MBA Alumni Day 2018
MBA Alumni meets in Frankfurt for their annual Alumni Day
This year theme was the impact of digitalization transformation on business and its impact on the future of work.
The event started with a casual get together at the ALEX Frankfurt Skyline Plaza on Friday November 16th followed by a full day on Saturday November 17th at the Evangelische Akademie located in the heart of Frankfurt at the Römer. More than 40 Alumni and current students joined the event. In addition to our friends from University of Bergamo we also welcomed Alumni from BMI Vilnius turning the Alumni Day into truly international event.
Digital transformation expert Peter Knapp opened the day with a very insightful look into the roadmap for Digitial Transformation of a manufacturing company. As former Chief Digital Officer and experienced head of some of the largest data centers in Europe he was able to showcase challenges of digital transformations. In his view deep commitment and digital skills are needed from top management which cannot be achieved by a singular strategy workshop. He recommends to develop a long term strategy and detailed digital roadmap which helps a company to prioritize and allocate resources needed for the digital transformation. “Knowledge and use of digital buzz words” will not be enough to compete any longer.
Jens Matthias, Talent and Development Leader of PricewaterhouseCooper Europe outlined innovative learning and effective development opportunities at PwC. The biggest challenge for the company is to take its employees on the digital transformation journey despite their heavy commitment as auditors and consultants. To assist it’s employees PwC has developed a digital learning platform which selects and organizes learning topics, provides feedback and tracks learning progress. 80% of the information used on the platform can be found in the internet. The key to an effective system is the rigorous pre selection and quality check by own specialists. Future work also means new working environments which PwC is also investing in. Jens Matthias showed newly renovated offices which underlined the modern atmosphere of collaborative work spaces and areas without fixed offices or desks. “Digitalization is also changing the way we will work together in the future – more flexible and in collaborative networks”.
As last year the Alumni Association awarded the best Master Thesis of the last MBA group. This year the award was given to Michael Döring who also presented his thesis on the topic of “Measurement of Empathy As a Precondition To Influence Customer Behavior”.
After a short report on the MBA program which has trained almost 300 students since its start in 2002 and the Alumni Association the group visited the Live Escape Room in Frankfurt. Organized in teams the group “escaped” from different rooms working their way through searches, riddles and solving mysteries. It was fascinating the see how engaged everyone was and how effective team work can be when you have to solve a lot of challenges in very short time!
A long and very interesting day was concluded at Restaurant Garibaldi with nice food and drinks as well as exchanging thoughts on the day’s topics and making plans for further meetings - maybe in Bergamo or Vilnius.
