A conversation with Dr. Georg Schroth, Co-founder and CTO of NavVis, on the technology, teamwork, and vision behind the award.
Innovation takes many forms. It can mean developing new technology, changing how an industry works, or finding better ways to solve everyday problems. That's also what makes the Innovator des Jahres award interesting: it recognizes businesses of all sizes and across very different industries in the German-speaking world.
And this year, NavVis has been named Innovator of the Year 2026!
Founded in 2017 by Michael Oelmann, publisher of DDW (Die Deutsche Wirtschaft), the award celebrates companies making a difference through their products, technologies, processes, and business models.
For NavVis, the recognition reflects three important developments: our innovative product portfolio, our growth as a company, and the increasing relevance of our technology in the market. With the recent launches of NavVis CLX, NavVis VLX 4, and IVION 12, we're continuing to make it easier for people to capture physical reality, keep that information current, and use it to make better decisions.
But as our Co-founder and CTO, Dr. Georg Schroth, explains, innovation is about much more than the technology itself. It's about turning ambitious ideas into products that genuinely improve how customers work, and recognizing the people who make that possible.
On October 20, 2026, Michael Oelmann, President of the award's Nomination Committee, visited our Munich headquarters to present the award to Georg on behalf of NavVis. After the ceremony, they sat down to discuss the innovations behind the recognition, what it means for the NavVis team, and where the company is heading next.
The following interview has been edited for clarity and readability while preserving the original meaning.
Many companies are investing heavily in modernizing factories, upgrading plants, and renovating buildings. Yet they still rely on outdated drawings and information to make major decisions. That often leads to unnecessary rework, delays, and downtime.
This is exactly the problem we're addressing at NavVis.
We do this in two ways. First, we radically reduce the cost and complexity of capturing the actual conditions of physical assets. Second, we make that information available as a current, trusted spatial record that people can use to plan, build, and operate.
For our customers, that means moving through projects faster, avoiding unnecessary costs, and getting more out of their assets.
But our ambition goes further. We envision a world in which every building and factory has a reliable spatial record that both people and AI systems can use to make decisions about the physical world.
We've introduced two new capture devices and a new generation of IVION. Together, they make it much easier for customers to capture physical reality and put that data to work.
NavVis CLX is about bringing reliable reality capture into everyday work. We've made the technology simpler and more accessible, so that people can capture their environments without needing the same level of specialized expertise or investment traditionally associated with reality capture.
This makes it practical to capture data across more projects and locations.
NavVis VLX 4, on the other hand, pushes the boundaries of what's possible with dynamic reality capture. We've taken the level of detail even further, allowing customers to capture fine geometric details that are especially important when making high-value, high-stakes decisions.
And with IVION 12, we're advancing how customers manage and use that information. It's about making reality data easier to keep current and accessible, so teams can understand existing conditions, plan changes, and verify results.
Together, these three innovations represent a significant step forward. They're making it easier for organizations to work with their physical assets digitally, from the initial capture through to the decisions that follow.
That's actually quite difficult to answer because there were so many challenges our teams had to solve along the way.
If I had to identify one breakthrough, though, it would be what these technologies now make possible when used together.
A customer can capture a building or walk through a factory and, potentially within the same day, explore that environment virtually. They can review the conditions with colleagues, discuss changes, and make decisions based on what is physically there.
For me, that's the biggest achievement of these three launches.
It's not just about advancing individual technologies. It's about making the entire process of capturing and working with physical reality much more accessible and practical for our customers.
I really see this as an award by the team, for the team.
Our people have worked incredibly hard to turn technological ideas into products that customers can actually use. And that's an important distinction.
Innovation isn't just about having an exciting concept or something that looks impressive in a LinkedIn post. It's about developing something that has a real, positive impact on customers and the way they work.
That's what makes this recognition meaningful to me.
I'm grateful that this work is being recognized, and it's encouraging to see more and more companies adopting our technology.
There's also something bigger here. We have the opportunity to build a European technology champion that organizations around the world can rely on. Seeing that take shape, thanks to the dedication of our team, is something I'm particularly proud of.
Our vision is for every building and factory to have a current, trusted spatial record that people and intelligent systems can rely on.
We're already seeing more companies adopt this approach, with real benefits for how they manage and work with their facilities.
But there's another important step ahead.
Today, much of what we capture is a geometric representation of reality. We can digitally represent the physical environment and understand what it looks like.
The next step is moving toward a semantic representation, where individual objects in that environment can be recognized and understood.
Imagine being able to select a piece of equipment in a digital representation of a factory, move it, duplicate it, or explore different layouts before making changes on site.
That's the direction we're working toward. It would allow people to interact with their physical environments digitally in entirely new ways, opening up many more applications for planning and decision-making.
And that's what makes the future so exciting, both for our customers and for the people here at NavVis who are building these technologies.
Hear Georg discuss the innovations behind the award, what the recognition means to the NavVis team, and his vision for the future of the built world.