The Search for Impact through Entrepreneurship

How to Turn Food Waste into Value using Digital Solutions. With Anika Schröder

Meet Postdoc at ITU, former Industrial PhD at CBS DIGI, Anika Schroder, a food nerd with a passion for tackling food waste. She’s working on how to turn food industry waste streams into high-value products using digital solutions to drive new forms of innovation. Her research focuses on digital sustainability: exploring how digital technologies can connect food producers with the right partners to make better use of what would otherwise go to waste. Because often, the challenge isn’t the technology, it’s coordination.

How Can Research Contribute to Modern Business Banking? With Morten Holm

Meet Associate Professor Morten Holm from the Department of Accounting at Copenhagen Business School. Morten's research and former corporate career focused on financial value creation. Ten years ago, Morten's research helped a bank develop and implement a novel advisory concept in business banking. It worked so well, they still use it today. Then last year, another bank approached him asking for a similar system based on his work. That’s when the penny dropped: “Maybe this shouldn’t stay in the drawer. Maybe it’s time to leverage my research and build a modern solution for business banking advisory that all banks may benefit from?” Morten applied for Proof-of-Concept grants at CBS and started working with Copenhagen School of Entrepreneurship. Now he is testing with his first client. Listen to his journey here.

How can decentralised AI utility fight global money laundering with Henrik Axelsen

Meet PhD Henrik Axelsen from the Department of Digitalization at Copenhagen Business School.  In December 2025, he received an Innoexplorer grant for his project: "Decentralized AI utility for financial crime compliance." Henrik calls himself 'a corporate dropout'. After a long career in large corporations mainly within the financial sector, Henrik did a PhD, followed by a postdoc position with the clear vision to become an entrepreneur within the field. Money laundering is a massive global challenge, currently fought by individual banks working in silos. The criminals work in networks, but their compliance counterparts often work alone. What if we could collaborate across banks using AI to find the real criminals faster and smarter?

Unlocking the Potential of Preferential Trade Agreements with Sebastian Ahlstich

Meet PhD student Sebastian Ahlstich, who, together with assistant professor Jan Stuckatz, has received the first-ever Innoexplorer Grant at CBS from Innovationsfonden. Their project explores how international trade agreements can be made more effective and accessible, with real-world implications for firms, policymakers, and global trade governance. Hear how Sebastian’s impact journey began and how his skills have developed over time across many European countries. How did his interest in preferential trade agreements emerge? And why does he believe that this 'market failure' could be relevant to address?

Create Scalable Societal Impact with Agnes Günther

Meet Agnes Günther, PhD, founder of Netsocietal and ATELOS. Hear how Agnes is driven by making a positive difference to society. For her, economic prosperity and societal impact are inseparable. Yet, today, companies’ value creation and ‘doing good’ for society are seen separately and too often understood as opposites. Her ambition is to break down the siloed thinking, which is a barrier to solving some of the most difficult challenges of our time: green transformation, European competitiveness, and new forms of value creation and appropriation. For that, Agnes is a proponent of addressing challenges horizontally and working across the value chains to understand the bigger picture that is needed for systemic transformations. Agnes lives for ideas and is keen on bringing in new perspectives. At the same time, she works data-driven and science-based. She feels comfortable in the tension between creativity and newness, rigour and facts. Among her clients, we find some of the biggest Danish foundations, public institutions, and entire industry organisations eager to create real impact with their investments.