Scaling Innovation Together in the Agentic Era | ERGO | Düsseldorf

1 room. EU’s top insurers. 1 day in Düsseldorf to fix the thing every innovation team struggles with: getting startup pilots into production

60% of insurance innovations never make it past the pilot stage.

Pilots multiply. Procurement stalls. Promising startups and scaleups burn out waiting. The industry doesn't have an ideas problem — we know that already. It has an execution problem. Everyone has run the proof-of-concept. Far fewer have got it live, at scale, in the real business.

This year, we're going bigger. On Wednesday, 9 September 2026, in Düsseldorf, the people actually solving this come together for one day to compare notes and leave with a plan. And we've timed it deliberately: "Scaling Innovation Together" is now part of Startup Week Düsseldorf (7–11 September) and runs the day before Future Tech Fest — the festival's headline event, with 300+ ventures and 5,000+ attendees. Do the private roundtable on Wednesday, then walk straight into Europe's biggest regional tech festival on Thursday. One trip, two reasons to be there.

This is still not a conference. It's a working roundtable — small, candid, and built to produce something you can act on Monday, while engaging with your peers.

What is this, in plain terms?

It's a hands-on session about the "venture client" approach: a simpler, lower-risk way to put proven ventures, such as startups and scaleups, to work on the problems already on your desk, without the cost, time, or risk of building it yourself, and without taking an equity stake. You stay the customer. The venture does the heavy lifting, with your help to navigate your organization. You move faster.

If your job touches AI innovation, AI transformation, AI strategy, or working with growth ventures inside an insurer, this room was built for you. And with agentic commerce around the corner, you need to make sure your distribution strategy is right. You don't need to already run a "venture client unit" to belong here. Most people in the room won't. That's the point — many didn't know the term before we talked to them.

Why get on a train, a car, or a plane for this one?

• The room you can't assemble yourself. 50–75 senior peers — Heads of Innovation, transformation and digital leads, strategy VPs — from Europe's leading insurers, in one place for one day. This is the densest gathering of people solving your exact problem anywhere in Europe this year.
• You leave with artifacts, not inspiration. Every attendee walks out with a one-page plan tailored to their challenges, plus a 90-day action plan they've committed to. You can hand both to your management on Monday.
• Ask the question you can't ask a vendor. Under Chatham House rules — nothing recorded, nothing attributed — a peer who has already done it tells you the truth: what worked, what failed, and whether they'd do it again. This is your room. This is your acceleration.
• Meet five trusted ventures that already live in a multitude of insurers. Pre-vetted, no demo-day noise — real conversations about onboarding, regulation, and integration, matched to your needs over lunch.
• Two events, one trip. Embedded in Startup Week Düsseldorf and sitting the day before Future Tech Fest, your roundtable seat is also your front-row pass to the wider European tech ecosystem — 300+ ventures, 5,000+ founders, investors, and corporates, all in town the same week.
• Founding-member status. This is edition #1 of a new European community. The people in this room set the standard and earn first claim on hosting future editions. Joining in 2026 is a different thing from joining in 2028. Aviva and Generali have already committed to hosting you in 2027.
• Built for European insurance reality. Solvency II, DORA, GDPR, and the EU AI Act are treated as design inputs, not afterthoughts. This is not an imported US playbook.
• Designed to fit your week, not wreck it. Düsseldorf sits in the middle of Europe — 90-minute flights from London, Paris, Madrid, Zurich, and Milan, and direct trains from Cologne, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and Brussels. Arrive Tuesday evening, work the roundtable Wednesday, and stay on for Future Tech Fest on Thursday — or head home Wednesday night.

What you'll walk away with

• A completed one-page Venture Client Canvas, mapped to your own organization.
• A 90-day action you've committed to — and that we'll check in on at day 30.
• 10+ new peer contacts across Europe working on the same challenge.
• A shortlist of pre-qualified startups matched to your priorities.
• A standing invitation to the private community of practice that continues after the day.

Who should be in the room?

Senior people inside insurers, brokers, investors, and reinsurers who make venture adoption happen: Heads of Innovation, Transformation, Digital, Emerging Technology, Strategy, and venture/partnership leads. The doers — operators who run corporate-startup commercialization end-to-end, not spectators.

Plus, five of the most respected founder/CxO guests from execution-ready scaleups with live insurance deployments. Seats for the scaleups are deliberately capped at five to create a unique experience.

How the day works

Four moves: Inspire → Explore → Build → Commit.

Morning sets the frontier context and hears the real ERGO playbook.

Midday breaks into fast, small-group working sessions on the problems that matter.

Afternoon builds practical skills across the full startup-adoption journey.

We close by having everyone name a 90-day commitment out loud.