Kevin Schwutke
Building, scaling and restructuring businesses: scaling up for growth, and scaling down with discipline when markets turn.
Senior Vice President & ProkuristARRI GroupMunich
- ~20Years of experience
- 10+Years of international assignments
- 2Co-founded: ARRI Solutions, Volkswagen ClimatePartner
- 3Companies reporting directly to the CEO
About
Strategy that becomes operating reality.
I am Senior Vice President and Authorized Signatory (Prokurist) at ARRI, reporting to the Management Board. I lead corporate development, brand and new business at group level and serve as Press Spokesperson on strategic and corporate topics.
Within 18 months, I founded and scaled Business Unit Solutions into a double-digit-million-euro revenue platform. I have also driven group-level restructuring and portfolio measures, including divestitures and capacity adjustments, scaling businesses up and scaling them down in times of crisis.
My experience spans media technology, automotive, industrial clients, management consulting and sustainability scale-ups, including private-equity-backed companies in the U.S. and Europe. Based in Germany, with more than ten years in the USA, I previously served as CSO at ClimatePartner and as Associate Partner at Porsche Consulting in Atlanta and Silicon Valley, where, as a founding member of the U.S. office, I drove post-merger integration and operational transformations.
I create the most value where strategy has to become operating reality, particularly in complex, brand-critical, and industrially or technologically demanding environments.
What I bring
Build, realign, internationalize.
New businesses, from zero to scale
Founded and scaled ARRI’s Business Unit Solutions into a double-digit-million-euro revenue platform within 18 months; co-founded the joint venture Volkswagen ClimatePartner.
Scaling down with discipline
Group-level restructuring and portfolio measures, including divestitures and capacity adjustments, to realign a business responsibly when its market contracts.
Market entry and cross-border delivery
More than ten years in the USA. Founding team of Porsche Consulting’s U.S. business in Atlanta and Silicon Valley; earlier international assignments at Bosch.
Governance grounded in operations
As Prokurist and Press Spokesperson, I work with the responsibilities of signing authority and public communication: liability, risk, reporting, and communication with stakeholders and business media.
Career
Two decades across technology, industry and consulting.
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SVP Corporate Development, Brand & New Business
2025 – todayARRI Group · Munich
- Before: SVP Business Unit Solutions (2023 – 2024): founded and scaled ARRI Solutions
- Prokurist (Authorized Signatory) & Press Spokesperson
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Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Global Customer Management
2021 – 2022ClimatePartner · Munich
- Co-founder of the joint venture Volkswagen ClimatePartner
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Associate Partner
2007 – 2020Porsche Consulting · Stuttgart · Atlanta · Silicon Valley
- Founding team of the U.S. offices
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Operational Excellence
2004 – 2006Robert Bosch · Germany · Italy · Tunisia · USA
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Engineering
2003BMW Group · Munich
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Military service
2001 – 2002Bundeswehr
Emory University, Atlanta: Executive education in Transformational Leadership (2018–2019)
Selected work
Building up, realigning, partnering.
ARRI Solutions
ARRI Group · New business unit · 2023 – 2024
In March 2023, ARRI elevated Solutions to its own business unit, alongside Camera Systems, Lighting and Rental. ARRI Solutions designs, builds and operates virtual production environments and delivers studio infrastructure and media workflows end to end, from consulting to turnkey installation. Projects include the 1,200 m² Gran Canaria Studios stage with VCI and ROE Visual, one of Europe’s largest VP stages, and the BaViPro pilot shoot at Bavaria Studios, funded by the Bavarian State Ministry for Digital Affairs. The largest project in this period was Al-Hisn Big Time Studios near Riyadh, designed, planned and built by ARRI and Sela for Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority (GEA) and inaugurated in November 2024.
- Role
- Senior Vice President & Head of Business Unit Solutions, responsible for the unit’s strategic and commercial direction, with a technical co-lead. Responsible for ARRI’s partnership with GEA and Sela on Al-Hisn.
- Result
- Founded and scaled into a double-digit-million-euro revenue platform within 18 months. Al-Hisn received the region’s first ARRI Stage Accreditation at Joy Forum 2025.
Restructuring & portfolio realignment, ARRI Group
ARRI Group · Corporate development & communications · 2025 –
Like much of the film industry, ARRI is adapting to lasting shifts in market demand by sharpening its focus on developing, producing and commercializing camera, lighting and software-based technologies. Publicly announced steps include the sale of the entertainment-lighting subsidiary Claypaky to EK Inc. (2025); the centralization of lighting R&D and product management at the Munich headquarters, with operations at two Bavarian sites discontinued by the end of 2025; and the agreed sale of the global rental activities to a management buy-out backed by H2 Equity Partners (2026).
- Role
- Group-level corporate development and Press Spokesperson: driving restructuring and portfolio measures, including divestitures and capacity adjustments, and representing the realignment to international business media.
- Status
- Claypaky sale completed in September 2025; rental divestiture agreed in July 2026; transformation ongoing.
