I'm Professor of Artificial Intelligence in Business Practice at HfWU Nürtingen-Geislingen and founder of Spielvogel.AI GmbH. My work focuses on AI-supported digital innovation, customer-centric business models and the transformation of organizations through data-driven and generative AI approaches. I combine academic teaching with more than two decades of leadership experience in mobility, financial services, consulting and digital business development. In previous roles at Mercedes-Benz, Daimler Mobility, car2go/moovel, Zühlke Engineering and Auto Club Europa, I led digital transformation initiatives, built innovation teams and solution centers, developed AI-based services and supported organizations in translating emerging technologies into practical business applications.

By way of background, my research currently focuses on two areas. The first is governing prompt-based innovation. As generative AI and vibe-coding tools enable non-technical users to develop digital products at unprecedented speed, responsibility for regulatory compliance, data protection, risk management, and documentation increasingly shifts to innovators who may lack the necessary specialist expertise. My research examines how regulatory and governance blind spots can be identified and explained during early-stage innovation, how proportionate actions can be recommended, and how human oversight can be supported without unnecessarily slowing down the innovation process. I will be presenting this research at the Open and User Innovation Conference at Harvard Business School shortly before Ai4. My second area of interest examines AI use through a leadership lens. In this perspective, the human user takes on the role of a leader, while AI agents function as a team that must be selected, instructed, coordinated, and evaluated. This shifts the focus from merely using individual AI tools to leading an AI-based workforce and raises important questions about leadership capabilities, delegation, decision-making, trust, and accountability.