Digital Leadership | Spark Institute

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP COURSE

PROGRAM

The founding principles of the digital economy and fast-changing digital world
What are the latest economical trends, which have a huge influence of your business
Major digital trends and characteristics of exponential organizations.
Disruptive technologies in the service of traditional industries
EXO Works method: The Corporate Immune System, scalable innovation, cross-functional collaboration techniques

In this module we will discuss the basics of the exponential economy, crucial driving forces of the changing environment and the laws of the future. We will go through the industry patterns and market dynamics that drive digital transformation and explain how these influence the business ecosystem and different markets.

We also will share the values and behaviors of leaders in the digital era. The program sets off from the founding principles of the digital economy, determined by exponentially developing technologies. Participants gain insight into the correlating factors shaping their markets.

THE LATEST AVAILABLE AI & AUTOMIZED TECHNOLOGIES

What is the reality with AI and automation and what ideas only futuristic?
Tips to deal with your subcontractors and how to find the best ones?
The role of Data in the decision making process
What is AI and what is not
Today’s trends and available recommended technologies

Not every company needs artificial intelligence immediately, but every company has to examine the potentials in using algorithms. Every company needs to gain necessary skills to apply AI solutions, and currently only a few percentage of the companies use AI solutions to automate their processes. Why? The most common reason is that employees do not have the necessary knowledge and skills yet to evolve and implement the AI tools within their organization.

We will also examine where are future technologies today in their development curve, and how these may evolve in the next 5-10 years. We do all this to create a common ground about the potential effects these technologies will have on the participants’ business’ future.

Spark Institute’s aim is to help participants to get started on this road with giving insights and inspiration about AI automation. We will present the areas where automized AI and machine learning technologies are already well-developed and work well, also dispel some misconceptions about what tasks can be or cannot be solved with these technologies.

STRATEGIC PLANNING FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

Key drivers of value creation
Designing scalable strategies
Introducing the Platform Business Model
How to build disruptive digital strategies

To seamlessly complete a digital transformation process we have to have a digital mindset and a corresponding business strategy. This module shares the theory and practice of building disruptive digital strategies and how large organizations can co-op with it. As part of the workshop participants will engage in the process of strategy creation and also learn best practices from different industries.

During the second module we unfold two main topics:

1. How can we build a strategy that allows rapid growth for the company, whilst the implementation is resource efficient thanks to game changing technologies?

2. How can we make sure we took the right strategic direction in a fast and cost-effective way?

EXPERIENCE DESIGN

Radical innovations in traditional business processes
Find and validate market opportunities
The mapping of costumer behavior patterns
The process of customer experience design: Embrace Service Design and Design Thinking mindset through a mini project in practice
Plan innovative business models of your services
Use more your creative side of solve your challenges

Service Design and Design Thinking have proved to be an extremely effective tool to support innovation and digital transformation processes. Using the creative design techniques you can equip your organization to deal with uncertainty and change with greater confidence.

The process involves the people within the organization mobilizing their true potential and igniting their internal motivation.

In this session we introduce these methodologies to the participants and share some really exciting application examples.

We conclude the session with a workshop to practice the methodology on a real life subject.

SYSTEM THINKING & HYBRID-THINKING: BIOMIMICRY IN BUSINESS

How to build viable systems that adopt to your organization?
How to make your company’s profile more sustainable?
Apply System Thinking, the alternative approach to solve 21st century leadership challenges
Hybridthinking: What can we learn from nature that we can benefit from also in the business world?
Develop an action plan to deal with the challenging problem and opportunity.

Did you know, the extremly efficient wind turbine blades mimic the edge of the flippers of the sealwhaes? Have you ever thought, that you could also find the solution of one of your biggest work challenges from nature?

Biomimicry means technology or business solution inspires by forms, processes and systems exist in our environment. It transforms the way how we think and gives a powerful force for sustainable innovation. It is a new way to experiment with possible product and service development avenues.

See your organization in a system and be connected to your ecosystem to reach your business highest performance.

TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP

How do we, humans deal with change?
Identify your personal motivators and improve your individual and organizational resilience
How can we leave old habits, patterns and discover new ones?
How to feel comfortable out of the comfort zone
Digital detox, how to stay conscious in the noise and keep a necessary private space
How to survive in the age of AI ? – Collaboration with robots

What are the methods that can help us to deal successfully with the challenges and keep ourselves on the surface? Are we able to constantly renew at all?

As you can see, in this session we are focusing on the human aspect of digital transformation. In the fast-moving pace of the workplace people easily get hit by the change fatigue, and get lost in the realms of buzzwords and rapidly changing objectives.

This module puts flexibility and the ability to adapt to change into the limelight. Also we will focus on the following questions: How does automation and robotics affect workplaces and what new personal skills do we need to have to succeed? How can we keep balance under such a demanding pressure?

AGILE MINDSET & TOOLS

Command and control leadership style – There is a way out
Leadership styles in the digital age, empower your team
How you can nurture the culture of autonomy and responsibility in your organization?
Overview of the agile and lean methodologies with emphasis on the following questions: – Which approach is suitable for which type of team or problem? – What are the pros and cons/bottlenecks and opportunities of each approach? – How to handle bottlenecks?

During these lectures and workshops participant will learn and practice the methods, skills and behaviors of different leadership approaches which helps them to become and effective leaders in the Digital Age.

Agile thinking provides experts with new ways to evolve their organization, their teams and themselves. In this section we are going to share the key characteristics of agile leadership, the new roles and responsibilities of leaders and team members in fast growing organizations and the archetypes in different leadership styles.

