Dr Christiane Gebhardt holds a degree in Public Administration from the University of Konstanz (1992), a PhD in Innovation Policy from the University of Giessen (1997) and a Master of Science degree in Biodiversity, Ecosystem Health, and Wildlife at the University of Edinburgh (obtained in 2024).
From 1999 to 2019, she was a Partner at Malik Institute in Switzerland, an international consulting firm renowned for strategy and organisation advisory for industry, university/ science, and government. Her research and work focus on strategy, organisational development, and operational management for mastering complex projects and stakeholder-driven innovation, including research on biocybernetics in clusters.
Among her clients and partners are multinational companies, the German Ministry of Research and Education, the Swiss Federal Agency for Research and Innovation, the European Commission, the Helmholtz Association of German Research Institutes, and many industries, start-ups, and national champions. She organised the BRAINPORT Smart& Sustainable City Syntegration and the FONA-funded SMARTilience Project with Fraunhofer and many regional innovation clusters. She was a member of the German Leading-Edge Cluster Commission from 2009 – 2014 after evaluating the German Entrepreneurial Regions program for Eastern Germany. She is an EU expert on smart specialisation implementation and has carried out research at Chicago University and MIT in Boston, MA
After launching the Smart and Sustainable City as a regional division manager at Drees & Sommer in 2019, she founded her own company, Silverapples, in 2024, focusing on advisory in strategy and organisation related to innovation systems and transformational governance.
She is the Vice President of Triple Helix and an associated editor of the Triple Helix Journal of University-Industry Government Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Christiane has been on the board for a long time and is responsible for conferences and sponsorships. She has introduced new topics such as “Cities” (2012, London), “Innovation and Environmental Policies”, and “Transition Management Research” (Barcelona, 2023).