futurest builds AI solutions for Stadtwerke Hürth, EnBW, Swisscom and Erste Energie. Before and alongside that: digital products and innovation work for Hornbach, Deutsche Telekom, BMW and METRO.
Most providers do one or the other. Consultancies deliver strategies nobody builds. Development studios build whatever they're handed. We come from innovation management and learned to build AI products — which means you get both from one team, without anything getting lost in the handover.
Desirability · Feasibility · Viability — now AI-assisted.
See our approach in detail
Four projects, four levels of maturity: from strategy through target picture and platform to an agent that works on its own. Most of our clients come from energy and telecommunications — sectors where data protection isn't a preference but a precondition.
A utility's knowledge lives in regulations, technical documentation, contracts and case files — findable only by those who already know what to look for. Public AI services were never an option: the data cannot leave the building.
We rolled out the AIDGEN Suite as the central AI platform and company-wide corporate GPT — connected to their own knowledge sources, with a roles and permissions model, and hands-on enablement for staff.
Stadtwerke Hürth run AIDGEN as their central AI platform. One entry point, the leading models, their own knowledge — and the data stays where it belongs.
Energy sales is highly standardised and, at the same time, labour-intensive. The question was never whether AI could assist. It was whether AI could carry the process.
We built an AI sales agent for Erste Energie that runs sales conversations independently — transparently identifiable as an AI, with clearly defined handover points to humans when a situation calls for one.
The agent demonstrably closes contracts. We're not permitted to share figures at the client's request — what we can say is that the question is settled: AI can do more than support this process. It can carry it.
In large organisations the question is rarely whether to use AI. It's where to start, to what standard, and how success will be measured. Without a shared target picture you get fifty isolated pilots and no impact.
We developed the AI target picture with EnBW: where AI should create value across the group, in what order, and what needs to be in place first.
A target picture that makes prioritisation possible — the basis for projects that build on each other instead of running in parallel.
A telecommunications group with deep in-house technology expertise doesn't need AI explained. It needs a strategy that holds up.
Based on trend analysis, we developed future scenarios and derived AI target-state candidates from them — the substantive foundation for building a sustainable AI strategy.
A fully developed AI target-state concept that serves directly as a blueprint for implementation — not an abstract strategy paper, but a concrete roadmap.
Three perspectives, one ambition: to think innovation method, market and AI engineering together — and to build alongside our clients. Between us we bring experience from research, software engineering and Mittelstand advisory that reaches back to the late nineties.
Founder and managing partner of futurest. A physicist by training and doctorate: after his studies he worked for the German Research Foundation (DFG), then led software development as a board member at clicktivities AG, before founding futurest in 2007. His focus: design thinking, customer experience modelling, service design — today consistently AI-assisted. Co-Host of "Innovate or Cry".
Co-founder of futurest and AIDGEN, a shareholder since 2013 — involved from the very beginning. Manuel has worked at the intersection of business and software since the late nineties, with a clear focus on the German Mittelstand. At futurest he leads brand, positioning and market. Co-host of "Innovate or Cry".
Partner at futurest since 2024, responsible for the architecture and engineering of our AI products. Co-founder and managing director of Sikant GmbH, which develops specialised software for outpatient surgery centres. He makes sure concepts turn into software that holds up in daily use.
We pull back the curtain and take you behind the scenes of an AI and innovation studio — methods, tech trends and real projects, discussed by Manuel Kreutz and Dr. Babak Zeini. The podcast is recorded in German.
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