A Visionary Leader | Prof. Dr. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h. c. Jivka Ovtcharova

Prof. Dr. Dr.-Ing. Dr. h. c. Jivka Ovtcharova

Head of the Institute for Information Management in Engineering

Jivka Ovtcharova, head of the Institute for Information Management in Engineering at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), learned to take on a leadership role as a child. She had the advantage that her parents, who worked, gave Jivka the freedom to shape herself professionally and personally and decide which path she wanted to take. “The inner conviction to go one’s own way and the knowledge of what one must do for it made me naturally self-confident and strong,” says Jivka. “Whether in school or later in my professional life, I always took an active position; I wanted to push instead of being pooled. My initiative and decisiveness inspired the people around me; they respected me, which was extremely important.” The pioneering leader also quickly learned that leadership is about professional excellence, personal strength, and a sense of duty that others rely on and trust the leader. These simple leadership principles have stayed with Jivka throughout her life, contributing to her brilliant leadership traits.

According to Jivka, as a leader, especially a woman, one is often confronted with stereotypes, even career plans, that dictate

what qualities a woman must possess to claim the necessary opportunities for success. It’s understandable to want to learn from the success of others. But this is only of limited importance. Every person is different and unique. Leadership qualities are not learned; they emerge individually and from personal experience.

Leading with Example

To be able to lead, a leader needs both masculine and feminine characteristics. Masculinity and femininity are multidimensional personality traits that do not coincide 1:1 with the biological affiliation to male or female, as falsely communicated in many media. For example, Jivka’s uniqueness as a leader is characterized by decisiveness and a willingness to take risks, which are often seen as typically masculine traits. However, her leadership style also includes her strongly developed feminine characteristics, such as empathy and helpfulness. These multidimensional qualities have made Jivka successful both in her former position in the automotive industry, which is known as a male domain and currently in the field of research and education at the university.

In Jivka’s life, there has not been one unwavering leader who has inspired her. Rather, there has been a permanent “flow” of role models. “A role model consists of a pre-image and -image, i.e., an image that you have in front of you and look into. For me it is mostly about the perception of behavioural patterns of people we admire for their deeds, charisma, inner and outer qualities,” explains Jivka. “Role models inspire us to follow their example, motivate and inspire us to our own achievements. My role models come from a wide variety of backgrounds, such as history, science, technology, literature, business, and media. I am fascinated by personalities who have nothing to do with my subject at all and mostly lived at different times.” Armed with this unique mindset, Jivka is taking the institute to new heights.

Imparting Knowledge

Knowledge and technology generations change very quickly every 2-3 years. Within the study period, the knowledge and technology generations changed several times. As per Jivka, the education system can no longer cope with these challenges. Her personal principle, with which she inspires her students, is that knowledge is important, but just knowing something is no longer enough for life; you have to be able to do it and practice it. “The devil is in the details. Turning knowledge into skills simultaneously and equally makes my students strong and confident. And “the future has no time” to wait, I read this recently,” elucidates Jivka. “Our labs look like “sandboxes.” There, students can let their creativity play, let off steam, and experiment without fear of doing something wrong, following Confucius’ motto—Tell me, and I forget; show me, and I will remember; let me do it, and I will keep it.”

Being a visionary and a doer, Jivka aims her activities at the inspiring interplay between engineering and computer science on the one hand and profound economic and social changes on the other. With her philosophy “Humans in the center,” she addresses cultural-philosophical aspects of technology criticism without forgetting what industrial value creation is all about: among other things, improving efficiency in decision-making. The Lifecycle Engineering Solutions Center (LESC), which Jivka founded in 2008 at the KIT, is unique worldwide in that it blends the boundaries between a value chain’s physical and virtual realities. The basis for this is the sphere of relationships and actions between people, machines, and computers in real-time. The focus is on questions of human behavior in intuitive interaction with machines and computers in a fluid reality, considering technological, information technology, economic, and social constraints. The goal is to teach people the ability to think, and act networked, with an eye for the big picture, and to empower them for practical applications.

Jivka is an optimist and always excited about everything that will happen in life. “It certainly won’t get quiet around me. I am currently working on a large project for regional digital ecosystems. In my concept of sandbox labs, companies should also be able to simulate process changes, just like in sandbox games – without fear of losing revenue,” she states. “Not only the technical feasibility, but especially the economic and social boundary conditions must be considered. In this context, goals must be set in a company-specific and time-variant manner to adapt to the innovation cycles that follow one another ever more quickly.” Furthermore, a traversing implementation by decision makers “top-down” and employees “bottom-up” is required. Change is lived in the teams, i.e., in the “nuclei” of a company and the metric is added value. Creating a human-centric organization means implementing “brain-friendly” workflows in dynamic value creation networks, characterized by rapid analysis and optimization cycles. Digitalization will no longer be “outsourced,” it will simply be part of human existence, all the time, in day-to-day business as well as in everyday life.

At the same time, Jivka is founding an Open Innovation European Institute (openIEI) to popularize and practically implement the principle of open innovation in Europe. She wants to establish a European innovation cell that bundles cross-industry and cross-border competencies and shortens the innovation path “From Vision To Market.” The new innovation cell to be created, called openIEI, should be capable of growth and become a role model for other innovation cells in Europe.