is managing director of PRINCIPIA MENTIS.

As a leader of McKinsey's organization and automotive practices, he put the conventional change methods to the test in many projects, and found their impact, efficiency or usability lacking. He founded PRINCIPIA MENTIS with a view to develop one comprehensive tool driving the speed and hit rate of change initiatives, such as profitability improvement.

Change initiatives typically only mobilize a fraction of the workforce – a key issue. Alexander concluded that a broad collaboration platform was required. And to get the best impact, this platform needed to fully exploit the cognitive resources of the brain. This is where Alexander’s neuroscientific background came in handy: His research at Oxford and Harvard had uncovered important insights into human thinking and motivation (that were published in leading scientific journals, e.g. Science). Such approaches enabled him and his colleagues to design the change platform around the requirements of the human brain. Result: The ChangeMaker. Mastering Change. Reaching targets. XING Profil

is head of software development at PRINCIPIA MENTIS.

Sebastian has a Master’s degree in informatics from Technical University of Munich (TUM) and was an IBM scholarship holder. During various practical applications he contributed to the automation of build processes and carried out research on string compression. Based on his experience as developer and first level support for a medium-sized mechanical engineering company, he places particular emphasis on intuitive, user-validated design.

His technical focus is on web technologies and performance optimization as well as database design. He developed the prototypes of the visualization components on which today’s PRINCIPIA MENTIS tools are based. He acts as a mentor to foreign students at TUM, and was himself an exchange student at the Royal Al Akha-wayn University in Morocco, where he carried out projects on software engineering and testing as well as network security.

Claudia Weiss is partner at company companions.

During her 14 years of consulting experience, she developed a focus on supporting strategic change projects. “A key characteristic of change initiatives supported by us is that employees experience true orientation, transparency, focus and co-authorship. To date we have not come across any project management tool that would support company companions’ approach to change management and measure implementation as well as ChangeMaker. The status of the change initiative and the degree of target achievement can be viewed at a glance. The designing of tasks is put in the hands of project managers. And the best: Using the tool is fun!”

Claudia Weiss and her colleagues are sparring partners of PRINCIPIA MENTIS. This includes exchange on potential new applications of ChangeMaker as well as suggestions for new products to support reframing or reorganization of companies. Company companions contribute their knowledge on methods, limitations of conventional approaches, and true customer needs to this collaboration. XING Profil

Dr. Alexander Schmid is founder and managing director of 2perspectiveS GmbH.

He has more than 15 years of experience in large strategy and restructuring programs – as engagement manager at McKinsey & Company as well as managing director of two large hospitals. This enables him to make accurate and practical recommendations as to which methods are useful to manage and mobilize an organization, and to support implementation of large programs.

It is important to him that by making the right choices with respect to tools, management of a company becomes much easier. Management of organizations and large projects should be driven by a small set of carefully selected key performance indicators (KPIs) that are made transparent to all management personnel. Thus, he supports his clients on KPI based management models as well as setup and execution of large strategy and optimization programs running on the ChangeMaker platform.

Dr. Florian Finck is founder and managing director of Principia Mentis Management Projects GmbH.

Due to extensive experience in top management consulting, he is familiar with the issues challenging successful business management. He creates value-add for his clients by offering methodical solutions to these issues. He contributes important impulses for product development at Principia Mentis based on his project and methods expertise. His functional expertise is focused on strategy, organization, sales, operations and supply chain management. He has also run multiple restructuring projects.

Before founding his company he spent about 8 years in top management consulting at a McKinsey spin-off where he was a senior manager focusing his client service on industry and commerce. Originally trained as a banker, he studied philosophy, mathematics and German at the Universities of Freiburg and Oxford. His doctoral thesis focused on the foundations of human thinking and behavior, which he concluded with summa cum laude. He still holds occasional lectures on various philosophical topics.

Dr. Martin Sundermann is partner in the Munich office of Osborne Clarke.

He advises German and international companies as well as investors on all matters of corporate law as well as corporate transactions and financing. He has led numerous national and international transactions. His clients include, among others, companies from the IT, biotechnology and medical devices sector as well as investors. He has been trained as a business mediator.

