Birgit Gebhardt is a trend researcher & trend analyst with a focus on the “Future of the Working World”.

The former managing director of the Hamburg Trendbüro brings together developments into plausible ideas of the future. Since 2012, she has been researching new models of networked business and work and advises cross-industry clients on the path to the New Work Order, whose areas of opportunity she describes in studies of the same name. As an impulse generator, she advises companies on their way into the networked work culture and supports them in the conception of new working worlds.

Birgit Gebhardt Lecture topics

• Social trends in the change of values
• Smart Cities, Real Estate & Mobility
• New Work & outlook on a human-centered work culture
• Retail, Experiences & new worlds of learning and consumption
• How will we live tomorrow? Recognizing opportunities – developing solutions

Birgit Gebhardt is the author of the book “2037 – Our Everyday Life in the Future” and former managing director of the Trendbüro supports clients from the media, consumer goods and mobility industries with communication strategies, new business development and innovation processes. Her public activities include future readings, trend lectures, moderations as well as her participation as an expert in panel discussions, jury sessions and workshops. Birgit Gebhardt condenses feasibility options from technology and research, pressing impulses from global competition, socio-political changes and cultural questions of the self-image of individuals and society into ideas about the future.

Selection of consulting projects:

• 2016: Impulse lectures and co-moderation of a multi-level think tank with divisional managers of a consumer goods corporation on new and rebuilding planning in Hamburg.
• 2016/17: Accompaniment of an IT company in the change process in agile organizational forms, creative methods and motivation including translation to the corporate culture in Zurich.
• 2017: Monthly think tanks with the real estate of a Swiss telecommunications group on the future meaning and equipment of the office, including scenarios of what and how people will work in it in the future.
• 2017/18: Transfer of the “New-Work” premises to the lived work culture as well as architectural expressions for a social network in Hamburg.
• 2018/19: Analysis of 14 megatrends and their consequences for the strategic orientation of a medium-sized retail company in NRW.
• 2019: Analysis of office activities that will keep people busy in the future despite automation and AI, determined for – and with the HR development of – an energy company in Austria.
• 2019/20: Support in communication strategy in the digital transformation process of an international airline group.
• 2020: Trend consulting for the new construction of a conference center of Jochen Schweizer Projects Holding GmbH in Taufkirchen

Birgit Gebhardt was a member of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s Commission of Experts from 2012-2015, focusing on “Work and Life Prospects in Germany.” She is a member of the Munich Circle, XING’s “New Work” Ideas Lab, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Liechtenstein Foundation Zukunft.li.

Selection from research and publications:

• “Discourse as Corporate Culture”; Birgit Gebhardt; Marketing Review St. Gallen, 5|2011.
• “2037 – Our everyday life in the future”; B. Gebhardt, J. Sporer, S. Wittorf; Edition Körber Foundation, 2011.
• “New Work Order, departure into a new work culture”; B. Gebhardt, F. Häupl; Trendbüro for bso, 2012
• “New Work Order, organizations in transition”; Birgit Gebhardt | trend expert for bso, 2014
• “Leadership fit for the future” B. Gebhardt, Josephine Hofmann, Heiko Roehl; Bertelsmann Foundation, 2015.
• “New Work Order – Creative Learning Worlds”; Birgit Gebhardt | trend expert for IBA (formerly bso), 2016
• “New Work” trend dossier; Birgit Gebhardt | trend expert for forum gelb, 2017
• „New Work Order – The Human Factor@Work“; Birgit Gebhardt | Trendexpertin für IBA e.V. , 2020
• “Future Pics – Outlooks into our new living and working world”; Birgit Gebhardt; GABAL, October 2021