GCV Powerlist 2016: Susana Quintana-Plaza, Eon

Susana Quintana-Plaza leads all innovation activities for Germany-based energy utility Eon, which includes a budget of more than €100m ($120m) for scouting, testing, development and initial launch of new products and business models at the group as well as its corporate venture capital activities.

As senior vice-president of technology and innovation at Eon, Quintana-Plaza has led a team making 16 investments through the Eon Strategic Co-Investments (SCI) group since 2014, although one was not a successful exit and is no longer on its website, she said.

Now reporting to new boss Karsten Wildberger, chief markets officer at Eon, she helped launch the CVC unit as vice-president of innovation scouting from 2011 to 2014 and has made the sharing of know-how a serious issue. At present, nearly 95% of portfolio companies have a technical partnership with Eon, according to Konrad Augustin, who joined Quintana-Plaza from BASF and last summer was promoted to set up SCI’s US office in San Francisco.

Supporting Augustin’s GCV Rising Stars 2016 award, Quintana-Plaza said: “Konrad has been invaluable in the build-up of the strategic co-investment activities at Eon. He was instrumental in the fast growth of our portfolio and team through his extensive experience and network in the VC community.”

But selecting the right team is part of the role of manager, and Quintana-Plaza’s own experience on GE’s famed commercial leadership program in 2008 before joining Eon in 2009 provided a good perspective.

Before GE, she was a consultant at Booz & Co, now part of PwC, after gaining her Harvard MBA. This was a change from her undergraduate and graduate degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering at University of Washington and jobs at aircraft maker Boeing.

But it is a versatility and mindset that has proved invaluable in her stated goal of “inspiring and moving leadership and teams in established large corporations into the innovation world and the digital age”.