Dr. Sundermann has developed the legal applications of the ChangeMaker and tested them in practice, with a focus on M&A, reorganization and complex legal issues. Projects such as due diligence are now clearly structured and completely documented, from start to finish. Advisors and clients have full transparency and control over process and results.

Arno Pätzold is Partner at ARTHOS Corporate Finance.

Arno Pätzold has over 25 years of experience in international M&A and has led nearly 100 closed transactions. Before joining ARTHOS as a partner, he was responsible for all matters of M&A in leading industrial and technology companies. As the head of M&A at Infineon Technologies AG, he built the M&A Team and their worldwide activities. At AUGUSTA Technologie AG, he was a board member and responsible for the successful implementation of their “Buy and Build” strategy.

He uses the ChangeMaker by Principia Mentis to master the particular challenges posed by M&A: complexity and time pressure, many (potentially external) stakeholders, requirement of end-to-end documentation, and knowledge transfer into the post-closing phase. ChangeMaker is a core element of ARTHOS’ M&A 360° approach which guides their technology clients all the way from preparatory strategy phase to successful integration.

Manish Pandey is IT management consultant.

How do you develop and roll out software, such that users easily adopt it and apply it successfully? This is Manish’s field of expertise. At IBM and Ericsson he managed international project teams and product development, maintenance and go-to-market for Fortune 500 companies. In his role as internal change manager, he enforced organizational changes. From today’s perspective he wished he had had an impactful tool like the ChangeMaker at his side at the time.

He offers ChangeMaker trainings jointly with Principia Mentis, as well as courses in project management (e.g. PRINCE2) and change management based on the ChangeMaker platform. The intercultural aspects of change management are of special interest to him – this is a topic he gained a lot of experience in as sales, escalation and alliance manager at Siemens, Tata and an HP subsidiary.

Prof. Dr. Felix Wich­mann is Professor of Computer Science and Neural Information Processing at the University of Tuebingen.

He is one of the most eminent vision scientists, who holds a joint appointment with the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems. One focus of his research is the development of new statistical methods helping to uncover algorithms potentially underlying complex human behavior. Against this background, he has made valuable contributions to our StrategyScan platform.

Before moving to Tuebingen he held the Professorship for Modelling of Cognitive Processes at the Technical University of Berlin, and headed the task force on mathematical psychology at the Max-Planck-Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tuebingen. He advises Principia Mentis on cognitive, mathematical and perceptual psychology.

Rudolf Ohnesorge is Investment Partner at Peter Möhrle Holding, resonsible for the development of the Holding's private equity portfolio.

He has extensive experience in developing and advising technology companies most recently as a Partner of the private equity firm Ambienta. Prior to that he held senior management roles in the private equity units of Siemens and Infineon Technologies with numerous advisory board roles in US based and European high growth companies. In addition, he is drawing on a successful operational leadership experience at Infineon Technoloigies, where he built and headed the “Identification” Business Unit, a €150 million revenue entity with high profitability.

As a member of our advisory council, he advises Principia Mentis on strategy, finance and organization.

Dr. Georg Rau is member of the Board of Management of the logistics company Hermes.

He has extensive experience in managing large IT projects, ranging from implementation and testing to roll-out and maintenance. As divisional board member at global logistics player Deutsche Post DHL he was responsible for the introduction of the electronic letter “E-Postbrief”, and introduced the SAP-based Target-IT platform into the global shipping business of DHL Global Forwarding. Prior to this he held various leadership positions at SAP.

Georg Rau advises Principia Mentis against the background of his extensive experience along the entire software lifecycle. Apart from technological and organizational questions, this concerns our objective to solve business issues through effective use of technology and to increase corporate value in a sustainable way.

Prof. Dr. John O’Doherty is Professor of Psychology at the California Institute of Technology and Director of the Caltech Brain Imaging Center.

He is one of the most influential neuroscientists of our time. His research has significantly advanced our understanding of human thinking. How does the human brain learn from experience and take decisions that maximize future rewards and minimize costs? A cornerstone of his research is the combination of human brain activity data with computational algorithms from informatics and robotics.

John O’Doherty advises Principia Mentis on neuroscientific findings that can potentially inform our software design: For best impact, software must address and exploit the performance profile of the human brain. Recent research has made important discoveries that can be translated into software design principles.