FounderConsultantResearcherArtist
I combine entrepreneurial experience, artistic experimentation and strategic thinking to rethink established structures, challenge assumptions and turn ambitious ideas into actionable change.
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Challenging Assumptions. Developing Strategies. Making Change Happen.
I help organisations navigate complexity, identify overlooked opportunities and turn ambitious ideas into actionable strategies.
My approach combines strategic thinking with entrepreneurial experience, artistic experimentation and hands-on organisational practice. Having founded organisations, built interdisciplinary teams, developed experimental ventures and mobilised resources under uncertainty, I know that meaningful change requires more than a good concept.
It requires the right questions, the right people and the capacity to make things happen.
Rethinking structures. Aligning people. Enabling change.
How can organisations transform when established routines, conflicting interests and limited resources stand in the way?
I support organisations in questioning existing structures, developing strategic directions and translating change into collective action. Drawing on my experience founding and managing organisations, I combine systems thinking, participatory approaches and practical organisational knowledge.
Relevant experience: Make-up, Operation Himmelblick, collective organisations and institutional collaborations.
From unconventional ideas to viable concepts.
Innovation often starts by questioning assumptions that everyone else takes for granted.
I help develop new ventures, business models, services and strategic concepts — from identifying an opportunity and defining a value proposition to developing prototypes, business plans and implementation strategies.
My experience includes founding experimental ventures, developing public-facing services and testing unconventional economic models.
Relevant experience: Collapse Collection, Wunder Parking, stoff♻wert.
Finding the right questions before automating the answers.
Artificial intelligence offers enormous possibilities, but its value depends on recognising where and how it can meaningfully transform existing practices.
I work at the intersection of AI, strategic problem framing, creative experimentation and human-centred design. Rather than treating technology as an end in itself, I focus on identifying meaningful use cases, rethinking workflows and developing concepts for intelligent digital interactions.
Relevant experience: AI Bernd / Invisible Networks, AI-supported artistic research and entrepreneurial experimentation.
Turning ambitious ideas into fundable projects.
Great ideas often fail not because they lack potential, but because they cannot access the resources required to become reality.
With extensive experience securing funding for artistic, cultural and civic initiatives, I help organisations develop funding strategies, position projects for potential supporters and build partnerships across institutional boundaries.
My approach combines strategic storytelling, financial planning, institutional knowledge and entrepreneurial resourcefulness.
Relevant experience: Make-up, Operation Himmelblick, On Parasiting and independently funded artistic and civic projects.
Making complexity discussable and collective decisions possible.
Organisational change is rarely blocked by a lack of ideas alone. More often, the challenge lies in different interests, unclear responsibilities, competing perspectives and unresolved tensions.
Through years of collective organising, interdisciplinary teamwork and public-sector collaboration, I have developed practical experience facilitating complex discussions and helping groups move towards shared decisions.
I see disagreement as a possible resource for learning and transformation — provided it is approached with trust, structure and responsibility.
Relevant experience: Operation Himmelblick, Make-up, international teaching, workshops and civic initiatives.
Discovering the problems, perspectives and possibilities others overlook.
In an age of increasingly accessible information and AI-generated answers, the capacity to ask the right questions becomes a crucial strategic advantage.
My background in artistic research, sociology and systems thinking has trained me to investigate complex environments, challenge established assumptions and explore unconventional perspectives.
I help teams understand problems before committing to solutions, uncover overlooked opportunities and develop alternative ways of thinking about their organisational futures.
Relevant experience: PhD research in Parasite Art, Collapse Collection, Penthaus à la Parasit and interdisciplinary research projects.
Question the frame. Identify opportunities. Develop alternatives. Mobilise people. Test and implement.
I combine analytical research with creative experimentation and practical implementation. Depending on the challenge, I work as a strategic advisor, facilitator, project developer or embedded collaborator — bringing different perspectives into dialogue and translating complex ideas into concrete next steps.
I work particularly with organisations navigating transformation, emerging initiatives developing new models, and teams looking for perspectives beyond their established ways of thinking.
Sparring for leadership teams facing a decision, a transformation or a new market.
Workshops and processes that bring stakeholders with different interests to a shared decision.
From first idea to concept, business plan and funding, ready for implementation.
Working inside your team for the duration of a change project.
€50K
Building a Venture from the Collapse of a Financial Empire
Co-founded and led an experimental startup transforming the collapse of the SIGNA real estate empire into a speculative digital-asset business. Developed the venture strategy, product portfolio and international market presence.
Expanded Case Study: Collapse Collection6 Weeks
Turning Generative AI into a Public-Facing Service
Led the product development of an AI-powered conversational agent for Stadtmarketing/Galerie Bernau. Translated generative AI into a personalised urban experience, coordinating user experience, content architecture and technical implementation.
Expanded Case Study: AI Bernd / Invisible Networks€350K
Unlocking Underused Urban Infrastructure at Scale
Founded and developed a multi-year urban transformation initiative opening inaccessible rooftops for public use. Secured €350K in funding, built a 50+ stakeholder network and led interdisciplinary teams while exploring a scalable model for urban asset reuse.
Expanded Case Study: Operation Himmelblick100+
Launching an Experimental Platform Business in Berlin
Co-founded a startup-style platform transforming public parking spaces into bookable accommodation and working environments. Developed the business model, digital platform and service prototype, testing customer demand in real urban conditions.
