Scaling Innovation Together in the Agentic Era | ERGO | Düsseldorf
About this Event
60% of insurance innovations never make it past the pilot stage.
Pilots multiply. Procurement stalls. Promising startups and scaleups burn out waiting. The industry doesn't have an ideas problem — we know that already. It has an execution problem. Everyone has run the proof-of-concept. Far fewer have got it live, at scale, in the real business.
This year, we're going bigger. On Wednesday, 9 September 2026, in Düsseldorf, the people actually solving this come together for one day to compare notes and leave with a plan. And we've timed it deliberately: "Scaling Innovation Together" is now part of Startup Week Düsseldorf (7–11 September) and runs the day before Future Tech Fest — the festival's headline event, with 300+ ventures and 5,000+ attendees. Do the private roundtable on Wednesday, then walk straight into Europe's biggest regional tech festival on Thursday. One trip, two reasons to be there.
This is still not a conference. It's a working roundtable — small, candid, and built to produce something you can act on Monday, while engaging with your peers.
What is this, in plain terms?
It's a hands-on session about the "venture client" approach: a simpler, lower-risk way to put proven ventures, such as startups and scaleups, to work on the problems already on your desk, without the cost, time, or risk of building it yourself, and without taking an equity stake. You stay the customer. The venture does the heavy lifting, with your help to navigate your organization. You move faster.
If your job touches AI innovation, AI transformation, AI strategy, or working with growth ventures inside an insurer, this room was built for you. And with agentic commerce around the corner, you need to make sure your distribution strategy is right. You don't need to already run a "venture client unit" to belong here. Most people in the room won't. That's the point — many didn't know the term before we talked to them.
Why get on a train, a car, or a plane for this one?
- The room you can't assemble yourself. 50–75 senior peers — Heads of Innovation, transformation and digital leads, strategy VPs — from Europe's leading insurers, in one place for one day. This is the densest gathering of people solving your exact problem anywhere in Europe this year.
- You leave with artifacts, not inspiration. Every attendee walks out with a one-page plan tailored to their challenges, plus a 90-day action plan they've committed to. You can hand both to your management on Monday.
- Ask the question you can't ask a vendor. Under Chatham House rules — nothing recorded, nothing attributed — a peer who has already done it tells you the truth: what worked, what failed, and whether they'd do it again. This is your room. This is your acceleration.
- Meet five trusted ventures that already live in a multitude of insurers. Pre-vetted, no demo-day noise — real conversations about onboarding, regulation, and integration, matched to your needs over lunch.
- Two events, one trip. Embedded in Startup Week Düsseldorf and sitting the day before Future Tech Fest, your roundtable seat is also your front-row pass to the wider European tech ecosystem — 300+ ventures, 5,000+ founders, investors, and corporates, all in town the same week.
- Founding-member status. This is edition #1 of a new European community. The people in this room set the standard and earn first claim on hosting future editions. Joining in 2026 is a different thing from joining in 2028. Aviva and Generali have already committed to hosting you in 2027.
- Built for European insurance reality. Solvency II, DORA, GDPR, and the EU AI Act are treated as design inputs, not afterthoughts. This is not an imported US playbook.
- Designed to fit your week, not wreck it. Düsseldorf sits in the middle of Europe — 90-minute flights from London, Paris, Madrid, Zurich, and Milan, and direct trains from Cologne, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Brussels. Arrive Tuesday evening, work the roundtable Wednesday, and stay on for Future Tech Fest on Thursday — or head home Wednesday night.
What you'll walk away with
- A completed one-page Venture Client Canvas, mapped to your own organization.
- A 90-day action you've committed to — and that we'll check in on at day 30.
- 10+ new peer contacts across Europe working on the same challenge.
- A shortlist of pre-qualified startups matched to your priorities.
- A standing invitation to the private community of practice that continues after the day.
Who should be in the room?
Senior people inside insurers, brokers, investors, and reinsurers who make venture adoption happen: Heads of Innovation, Transformation, Digital, Emerging Technology, Strategy, and venture/partnership leads. The doers — operators who run corporate-startup commercialization end-to-end, not spectators.
Plus, five of the most respected founder/CxO guests from execution-ready scaleups with live insurance deployments. Seats for the scaleups are deliberately capped at five to create a unique experience.
How the day works
Four moves: Inspire → Explore → Build → Commit.
Morning sets the frontier context and hears the real ERGO playbook.
Midday breaks into fast, small-group working sessions on the problems that matter.
Afternoon builds practical skills across the full startup-adoption journey.
We close by having everyone name a 90-day commitment out loud.
Agenda
🕑: 08:30 AM - 09:30 AM
Registration & Breakfast
Host: Joanna Schröder
Info: The deals start before the coffee does. Grab your color-coded badge, a warm breakfast, and the first handshakes of the day — Joanna, Bessem, and Sabine are at the door to make sure you meet the right people fast.
🕑: 09:30 AM - 09:45 AM
Opening: Why We're Here
Host: Hanbing Ma
Info: Three minutes in and you'll know exactly why this room was assembled. ERGO ScaleHub opens the doors, and Bessem, Hanbing, and Joanna set the scene for a day built to turn talk into traction. Sabine shares the rules of engagement.
🕑: 09:45 AM - 10:05 AM
Keynote: Venture Clienting at ERGO ScaleHub... In Practice
Host: Bessem Ayari
Info: No theory, no gloss — Bessem Ayari opens the ERGO playbook and shows you the vision, the execution, the wins, and the scars. The honest version of how an enterprise adopts and scales ventures across countries. The type of open discussion you will not hear from a webinar.
