Barbara Salopek

Barbara brings more than 20 years of international experience from innovation management, technology transfer, and strategic development. She is the founder and CEO of Vinco Innovation AS, where she advises organisations across Europe on how to design innovation systems, strengthen innovation culture, and integrate sustainability into strategy and operations. Her applied work spans sectors such as maritime, health, renewable energy, CCS, aquaculture, and public administration.

Before founding Vinco, Barbara spent almost ten years at VIS, formerly known as Bergen’s technology transfer office, where she worked on commercialisation of research-based innovations and held leadership roles including team leader, project leader for complex innovation cases, and board member/chairperson in several start-ups. She has also worked in the telecom industry in product development, CRM, and service management.

Barbara has led or contributed to more than 20 innovation projects in the last years and has secured more than 100 MNOK in national and international funding, particularly through EU/EEA programmes such as the ZEV innovation initiative and CCS4Krakow.

Her work often focuses on bridging strategy, culture, and implementation to help organisations move from ideas to measurable impact.

She is an experienced speaker and has delivered over 1,000 keynotes, lectures, and workshops across Europe. She is also a TEDx speaker, known for her talk “How to Open Closed Doors: Organizations and Innovation”

Her book Future-Fit Innovation published in 2025, focuses on individual, group, and organisational enablers of innovation.

Barbara holds a Master of Economics and Administration and a CEMS Master in International Management from NHH, and has studied innovation leadership at UC Berkeley and Stanford. She is trilingual, a certified PRINCE2 Practitioner, and a Registered Technology Transfer Professional (RTTP).

https://www.linkedin.com/in/barbara-salopek/
https://barbarasalopek.com/