Elias is an expert on how to design the learning organization in both the core and the explorative side of a business. For that, he helps to create organizational structures, programs and learning journeys — often for HR and organizational development functions. He views organizations as prototypes that should be developed in permanent iterations. To make organizations ready for such a notion of organizational development, he coaches and trains agility, cross-disciplinary collaboration, customer focus, empathy and creative confidence to change, HR, and innovation teams in respective projects and programs.
Elias also teaches and coaches at universities, such as the University of Arts, Berlin, or the HPI School of Design Thinking, Potsdam. In 2015 he also initiated the Education Innovation Lab, an awarded Ed-Tech Startup dealing with the Digital Transformation in education. Over a period of six years, he also coordinated the Google-initiated think tank “Internet & Gesellschaft co:llaboratory” to better convey issues such as “Future of Work, Innovation and Entrepreneurship” in the rather conservative German society.
Currently, he is exploring the role of determinants of “innovative behavior” for sustainable innovation capability building. Doing so, he hopes, will reveal better ways to establish human-centric learning and innovation cultures, especially in traditional German industrial environments. One playground where he applies all of the aforementioned right now is the German Ministry of Finance, where he supports the creation of an innovation lab as a Work4Germany Fellow.