📱+49.176.70022050

💌 [email protected]

📍 Zelterstr. 14 · D-10439 Berlin

👋 https://www.linkedin.com/in/brsma

Product & Innovation Leader

0 ⇒ 1 ⇒ growth ⇒ excellence for B2B(2C) SaaS, platforms, and hybrid services with complex challenges and complicated ecosystems

Polymath product pirate captain, building resilient human-centric companies from 0 to 1 to scale for over 20 years. Comes with a mosaic biography, a design degree, scars, grit, and some accolades. Incurably curious. Purpose-driven. First-principled. Neurospicy, yet sociable. Compassionately constructively contrarian. Easily impressed by competence coupled with care. Values above all others growth, courage, connection. Likes complex problems and therefore loves working with people ;-). Dislikes speaking about himself in the third person. My superpower is synthesis – connecting the dots to emerge a guiding vision even from the faintest signals within blinding noise. Product work is messy by nature. As your proven navigator in uncertain complexity, I’m here to make worthwhile futures happen.

It happens by building not only great products but also matching effective organisations with a humane backbone. I support by rallying inclusive teams around shared meaning, enabling them to translate business objectives and strategic goals into tactical achievements while zooming back and forth between the whole forest and its trees. Full situational awareness goes way beyond customers – and provides a stellar advantage.

My work approach favours a systemic perspective that integrates all functions and stakeholders in our ecosystem as far as possible, united by sound strategy, enabled by lean operations. I'm equally ready to pivot to quick tactical wins when pragmatism demands it. Still hands-on if required, I won’t shy from ‘menial’ tasks to support my teams in times of need.

Teaching, mentoring, and parenting taught me a lot. Amongst all that I deeply cherish seeing people grow, both professionally and personally. I firmly believe that enabling individuals with high agency is necessary for all sustainable success. This demands encompassing empathy, guiding not only the development of our products and business models but also the design of our organisations itself. Nothing exists in isolation.

I created my first digital product at age 13. Tracing my pre-professional teenage steps, I've been shaping digital products and culture for over 35 years of deep immersion. Of these I spent over 20 in high-impact roles as a lead contributor or product executive. Primarily I have helped to build purpose-led start-ups during longer engagements, alternating with consulting and fractional management for a variety of clients. Still a builder and grower at heart, I distinctly prefer the former’s fulfilling depth and impact. Thanks to the latter we additionally benefit from a breadth of insights drawn from various industries, organisational contexts, practices, and team cultures. I also onboard at lightning-speed. :) Like to see?

Selected Experience

• Freelance Consultant · (1998 – present)

• Full-time Parent (2023/07 – 2024/06)

• HealthCaters · Head of Product (2023/01 – 2023/07)

  <aside> 👉 Details: HealthCaters (2023/01–2023/07): Head of Product

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  • Transformed HealthCaters for full business agility and coherent effective action while decreasing time to insight and time to value over 80% (sic!)
  • Remodelled customer journey in rapid product iterations to unlock >10x customer growth
  • Ensured long-term success and 1.2M$ extended funding by leading business strategy pivot
  • Established customer centricity at the heart of the company, integrating customer insights into every phase of product development and strategic planning
  • Championed a human-centric culture of continuous learning and improvement
  • My tenure at HealthCaters, while impactful, was cut short by the joyful arrival of a new family member. I focused my presence where it was most needed and set up the team for further success without me.

• Curalie · Senior PO interim (2021/12 – 2022/04)

  <aside> 👉 Details: Curalie (2021/12–2022/04): Senior Product Owner (interim)

  </aside>

  • Took a business-critical green field product (C4U2BE) with completely new business model in a highly regulated industry from rough strategic draft to demonstration prototype with a new team in less than 5 months amidst department reorganisation.
  • Pinpointed mission-critical risk already during second week of onboarding. Differentiated an unattainable hunch into viable strategic tracks with far superior quality. Refocused the core strategy on achievable objectives, aligning the mission with organisational capabilities, supported by full stakeholder buy-in. Managed several concurrent workstreams implementing the strategy.
  • Successfully orchestrated a complex system of internal and external stakeholders and managed complex technical and organisational dependencies. Thus enabled timely and coherent action across the company, overcoming significant hurdles to maintain project momentum and meet critical milestones.
  • Raised the bar and exceeded all expectations by combining resourceful creative pragmatism with compelling vision and skilled coaching which enabled everyone involved to make the product shine with their best work while hitting our ambitious external deadlines.
  • Convincingly demonstrated the hybrid product’s value proposition to decision-makers in international markets using innovative approaches without straining resources. Employed creative solutions to prototype not-yet-available features using the existing technology stack, culminating in an innovative B2B/B2G showroom experience that staged several patient journeys through the C4U2BE unit. Visitors praised the immersive storytelling effectively illustrating the product’s potential.

