration Masters”. (logo copyrights: European Space Agency and AZO, 2016)

AZO – Visual Identity & Storytelling

Space Exploration Masters – Conceptual lead for the innovation competition’s visual identity and storytelling (© AZO, 2017)

AZO – Competition Kick-Off

Space Exploration Masters Kick-Off at Paris Air Show in Le Bourget (© ESA & Philippe Sebirot, 2017)

AZO – Awards Ceremony

Space Exploration Masters – Awards Ceremony in Luxembourg (© Dominique Gaul, 2017)

AZO – Results

Space Exploration Masters Results Brochure (© AZO, 2017)

AZO – Results

Space Exploration Masters Results Brochure (© AZO, 2017)

AZO – Results

Space Exploration Masters Results Brochure (© AZO, 2017)

Various Roles – Participation in Events

Participating in various high-class events addressing the most pressing topics of today, for representation, scouting and sales activities for new projects affiliated with, general networking, in-depth talks with experts, getting insights.

Spacexchange

Supporting strategic discussions, conception, definition of messages, input for content, as well as outreach to potential partners. (© 2017-2018 by Spacexchange LLC, a Public Benefit Corporation in-organization, Emerging Futures, LLC, and Finsophy PBC)

New Worlds Institute – Conference Promotion

Development of the New Worlds 2018 conference website as one part of the event promotion being covered. (© New Worlds Institute, 2018)

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