Dr. Jan Hachenberger, Chief Innovation Officer at TIMETOACT GROUP, does not follow the dictionary definition of innovation. His definition is not restricted to having a great idea or inventing something new. For him, innovation means real-life application and the benefit it offers.
As Chief Innovation Officer (CINO), his current focus is on anticipating where the world is going. He identifies new technologies, new areas of application, and, above all, new business value for customers. The question that keeps him busy is how to turn developments like AI into something that generates measurable value for a specific organization, rather than a demo that impresses and then fades.
“We do not want to sell technology. We sell solid business cases,” Dr. Hachenberger says. “Everything I do as CINO, from the innovation portfolio to reusable assets and go-to-market narratives, is meant to close the distance between a new capability and a number a CFO can sign.”
Vision for TIMETOACT GROUP
Dr. Hachenberger, also a shareholder at TIMETOACT GROUP, is not focused on making the company the biggest one in the market. He wants to see it become the most relevant IT service provider in the world.
“The most relevant, the most trustworthy, the most reliable, the most innovative, the one that generates the most benefit for its customers, and the one that is the most fun to work with,” he says.
Dr. Hachenberger hopes that vision will attract talent and help its people at TIMETOACT grow. One day, he expects one of them to follow in his footsteps.
A Curious Mind Shaped by Constraints
Dr. Hachenberger grew up in the former East Germany, where everything was scarce. He recalls living with limitations. And when circumstances are dire, creativity is very much needed to create something out of thin air. Dr. Hachenberger says, “If you have nothing, you have to find a way to accomplish what you want despite the limitations you face.” That mindset has stayed with him ever since. He believes constraints are the starting point, not the excuse. ‘To do better’ is also embedded in his DNA.
In addition to that, Dr. Hachenberger has an unquenchable curiosity. He also holds himself to a high standard. Even when a client is happy with the service and the result, he looks for what will make the next one even better. He regularly reviews the services TIMETOACT provides from the customer’s point of view. “I put myself in the shoes of the customer who may ask for something in particular,” he says. “Then I try to work out how we sell it. A lot of things may not connect, or something seems off, like there is a crack in the surface, which can be done better.”
Then comes the analytical approach to determine the root cause of the issue. For that, Dr. Hachenberger looks at the whole system. He explains that he tries to figure out what can be done, how much he has to invest, and what the improvement would be. He then considers whether that improvement would be worth the amount of money the customer, or he himself, would have to pay.
“Those would be the benefits, and they definitely outweigh everything that needs to go into making it better,” Dr. Hachenberger says. “That’s how I look at innovation.” He does not do new things just because they are new. He also accepts that the value of innovation often unfolds over a longer horizon rather than in the next quarter.
Creating Value for the Company
TIMETOACT GROUP is a leading IT service provider specializing in cloud platforms and digital solutions for enterprise customers, Fortune 1000 companies, and public sector clients. Prior to his current role, Dr. Hachenberger served as Director Strategy Consulting.
When he arrived at the company, it gave him the space to experiment and to let the creative juices flow. However, as Dr. Hachenberger points out, that space comes with a clear expectation: whatever he builds must create real value for the company, meaning real business with real customers and real revenue. “That has always worked out,” he adds.
Over the past four years, he has built several teams inside the group, from the Performance Strategy team with 25 people to the CIO Advisory practice, the CIO Circle and the Strategy Fellows.
Ever since he stepped into the role of Chief Innovation Officer, his ambition has shifted from building teams to shaping the organization itself. According to him, he tries to mirror his own attitude and his way of solving problems onto the group as a whole, so that experimentation, pragmatism, and a hard focus on business value become the default rather than his personal style.
Inspired by His Engineer Father
Dr. Hachenberger’s father, an engineer and later Chief Information Officer of a company in his hometown, introduced him to IT. Dr. Hachenberger himself stepped into the role of Chief Innovation Officer in January 2026.
For him, one moment from the past three years that especially stands out is becoming interim CDIO of the Swiss company KWC Professional in July 2024. “You can have good ideas as a consultant, but sometimes you cannot find anyone willing to follow them,” he points out. “This time it had to be me.”
Dr. Hachenberger took on the mandate to make IT leaner, faster, and more closely aligned with the business. He was responsible for a build and run budget of around 6 million CHF, a core team of ten, and more than twenty external team members. With a radical but pragmatic approach and the right external partners, he and his team significantly reduced run costs and brought the solution landscape much closer to what the organization actually needed. The work included a full ITSM redesign, a new service delivery hub in the UAE, and the carve-out of KWC Home.
As part of that engagement, Dr. Hachenberger used what AI now makes possible: a sandbox for developing the small micro solutions every CIO needs to make their life easier. That sandbox became the starting point for the asset-based consulting offerings that have since been defined for TIMETOACT GROUP. “The mandate has been extremely valuable for me,” Dr. Hachenberger says, “because it turned my ideas into something I had to live with every day.”
