"Publicis Publishing" about Mario Pricken: For twenty-six years, companies have been calling on Mario Pricken to create the creative space needed for innovation. A provocateur who, even at school, took his education into his own hands – for which the system rewarded him with poor marks. But that is quite probably why, today, his client list reads like a who's who of the brand world – international corporations, leading agencies and design firms.

Since 2001, Pricken has been decoding the hidden architecture of extraordinary ideas – their patterns, their logic, their emotional mechanics. From this knowledge, he fashions immediately applicable thinking tools that enable teams to arrive at brilliant solutions on their own. He combines analytical creativity research with intuition and artificial intelligence – showing companies how they can consciously reignite their capacity for innovation.

Together with Germany's Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Pricken spent four years developing new innovation processes for engineers and researchers. He brought the necessary technical grounding to the table as a trained mechatronics engineer.

His five books, including the seminal work Kribbeln im Kopf, translated into seven languages, have sold approximately 130,000 copies to date – and remain required reading for many students of communications and marketing. Professor Walter Lürzer, who described his creative system as "a stroke of genius", invited him to the University of Applied Arts Vienna in 2004 to head the department of Strategy & Creativity for four years.

He went on to develop team-ready toolboxes, one of the world's first creativity apps, and numerous AI tools, with which he has inspired thousands of participants across more than 300 workshops.

His career is marked by global breadth and a sense of responsibility: he served as managing director of a digital agency in Hong Kong, completed training in group dynamics, systemic therapy and hypnotherapy, and worked with the patients of the Künstlerhaus (Art Brut) at the Gugging psychiatric clinic. He also spent several years developing successful campaigns for NGOs such as Greenpeace, Amnesty International and Oxfam.

Today, this husband, father and self-confessed information junkie lives in the mountains of Austria – not as a retreat, but as a place of clarity and freedom. As Innovation Director, he does what has always driven him: opening up fresh perspectives through incisive questions and encouraging teams to think beyond the obvious.