Expanded Case Study: Wunder Parking3,000 kg
Rethinking Waste Management Through Economic Incentives
Co-developed an experimental circular-economy initiative addressing illegal plastic waste disposal through reverse pricing. Designed and tested an alternative distribution model linking economic incentives, consumer behaviour and recycling infrastructure.
Expanded Case Study: stoff♻wert
€250K+
Building and Sustaining an Independent Organisation
Co-founded and developed a multidisciplinary non-profit organisation, establishing shared infrastructure, governance processes and long-term institutional partnerships. Managed funded programmes, interdisciplinary teams and organisational operations.
Expanded Case Study: Make-up“Jakob-Margit doesn't just question established systems — they enter them, challenge their logic and create unexpected possibilities for transformation.”“Jakob-Margit brings fresh perspectives to complex challenges, combining unconventional thinking with a strong sense for strategy and practical solutions.”“Jakob-Margit has a remarkable ability to turn ambitious ideas into reality, building compelling narratives and mobilising people even with limited resources.”“Working with Jakob-Margit means pushing beyond the obvious. They combine bold imagination with the persistence and organisational skills to make unconventional ideas happen.”“Jakob-Margit combines entrepreneurial drive with an exceptional ability to navigate uncertainty, challenge assumptions and bring people together.”Five concepts drawn from my experience as a founder, my artistic experimentation, collective organising and systems thinking and theory.
I believe that the most important strategic capability is not always finding better answers, but recognising when we are asking the wrong questions. Organisations are increasingly equipped with powerful technologies, specialised knowledge and artificial intelligence. Yet they can remain trapped in familiar assumptions, institutional routines and inherited definitions of problems. Before developing solutions, we need to understand how a problem is constructed, whose perspectives are missing and which possibilities remain outside the organisation's existing imagination. My approach draws on five concepts developed through more than a decade of experimental practice, organisational work and artistic research.
Disrupting routines to make transformation possible.
Organisations rely on established routines and shared assumptions to maintain stability and efficiency. Yet these same structures can prevent adaptation, reproduce outdated practices and limit innovation. Drawing on Michel Serres' philosophy of the parasite and sociological systems theory, Productive Irritation understands friction as a catalyst for organisational learning. Unexpected perspectives, critical interventions and constructive disagreement can expose hidden contradictions and create opportunities for change.
From practice: stoff♻wertExpanding the imagination beyond existing solutions.
Organisations tend to develop strategies within the boundaries of existing knowledge, market expectations and institutional assumptions. While this enables incremental improvement, it can restrict the imagination of fundamentally different futures. Fugitive Thinking creates space to move beyond these boundaries, combining critical research, interdisciplinary perspectives and speculative experimentation to explore possibilities that established frameworks exclude.
From practice: Die Blaue BlumeTurning resource constraints into collective capacity.
Resource scarcity, technological disruption and uncertainty can limit organisational capacity, but they can also expose inefficiencies and create urgency for transformation. Drive Through Precarity focuses on mobilising overlooked resources, building strategic alliances and maintaining collective momentum under pressure. It combines adaptive leadership, effective prioritisation, resource mobilisation and the ability to recognise critical windows of opportunity.
From practice: Penthaus à la ParasitIdentifying overlooked opportunities within established systems.
Established systems often contain overlooked resources, emerging needs, institutional gaps and temporary opportunities that remain invisible within conventional strategies. Find the Niche combines analytical observation, entrepreneurial thinking and strategic timing to identify and activate this unrealised potential. Opportunities may emerge from market contradictions, underused assets, regulatory conditions or new ways of connecting existing resources.
From practice: Wunder ParkingChanging the perspective before changing the organisation.
Professional environments develop their own languages, expertise and assumptions about what constitutes a realistic solution. While necessary for specialisation, these frameworks can also create blind spots and reinforce established ways of thinking. Leave Your Habitat means deliberately entering unfamiliar environments, engaging with different forms of knowledge and questioning the limits of one's own perspective. It enables cross-sector learning, challenges institutional routines and opens new approaches to complex problems.
From practice: Operation HimmelblickThese five concepts inform how I approach complex organisational challenges. But they only become meaningful when connected to action. Change requires people who understand why it matters, the confidence to engage with uncertainty, the resources to experiment and the organisational capacity to turn learning into decisions. My approach therefore connects critical diagnosis, unconventional imagination and practical experimentation with stakeholder engagement, organisational development and implementation.
What an anarchist past taught me about organisational transformation.
How do you transform a system that is not waiting for change — and often actively resists it?
Read the storyA brief overview
Founder, creative thinker and project lead with 5+ years of experience building organizations, leading teams and delivering complex cross-sector projects. Secured €750K+ in funding, led teams of up to 20 and managed diverse stakeholders across public institutions, academia and civil society. Combines entrepreneurial execution, structured problem-solving and hands-on implementation with experience in strategy, organizational transformation and AI-enabled service development.
Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes (PhD Scholarship 2023), German Mobility Award (Federal Ministry, 2023), Mart Stam Prize (best graduate, 2022), Goethe-Institut USA/ID/FR/ZYP (2019–2025), Born to be Bauhaus (best graduate, 2020)
German: Native, English: Fluent, Spanish: Fluent
Let's explore what is possible.
Facing a complex challenge, developing a new venture or looking for a different perspective?
I am interested in collaborations where strategic thinking, unconventional ideas and practical action can create meaningful change.