Gijs van Wulfen

Gijs van Wulfen is a bestselling innovation author, LinkedIn Thought Leader and an inspiring speaker on entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation. His speaking style is informal, direct and humorous.

He is very driven to jumpstart innovation in organizations because they are struggling with the creation of innovation in their hectic day-to-day business. He was educated as a business economist and has 25 years of experience as a fast moving consumer goods marketer, as a boardroom consultant at Ernst & Young and Boer & Croon and as an innovation expert.

He is the founder of the FORTH innovation methodology. FORTH is a customer-oriented and inspiring innovation expedition to create new mini business cases for innovative products, services and business models. The FORTH innovation method connects the day-to-day business reality with outside-the-box creativity. An asset of the method is that it creates internal support for innovation. FORTH is an acronym and stands for Full steam ahead, Observe and Learn, Raise ideas, Test ideas and Homecoming. The method is described in his latest innovation bestseller “The Innovation Expedition.”

He is used to working and speaking in an international setting. He facilitates the creation of new services, products and business models for a wide variety of clients including large international companies (CARGOTEC, Fayat-RAVO, Yakult, Scandinavian Tobacco, FrieslandCampina and Sanoma WSOY), service organizations (IT), government organizations, agricultural companies and healthcare organizations. Gijs facilitates his innovation method worldwide. Gijs is a frequent keynote speaker at international events on innovation and creativity like The Pharma Summit in Berlin; the Conference of the International Society for Professional Innovation Management in Barcelona; Let’s Play Innovation in The Netherlands; Design Thinking Festival in Potsdam; Service Design Conference in Helsinki; and the European Conference on Creativity and Innovation in Portugal.

Gijs was invited by LinkedIn in 2012 to join their first 150 LinkedIn Thought Leaders.

In his speeches Gijs loves to make difficult things easier. Through his informal personal style, infectious enthusiasm and persuasiveness he gets people moving beyond their borders. He is 53 years old, the father of two children and lives in The Netherlands, Europe.