• acework · ****CPO/Partner (2020/03 – 2021/10)

  <aside> 👉 Details: acework (2020/03 – 2021/10): CPO & Partner

  </aside>

  • Successfully guided acework through a strategic pivot from a remote recruiting platform to a boutique talent advisory and hybrid leadership consultancy.
  • Managed tactical improvements which lowered time to hire and reduced talent team workload.
  • Enhanced product process by addressing bottlenecks with offshore development team, reducing cycle times by several days, leading to faster time-to-market and increased product quality.
  • Introduced a resilient north star metric, realigning the company’s focus towards high-impact advisory services.
  • Spearheaded the bootstrapping of a profitable consultancy line together with the CEO within 15 months, attracting global clients such as Deutsche Bank, Bertelsmann Arvato, VSB Energy Group, upfeat, and Combostrike.
  • Developed distinctive advisory IP such a comprehensive, human-centric framework for building and leading distributed teams and a research-backed hybrid team quality assessment.
  • Demonstrated adeptness in engaging with clients and stakeholders, from initial acquisition through to delivering high-value workshops, executive coaching, and keynotes. Co-organised and hosted leadership roundtables, enhancing acework's community engagement and brand presence.
  • Contributed significantly to operations, knowledge management, and the relaunch of the customer-facing website, underscoring a versatile skill set and a hands-on approach to driving business success.
  • Made my full-time role obsolete for the benefit of the pivoted business.

• iversity · CPO (2008–2011) / Design Lead (2013)

  <aside> 👉 Details: iversity (2008–2011/2013): CPO & Design Lead

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  • Joined the founding team of EduTech SaaS iversity.org as the first Chief Product Officer in early 2008, playing a key role in the development and implementation of the company's initial business model.
  • Championed a human-centric "do things that don't scale" approach to kickstart customer discovery and growth in the early-stage startup. Thanks to our high-touch 360° service we quickly grew our pilot audience to over 2.000 academics (educators or researchers) and 7.000 students.
  • Laid groundwork to make the company persevere through two strategic pivots, ultimately transitioning to a successful hybrid B2B/B2C platform model and becoming the leading European MOOC platform.
  • Fostered a strong community of users through innovative features such as peer evaluation, contributing to the platform's lasting success.
  • Developed a lean component-centric responsive design system, focusing on first principles and continuous evolution.
  • Altogether positioned iversity for a successful acquisition by Springer Nature in 2017.

• Cluster of Excellence “Bild Wissen Gestaltung” (HU Berlin) · Research Fellow (2013/03–2014/02)

• KHB Weißensee · Visiting Lecturer Interaction Design (2009/04 – 2012/09)

  • Designed and taught foundational workshop (juniors) and course (seniors) for UX prototyping. Focused on both the means and the ends, showing how to decide on the right method and tools for the context in order to make informed product decisions. Piggybacked teaching cutting-edge IA/UX methods wherever reasonable.
  • Co-supervised numerous term projects (seniors) focused on hybrid digital/physical product innovation together with Prof. Carola Zwick, all of which met outstanding student satisfaction.
  • Introduced mandatory course blogging as a means of learning project communication with distributed teams and gaining more visibility as designers at the same time. Thus helped several of our students build a strong public portfolio including both process and results on the go and score high-profile positions in the industry after graduating.
  • Introduced presentation rehearsals near the end of the term in order to strengthen visual communication and storytelling skills (adapted as standard afterwards). Thus significantly improved end-term presentation quality and student’s success.

• Tonspion.de · Head of Design and Brand · (1998 – 2005)

  • Transferred the social experience of music lovers from analog to digital with tonspion.de. Thus pioneered socially curated and user-generated content with the first relaunch in 2002/2003 before the term ‘Web 2.0’ was even coined. Therefore twice nominated for Grimme Online Award in 2005 and 2006.
  • Helped to bootstrap and lay the foundation for one of the most long-lived music businesses on the web (tonspion.de is still operating successfully).
  • First time in a larger universal design role unifying more traditional 360° branding/marketing/art direction and UX/product. Notably, my responsibilities at tonspion also helped me realise early on that product and brand are not the different entities as which they are still considered by many organisations but need to be holistically managed as one experiential system containing all touchpoints of the customer journey.
  • tonspion.de was conceived as an internet-enabled company. Consequently we had been working 100% remotely from the beginning with a fully distributed and asynchronously working team. My experience with working in time- and location-independent teams hence already spans over 25 years.

• Bossard Consultants / Cap Gemini Ernst & Young · freelance Visual Producer (1995 – 2000)

  • Responsible for producing flawless business presentations and other collaterals for corporate executive-level consulting projects in a demanding high-pace environment both in the back office and onsite with the project teams.
  • Quickly gained reputation for reliably delivering outstanding quality at lightning speed which put me in high demand. Trusted to work self-directed from often only rough outlines and sketches. Supervised other freelance visual producers in the Cologne office early on before relocating to Berlin.
  • On the fly acquired business administration foundations, knowledge about the operational model of top-tier consultancies, countless industry insights by way of everything that went over my table
  • Developed expert business storytelling skills from effective presentation structure over slides and charts to how to structure and convey information for executive stakeholders.

• Interface Connection · Working Student (1991 – 1995)

  • See Early Steps