Thus the program will contain tips and tricks to nurture the culture of autonomy and responsibility in your organization. Moreover, we also show hands on practices and tools for leaders to manage cross-functional teams.

Outcome of the module is that leaders learns when to use agile and when not and how to apply agile and lean startup methods in operative corporate work.

I’LL BECOME A DIGITAL LEADER!

FACULTY

CLICK ON THEIR NAME TO GET TO KNOW THEM!

FERENC SZALAI

Since 1998 he has participated in a number of international, high-performance supercomputing, grid and cloud computing projects as the researcher of the MTA SZTAKI Laboratory of Parallel and Distributed Systems and NIIF Institute. For a long time he was one of the main developers of the ARC system, which is actively used to process large amounts of data in the experiments (e.g. measurements related to the Higgs boson) of the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator.
He has worked with many researchers and has published articles in international journals during that time.

From 2007 after the academic times he has founded and led several enterprises in Hungary, England and the United States. These companies are addressed to distributed data storage systems, virtualization, a variety of web and mobile technologies and services, and pharmaceutical solutions.
Currently under Real Ventures in Silicon Valley he is supporting founders of early stage enterprises, how can they dream big, how can they bring these dreams to life and enter the international markets. He is also present as an angel investor in businesses.

He is also engaged with several non-profit organizations. He is one of the organizers of the New Tech and Science Meetups in Budapest, was the head of the Asimov Foundation for a few years.
In his free time he loves to teach young people about science and technology.

DEA FRANKÓ CSUBA

Dea’s projects mainly focus on the progress of technologies, organizations, human beings and their interactions. She continuously researches how to empower people to embrace change and allow its positive effects shape their paths; and how to train themselves in order to achieve an ever growing open-mindedness and flexibility. She is head of Spark Institute, the Future Studies Center of International Business School Budapest, where she is developing education programs introducing the professions of the future. She is founder and organizer of knowledge sharing community called ‘A Műhely’, which offers inspirational programs and learning opportunities for both leaders and entrepreneurs. In 2009 she co-founded KÜRT Academy an organization that became a smashing success in Hungary under her guidance. Dea is deep into practicing and teaching yoga and meditation and is immensely interested in ancient philosophies.

dr. Arndt Pechstein

As a Managing Partner of ‘phi360’ innovation consultancy, Arndt’s passion and expertise intersect at innovation processes combining Biomimicry, Design Thinking, and System Dynamics to develop and deliver reliable, mission-critical solutions for companies and organizations. He is also director of ‘Biomimicry Germany’ which is a nexus of professionals combining their expertises and bringing nature-inspired innovation to their respective sectors.

Biomimicry is the scientific design discipline of studying and emulating nature’s effective design strategies to drive product and service innovation. The vision of biomimicry is to create a resilient, adaptive, and thriving economy inspired by nature’s designs, strategies, and systems.

Arndt holds a PhD degree in Neuroscience and a diploma in Biochemistry/Biotechnology. He managed research projects at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, for several years and specialized in Biomimicry at the Biomimicry Institute in Boston.Arndt is thrilled to inspire students with Design Thinking at the Hasso-Plattner Institute and is involved in international projects from Sweden to Ecuador. He is a passionate traveler, outdoor-enthusiast, climber, traceur, and martial arts trainer.

RÓBERT BYSSZ

Robert joined Philips four years ago. In his current role he is responsible for the sales transformation globally. With this transformation the company is impacting close to 4500 sales people in over 100 countries, with enabling them to be successful in a more digital environment than what they are faced with today. Close to 50% of the total revenue of Philips, i.e. apprx. 11 Bn EUR is coming from the healthcare sector globally, in which sector all analysts expect a huge transformation in the coming 5-10 years. Philips is leading the pack beyond its own industry when it comes to digital transformation, which started in 2011, and the results of which are clearly visible not only in the financial numbers, and organizational set-up but deep in the culture and behavior of the teams. Fortune named Philips global CEO as one of the top 20 CEOs of the globe last December based on the clear improvement the company achieved under his leadership.

Robert was invited to his current role after the great success the teams achieved in CEE when in the first year they managed to increase EBIT by 14%, followed by a 20%+ CSG in the coming years.

He joined Philips after 10 successful years at Hungarian Telekom, where he started his journey as a trainee at Westel and in his last position he was the deputy director of Small and Medium Business Sales Directorate. In 2007 he was member of the team, which designed and deployed the new operating model, in which Telekom merged all its subsidiaries under the umbrella of “T”. As he recalls this was the start of his never-ending endeavor to master the fields of change management, transformation, understanding the future ways of work and modern leadership. He spends all his leisure time with his two daughters and wife. They started their own transformation journey when purely driven by health consciousness they turned to a whole, plant based diet, which they became proud advocates of.

LET’S LEARN DIGITAL LEADERSHIP WITH THEM!

WHY SHOULD YOU TAKE PART?

More than
0
%
of the companies have a designated CDO.
This is a
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%
increase since 2015.
While
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%
of CEOs consider digital transformation of key importance,
Less than
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%
are taking steps to produce the missing skills.

OUR BIGGEST CLIENTS IN TRANSFORMATIVE COURSES

CLIENT TESTIMONIALS

Oliver Cordt

The Digital Leadership training was a real eye-opener for all of us. Within really intensive training sessions we learned much more than we expected. After the training it was clear for everybody: Tradition is not a business model! We have to move forward and we have to be one of the first.

Éva Nikovics

What we experience seems to be a technological revolution but the leadership program of Spark confirmed to me that change starts with people. We have to change, improve, expand human knowledge and attitude in order to be able to utilize technological knowledge successfully.