Group CPO/CSO, Head of Strategy and Product Portfolio Management
2015 - 2020Trapeze Group- Designed and implemented the corporate strategy and business strategy bringing back the focus to disruptive strategies with the executive board.
- Oversaw strategic portfolio management and restructured the group's portfolio for the different business areas with a focus on adding new portfolio areas, value proposition, and differentiation strategies.
- Oversaw product management and led the product management team. Modernized product management in a highly-competitive disruptive and market-driven world. I also assumed the role of the product lead for the most important products.
- Managed the innovation management. Installed a revised innovation management process to balance ROI with a “fail-early” mindset.
- Bridged innovation with strategy, orchestrated the four innovation acquisition approaches, and established several successful strategic partnerships in the industry and academia.
- Led cross-business unit strategic initiatives and projects.
- Introduced modern pricing and licensing strategies.
- Revolutionized strategic marketing and established a new online strategic marketing and customer engagement tool for joint marketing and road mapping.
- Took responsibility for new business development and launched more than 10 new products in existing and new business areas.
- Introduced and sponsored business model innovation (confidential details).
Project Manager - Consultant
2014 - 2015Siemens Consulting- Consulted on product strategy cases in B2B and B2C during different phases of the product lifecycle (from ideation to phase-out).
- Provided professional project management expertise for high-value strategic projects and initiatives.
- Worked on future roadmaps for disruptive digitalization technology products.
Product Architect and Project Leader
2010 - 2014ETH Zurich & Advanced Circuit Pursuit (ACP)- Led projects in the area of high-speed high-performance modem technologies (software and hardware).
- Assumed the product owner role for the high-speed high-performance modem product portfolio.
- Led the design and development of the industry’s first 4G scalable-performance modem product.
- Represented and promoted our innovations in international flagship conferences.
- Supervised and mentored juniors and postgraduate students.
R&D Engineer
2008 - 2010Nokia- Privileged to have worked at Bell Labs, the globally renowned innovation engine for some of the most popular disruptive technologies.
- Worked on advanced signal processing techniques for LTE Advanced and Multiuser MIMO OFDMA (the underlying technology for WiFi 6).
- Devised several innovations in over-the-air training of the transmission channel using machine learning techniques.
R&D Engineer
2006 - 2007Ericsson- Worked on the inception of the third generation mobile telecom networks.
- Assisted in the 3GPP feature standardization efforts.
- Co-developed a high-speed simulation platform to enable rapid prototyping.
Dr. Karim Badawi
Product Manager in Zürich, Switzerland
Member since May 28, 2020
Karim is a passionate product and strategy professional with 15 years of experience in many markets with multi-nationals and startups in B2B and B2C. He enjoys excellent qualifications including an Executive MBA from a top business school and a Ph.D. in engineering and technology from a global top-5 university. He considers himself a life-long learner. Karim is an empathic people leader who has managed high-worth products from ideation to phase-out.
Dr. is now available for hire
Expertise
- Business Models
- Business Strategy
- Leadership
- Product Development
- Product Management
- Product Strategy
- Strategic Planning
- Strategy
Education
- University of California, Irvine
- University of St. Gallen
- ETH Zurich
Employment
Project History
- AI-based Transport Network PlannerLed this strategic product (product management and development) from ideation to completion.
This product has been established as the most advanced transport network planner in the world, thanks to its unique artificial intelligence technology. The product outperformed all of its competitors in all relevant KPIs. The product platform is featured in several flagship publications, and it continues to grow and generate traction. It is the only network planner platform which is based on on-the-fly deep reinforcement learning algorithms.
- Intelligent Transport System for OperatorsOwned and led the product portfolio management of the #1 award-winning ITS system in Europe for the future generation of the portfolio elements.
This product portfolio is one of the leading ITS system portfolios in the world with a very high market share. In this project, we strategically repositioned the portfolio elements, re-platformed several products to the state-of-the-art technology, and introduced a highly innovative and disruptive business model in order to achieve both diversification and expansion market strategies. The system is based on IoT and edge-computing devices, in addition to a cloud-ready software suite for planning, operations, and business intelligence solutions
- High-Availability Network Router for Industrial and Enterprise ApplicationsLed the strategy, product management, and UX design for the product.
This highly-available ultra-reliable network router is the most advanced industrial router in the world to date. It presents a great and unique value proposition for a highly-differentiated product with patented technology. The market adoption rate of this new product makes it a star product.
- A Management System for Electric MobilityLed the strategic and product management of an innovative product suite for the management of electro-mobility.
Electro-mobility is a current global megatrend. Mass transit applications of fully-electric mobility are still lagging behind due to the unfilled gaps in software tooling and infrastructure required to manage large-scale electric vehicle fleets. While not all elements of this product portfolio are yet completed, its offerings are creating market traction and attracting customers.
- A 4G Device Modem for Scaleable Resource-Availability-Based PerformanceLed the product management and product development of this industry's only solution.
Typically, device modems are designed to accommodate battery-powered applications such as smartphones. However, fixed-access and grid-connected 4G network applications are on the rise. In this project, we designed and developed the world's most advanced 4G terminal modem which is able to scale performance given a resource (such as power source availability for example).
- Parking Sharing PlatformLed the product strategy and management of the first parking sharing platform in the DACH region. Played a fundamental role in raising investor funding.
(For confidentiality reasons, the name of the company is omitted)
The project included the design and development of a unique IoT on-street sensor, a highly-scalable cloud platform, and user mobile apps. The startup aspired to solve the limited parking availability problem in European metropolitans by introducing the sharing-economy strategies and business models to parking spots. The project was launched successfully and had very high user-adoption rates. - The Largest eCommerce Platform in the Middle EastLed the strategy, product management, ownership, and UX design for the platform from its ideation phase, throughout its implementation and roll-out to the growth hacking stage
(The name of the company is omitted due to confidentiality)
The promising startup aimed at building and operating an eCommerce platform for light-weight consumer products in several countries in the Middle East region. The startup has exited after tremendous growth through an acquisition by a global giant.
Education
- Executive Diploma in International Management and Doing Business in China2019 - 2019Antai College of Economics & Management, Jiao Tong University - Shanghai, China
- Executive Diploma in Strategic Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation Management2019 - 2019University of California, Irvine - California, USA
- Executive MBA in General and Strategic Management2018 - 2019University of St. Gallen - St. Gallen, Switzerland
- Ph.D. in Information Technology and Electrical Engineering2010 - 2014ETH Zurich - Zurich, Switzerland
