I have worked together with Lucian on several innovation related projects in Metro Systems Romania. He was the Product Owner for the Innovation strategic vertical in our company and he did an amazing job in chaging the culture inside the organization towards a much more innovative one.

Lucian is always positive, energetic, full of ideas, inspiring for everyone around him. I personally was coached by Lucian on how to move forward an innovative project in the company, even if we did not had a clear path ahead, at that time.

Besides his powerfull inter-personal, facilitation and communication skills, he has strong knowledge about: IT industry, especially about the latest trends, methodologies to be used inside organisations in order to boost innovation and creativity, startups industry, brainstorming techniques.

In conclusion, I recommend Lucian for bringing innovation in any kind of organization, in the most authentic way possible.

METRO SYSTEMS’ collaboration with Lucian Ghinda started in 2014 when we decided to have a new person to fulfill a challenging, dynamic and very special role, which we called Innovation Master. The role was about dealing with our colleagues’ ideas and making sure they receive support to make progress. This new role needed to be fulfilled by a person who was very creative, a problem solver, a technical profile with a passion for technology and innovation in general.

Lucian became that person who, along the years, became synonym with innovation, with open mind, with creativity, with problem solving, with experimentation and with passion for learning. And with the joy and real pleasure to work with and for people. Lucian’s role grew from dealing only with ideas to become a role that was about inspiring others and about creating and sustaining a mindset of innovation and change in Metro Systems Romania. Lucian and his team worked to create opportunities for our colleagues to do new things, in a different way. In the first years they focused mainly on learning and experimenting with different technology trends and organised events and workshops, hackathons, coding contests, knowledge sharing sessions. Lucian was the person people came to for support, for innovative ideas, for solutions and for inspiration.

Among Lucian’s successful projects I will mention the creation of IT Connect, the idea management platform that he developed himself which now holds hundreds of ideas supported by tens of events and is being used by different METRO entities, not only by Metro Systems. Different colleagues managed to create their first MVPs with Lucian’s support. The first design thinking program was developed by Lucian and his team in 2015 through which our youngest colleagues, the trainees, first came in contact with a new way of creating software with the customer in the center of all decisions.

Also, Lucian started the first articles on Medium about how we do innovation and how we work with new technology, a blog that is now being used extensively by our colleagues to show how we work in MSYS. Friday Talks were a series of monthly knowledge sharing events that opened the appetite for our colleagues to share and learn from each other. This developed into a habit of knowledge sharing that is now part of our culture. The first hackathons ever organized in MSYS have been introduced by Lucian as early as 2015 which were the perfect opportunities for our colleagues to play and experiment with new technology. And our colleagues loved it. The first pitching sessions were part of Lucian’s efforts to make people accustomed with selling an idea to an audience.

But, I think, the most important values that Lucian brought to Metro Systems and the people he worked with are the sheer joy for solving problems creatively, the attitude of openness to embrace any idea and the caring and the support he gave everybody. These are values that have inspired me and others to embrace innovation and change.

I had the pleasure to work with Lucian in the last 4 years in various topics related with innovation and I would say that he succeeded every time to make me and the group thinking differently.

As partner in the innovation journey Lucian he brought:
1- Expertize – innovation is such big opportunity ground and it is important to make the difference between playing and serious topics.
2- Courage – he constantly challenge the status-quo in a very positive manner.
3- Inspiration – he has that talent to inspire the ones around him in being and willing to be more.

All the teams he work with, at the end of the sessions/projects, want to have Lucian more closely for a longer time. The main reasons are in my view the same positivism, open minded and knowledge needed in such a broad field.

As a conclusion I would recommend Lucian in
- Initiating and driving innovation projects and make teams / individuals thinking outside of the box.
- Driving cultural changes to an innovation mindset.

I have had the luxury of working with Lucian, and have found him to be a great project manager and an excellent colleague. Working remotely together is always a challenge, and Lucian easily eliminates this distance by being in constant communication.

One of the attributes I appreciate about Lucian is his patience and efforts. He takes great lengths in educating his peers with his vast knowledge. I look forward to working with him on the upcoming projects, as I know it will be a pleasure to work with him.