🕑: 10:05 AM - 10:15 AM
Expert Identification — 'Who Has a VCM Expert Team in their Company?'
Host: Christian Hüttenheim
Info: Find your people. Christian Hüttenhein runs a three-tier peer exchange that puts you with peers at exactly your level of venture-client maturity — beginner, builder or veteran.
🕑: 10:15 AM - 10:45 AM
The Agentic Insurer: From Art of the Possible to Operating-Model Execution
Host: Dr. Magdalena Ramada Sarasola, phd
Info: Everyone agrees the agentic insurer is coming. Almost no one can tell you how to build one. In 30 minutes, Magda Ramada — WTW's Global InsurTech Innovation Leader — cuts through the hype with three years of war stories from WTW's own build: how autonomous agents really work across underwriting, claims and operations, where insurers are quietly getting it wrong, and what it all means for your data, people and operating model. You'll leave with: a clear-eyed map of what agentic AI can (and can't) do today, a blueprint for orchestrating agents across the value chain, and the moves to start making now.
🕑: 10:45 AM - 11:20 AM
Panel: Lessons from the Trenches
Host: Sabine VanderLinden
Info: Leaders from ERGO, Allianz, MAPFRE, Zurich, and other top European insurers say what usually stays off the record. Under Chatham House rules and moderated by Sabine, this is the candid debrief you rarely get to witness.
🕑: 11:20 AM - 11:40 AM
The Bridge: Meet the 5 Scaleups Before Your Coffee Break
Host: Bessem Ayari
Info: Meet the five scaleups who could solve a problem on your desk right now — and get the World Café format that turns conversation into a plan. Caffeine and live demos. The showcase stands are open, the founders are right there — go kick the tires.
🕑: 11:40 AM - 12:25 PM
World Cafe Sprints
Host: Sabine VanderLinden
Info: We know AI strategy is on most senior leaders' minds. The problems here need to be broken into bit sizes. So we will now split the group. Four rooms, four real problems, one honest format. Pick your battleground — Agentic AI, AI Ops Transformation, Talent & Culture, or Ecosystem Design — then rotate through three fast sprints while the facilitators stay put and nobody hides behind a slide. You'll start with "What's working? What's not?", trade hard-won lessons with people fighting the same fight, and close on the sharpest prompt of the day: "What concrete actions would accelerate progress in the next 12 months?" You leave this room with answers, not just sympathy.
🕑: 12:25 PM - 12:40 PM
Table Harvest
Host: Sabine VanderLinden
Info: Every table's best thinking, captured live. Sabine and Christian pulls the cross-cutting themes into a thread that carries straight into the afternoon.
🕑: 12:40 PM - 12:50 PM
5-5-5 Disruptor Discovery
Host: Bessem Ayari
Info: Five scaleup leaders. Five questions. Five minutes. A rapid-fire round, moderated by Bessem, that tells you who's worth a follow-up before lunch is even served.
🕑: 12:50 PM - 01:45 PM
Lunch & Networking
Info: Eat where it counts. Each high-table station is matched to a capability need — sit at the one that solves yours and turn lunch into your most useful meeting of the week.
🕑: 01:45 PM - 02:30 PM
Mark Klein — Agentic AI & The State of Venture Clienting
Host: Mark Klein
Info: ERGO's board-level digital chief on where agentic AI and venture clienting collide — and what that means for your next three years. Thirty minutes of signal, ten minutes of peer-to-peer Q&A. And Let's memorize the moment. "Let's reinvent insurance together." Step into the founding-cohort shot — the picture you'll point to when this community is everywhere in 2027.
🕑: 02:30 PM - 02:35 PM
Deep-Dive: The Enterprise Venture Commercialization Framework
Host: Sabine VanderLinden
Info: Sabine walks you through the A3 Venture Client Canvas — the one-page tool you'll actually use Monday morning — then you choose your workshop.
🕑: 02:35 PM - 03:05 PM
Parallel Workshops · 30 min each
Info: Go deep where it matters to you: Scouting & Deal Flow, Piloting & Co-Creation, Scaling & Integration, or Measuring Impact & ROI. Working sessions, not lectures — you leave with a method, not a memory. Design where the gaps are and where the framework has evolved in a world where intelligence on tap must be part of your fabric.
🕑: 03:05 PM - 03:20 PM
Coffee Break
Info: Recharge before the part where everyone commits out loud.
🕑: 03:20 PM - 03:50 PM
Workshop Synthesis & Action
Host: Sabine VanderLinden
Info: Each workshop reports back in a format built for one thing: so you can walk into your boss's office and show exactly what this day delivered.
🕑: 03:50 PM - 04:20 PM
Fireside Chat: The Future of Venture Clienting
Host: Hanbing Ma, ERGO
Info: ERGO and Generali read the road ahead — fifteen minutes of forward-looking signal from two carriers actually doing the work. Bring your sharpest question.
🕑: 04:20 PM - 04:35 PM
Commitment Round + Closing Remarks
Info: This is where intention becomes accountability. One voice per insurer states a 90-day action out loud and we follow up at T+30. Then, Closing Remarks + 2027 Save-the-Date: The founding edition closes and the community of practice opens — with other insurers already confirmed for 2027. You'll want to say you were there first.
🕑: 04:35 PM - 07:00 PM
Event Ends - Networking drinks
Info: Wednesday flight to catch? Slip away guilt-free. Staying? The best conversations often happen over the last drink.
Where is it happening?
Event Location & Nearby Stays:
EUR 0.00