A String of Great Achievements
Dr. Hachenberger has plenty of achievements to his name. Personally, one of his greatest achievements is being married for over 30 years and being the father of two sons who are currently studying computer science. “Maybe the way I’ve looked at IT, and at making the world a better place, has resonated in my family legacy,” he says. “That’s definitely a great achievement.”
Another achievement he looks at with great pride is his PhD thesis, which he wrote in less than nine months, more than two decades ago. It typically takes much longer, and he was also teaching and working freelance at the same time.
“It was a very hard time, and I’m grateful to my wife for supporting me,” he says. He has kept his doctoral degree as a printout on the wall, and he always looks at it and thinks, “That is cool.”
Getting it done in such a short time taught him that almost nothing is impossible if one believes in oneself and stays super focused. That focus has become part of who he is. “It is the reason I know from experience that you can achieve the unachievable,” he says.
He considers becoming Chief Innovation Officer a major milestone, and the one that opens the next chapter of his career.
Believer in the Good in People
Dr. Hachenberger believes in the good in people. He has many interests, and through all of them he tries to make the world a better place.
“If that is driving you, you don’t want people to be unhappy, although you can’t make everybody happy,” he adds. He never hesitates to help people get to a better place.
While growing up in East Germany, Dr. Hachenberger realized that not everything is possible, but he can still do something good, and that it offers a good feeling. “Then, when the Berlin Wall came down, we had the freedom to explore other countries, people, and cultures,” he recalls.
That helped him scale those basic principles: always striving to be the best version of himself. That is still the driver behind everything he does. As CINO, it helps him stay critical about his work and balance the pros and cons of every decision.
Dr. Hachenberger has the ability to take people with him. He does not try too hard to convince them. People tend to gravitate toward his energy and conviction.
That helps others understand what can be done, build teams, and mirror the way he does things. “It is hard to explain,” Dr. Hachenberger says. “You can’t just look at me and say, ‘He moves like this, so doing the same should lead to the same result.'”
The way he interacts with people typically helps him transport the message, the ideas, and the innovation to management, employees, and customers.
Spreading Ideas Beyond the Organization
There are three ways by which Dr. Hachenberger tries to spread ideas outside the organization. First, through standards. He has been a member of ISO JTC1/SC7/WG21 since 2016 and serves as an ISO editor. In addition, he is currently working on a meta standard for technology, Technology Portfolio Management.
“Standards are a powerful vehicle,” Dr. Hachenberger says. “Once organizations follow them, my concepts stop being one person’s opinion and become an accepted way of working.”
Second, through multipliers. He leads the Strategy Fellows at TIMETOACT, where they shape the strategic vision on technology together with thought leaders from across the group. According to Dr. Hachenberger, they carry that vision into their own domains and customers.
Third, as a content creator. Since 2022, Dr. Hachenberger has been hosting the podcast and YouTube channel “IT Asset Management and More” under the IT Skunk Works brand, where he ponders over the things he sees. He shares his insights, opinions, and guidance on the toughest technology topics of the day, which include business innovation, digital strategy, data and AI, technology adoption, change, governance, security and spend management.
And whoever wants to know Dr. Hachenberger’s inner feelings and personal perspective on where the world is heading can read his novels. His first book “Project Darkline” was published in German in 2025 and will be released in English in Q1 2027 as paperback, e-book and audiobook. The sequel, LYRA Rising, is already out, and its English edition follows in Q2 2027.
He took to writing because he believes he must try things he has never done before, simply to find out whether he can. That is why he started writing a series of near-future cybercrime novels and why he built his own app. Both are closely tied to his work. They offer a different perspective on topics he considers relevant, ranging from storytelling to content creation, and they have taught him more about technology adoption and audiences than any market study could.
What Comes Next
Looking ahead, Dr. Hachenberger’s agenda is clear. He wants to scale the asset-based consulting offerings that grew out of the KWC Professional sandbox, so that TIMETOACT customers can move from AI experiments to working solutions that pay off. He wants Technology Portfolio Management to give organizations a shared language for deciding which technologies to invest in and when to let go of them. And through the Strategy Fellows, he wants the group’s thought leaders to carry that thinking into every customer conversation.
Advice to Aspiring Innovators
Dr. Hachenberger advises aspiring innovators to believe in their ideas. “I am not saying that every idea is great or good,” he says. “An idea is a signal from your brain that something seems off, strange or new. Look into it, substantiate it, and if you see the benefit, put your energy into it.”
He also points out that aspiring innovators need the right place to work, with the space and the freedom to experiment, because trial and error is a big part of innovation. He tells them to be ready to make mistakes, learn from them, and make it better next time.
“A friend of mine, a CIO, once said: ‘done is better than perfect,'” Dr. Hachenberger says. “For innovation, that is more than true.”
For Dr. Hachenberger, that is the essence of innovation: notice the signal, prove the value, and keep moving forward.
