Christian (“Chris”) Lindener is the Head of Airbus Scale, Airbus’ innovation unit that brings together corporate innovation, startup engagement and company building activities. In this capacity, Chris leads and drives the company’s internal and external innovation activities.
Prior to joining Airbus in November 2019, Chris worked as Managing Director for Wayra Germany, a technology innovation corporate venture capital (CVC) based in Munich focused on startup scaling and pre-scale investing. In this role, he oversaw the strategic direction of the organisation and managed the selection of startups and young technology corporations to be integrated into the Telefonicà investment portfolio. Spending a significant part of his career as an independent consultant in the tech space, Chris has created and advised more than 20 incubator and accelerator programs in Switzerland, Austria and Germany. From 2015-2017 he served as co-Founder and Director of TechFounders, a high-tech hardware accelerator based in Munich where he was responsible for the development of more than 50 high-tech startups.
As a serial entrepreneur, Chris has co-founded several companies, one of which (a virtual reality startup) was sold to booking.com in 2014. Most recently, he co-founded D3 Technologies AG, an open digital operations platform for the urban air mobility market. Born in Brazil and raised in Mexico, Chris studied international business administration and economics at the Leopold-Franzens-University in Innsbruck, the University of New Orleans in the USA, and the University of Barcelona. Chris lives in Munich with his wife and two children and in his free time enjoys surfing the European swells.