Volkswagen ClimatePartner
ClimatePartner × Volkswagen · Joint venture · 2022
Volkswagen ClimatePartner GmbH was founded in Munich in 2022 as a joint venture of VW Kraftwerk GmbH (the Volkswagen Group’s energy and decarbonisation subsidiary) and ClimatePartner, with operations starting in March 2022. Its purpose is to identify, develop and finance high-quality carbon projects, with both partners sharing the resulting credits; the focus is forest and land use, renewable energy, methane avoidance and mobility, certified to recognised standards such as VCS and Gold Standard. It was set up while ClimatePartner was expanding internationally, backed by a growth equity investment from Vitruvian Partners (December 2021).
- Role
- Co-founder of the joint venture as Chief Strategy Officer & Head of Global Customer Management at ClimatePartner.
- Result
- 16 climate projects completed or significantly advanced in the founding year. The joint venture continues to operate and today reports 25 projects concluded and running in 18 countries, with more than 2.2 million hectares in restoration and conservation.
Porsche Consulting U.S.
Porsche Consulting, Inc. · Market entry · 2011 – 2020
Porsche Consulting, Inc. officially opened in Atlanta in October 2011 as the firm’s first U.S. office and its fourth internationally. Since January 2015, it has been based at One Porsche Drive, Porsche’s North American headquarters; a second office followed in Belmont, Silicon Valley, in November 2018. Fittingly, One Porsche Drive appeared on screen as the Avengers headquarters in Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War and Spider-Man: Homecoming.
- Role
- Founding team member, later Associate Partner: post-merger integration and operational transformation programs for clients.
- Result
- Market entry and ramp-up of the U.S. business to around 60 people across two offices.
- Selected results
- U.S. automotive OEM (R&D): triple-digit million dollar savings identified across 4 model lines; steering committee with Chief R&D and Chief Procurement Officer, 50+ person project house.
- Energy company: production lead time cut from 18 to 6 months.
- Industrial supplier (80,000 employees): global continuous improvement organization of 300 people, piloted in the U.S., Germany and Slovakia.
- U.S. automotive OEM: future sales model for an EV launch; 120 team members, CEO-level steering.
Synopsys × Porsche Consulting: Revolutionizing Automotive Development for the Digital Future
Porsche Consulting, Inc. × Synopsys · Whitepaper · 2019
The jointly developed whitepaper, announced in December 2019, addresses a core challenge of electrified, connected and autonomous vehicles: increasingly complex electronic hardware and software architectures, from the system-on-chip (SoC) to the ECU to the vehicle. It describes a development framework that integrates Synopsys’ Triple Shift-Left approach into existing automotive development organizations by applying Porsche Consulting’s systems engineering principles. According to the companies, this lets OEMs build safety and security into automotive SoC designs faster with automotive-grade IP, start software development up to 18 months earlier with virtual prototyping, and assess software security and quality throughout development and across the supply chain.
- Role
- Co-author on the Porsche Consulting side, together with Dr. Burkhard Huhnke (Vice President of Automotive, Synopsys).
- Result
- Announced by Synopsys in December 2019, covered by eeNews Europe and republished on Semiconductor Engineering in January 2020.
Perspective
Notes on transformation.
Scaling down is a leadership skill, too
Growth gets the attention; contraction tests an organization. What it takes to realign a business when its market shrinks: deciding early, protecting the core, and treating people and partners with respect.
Building a new business inside a 100-year-old company
A new unit inside an established brand needs the speed of a start-up and the trust of the core at the same time. Lessons from building ARRI Solutions on mandate, partners and focus.
When intelligence becomes abundant: what leaders still own
As AI moves toward superintelligence faster than organizations can adapt, strategy, operating models and governance have to be rethought, from how decisions are prepared to how risk is reported. What does not scale away is leadership responsibility: judgment, accountability and the trust of people, customers and partners.
Climate action as operating discipline, not reporting exercise
Decarbonization and resilience matter when they are built into products, supply chains and capital allocation. With regulation shifting, the companies that win treat climate as a business case and a risk topic, not a label.
Press
On stage and in the press.
- Getty ImagesJoy Forum 2025 panel video, Saudi Arabia
- Destination KSAJoy Forum 2025 speaker line-up, Saudi ArabiaSpeakers at the forum included MrBeast, Dana White, Novak Djokovic and Shaquille O’Neal.
- BloombergARRI strategic realignment (as spokesperson)
- PetaPixelARRI on the consolidation of its lighting business (as spokesperson)
- TVBEuropeARRI Solutions, VCI and ROE deliver one of Europe’s largest VP stages
- ARRIAl-Hisn Big Time Studios
- eeNews EuropeSynopsys × Porsche Consulting whitepaper on automotive development
Beyond work
Outside the office.
Animal welfare
Volunteer with Georgia Jack Russell Rescue from 2013 to 2020 (behavioral assessment, adoption and training). Member of the German Animal Welfare Federation (Deutscher Tierschutzbund) since 2023.
Ju-Jutsu
17 years of Ju-Jutsu, black belt; trained adults and children in self-defense as an instructor.
Philosophy
Ethics and moral philosophy, especially Epicurus, Spinoza and Nietzsche, and what they teach about judgment and a well-lived life.
Networks Member of the Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) and of the QX Quarterly Crossing network.
Contact
Get in touch
For press enquiries and speaking invitations, please email [email protected].
For professional exchange, LinkedIn works well too.
Open to exchange on strategy, transformation and advisory topics.