Pre-program
You identify a business transformation challenge/ opportunity to work on during the program with support from IMD.
You get familiar with the latest digital technologies through a designated platform.
Program
Morning sessions
Move from inspiration to prototyping
You will explore business opportunities in 3 areas:
Designing new products, services and solutions
Are you dealing with stagnating sales or even serious disruptions in your market? Perhaps you’ve succeeded in partially streamlining your cost structure. You must come up with new ways to grow your business and technology is certain to help, but where should you start? In this session, you will be challenged to design a new customer offering (product, service or solution) that can bring new sources of growth for your business and to imagine ways to test your assumptions in the market.
Delivering new user experiences
Technology provides us with amazing new capabilities, but ultimately, the implementation of a new technology depends upon an audience wanting to buy it, use it and be wowed. In this session, you’ll learn about users to better understand their “pain points”, the benefits they’re seeking and the value they’re willing to allocate. With this insight, you’ll explore how your business–customer interface could be improved through technology.
Developing operational efficiencies
Are you under relentless pressure to make operations more efficient, reduce costs or improve internal services? Technology can improve an organization’s competitiveness by offering people powerful tools to access the right information at the right time, in turn to facilitate their decision-making. But technology goes well beyond supplying information. It can also augment human intelligence to improve the running of your business.
Afternoon plenaries
Explore exponentially improving technologies
Get the latest from EPFL and other technology experts on:
IoT
Nowadays, every organization must think about how to embrace the opportunities offered by the IoT and its underlying smart-connected technologies, as they can apply to different industrial fields. In this session, you’ll cover the three main themes that enable the IoT to be deployed in any business.
Data analytics & artificial intelligence
You’ll discover how modern machine learning and data science are reshaping existing businesses and how they can help you identify new opportunities, too. In this session, fast-forward to the near future, discuss the next wave of artificial-intelligence (AI) systems and anticipate their impact on data-enabled corporations.
Intelligent robotics
In this session, you’ll learn about the trends and technological innovations of these robots being developed in research labs and about the companies interested in them. You’ll explore use cases that are indicative of how intelligent robots are set to revolutionize manufacturing, service, and health businesses.
Blockchain
Are you trying to understand blockchain and how it could be useful for your business? Considered the biggest revolution since the internet and commonly associated with bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, blockchain has the potential to transform multiple industries ranging from healthcare to politics. Find out how this database validated by a distributed community rather than a centralized authority, makes it inherently resistant to modification of data and thereby essential for businesses from a security perspective.
The future of the technology-aided workplace
During this session you will take a journey into the workplace of tomorrow.
Afternoon sessions
Develop your technology-enabled business case
Create and refine your beta-prototype through experiential learning:
- Get first-hand exposure to new technologies with a visit to EPFL labs
- Exchange with start-ups from EPFL that have applied AI, IoT and robotics to different business areas
- Develop a beta-prototype with feedback from business, innovation and technology experts. Come as a team to develop a beta-protoype for your specific business opportunity.
By the end of the program you will be ready to test your technology-enabled business case within your organization.
Post-program
Continue technology prototyping for your business transformation initiative and get feedback.
Join IMD’s professional alumni network
Once you complete an IMD program, you join IMD’s alumni network, an outstanding global community of global business leaders who will support you long-term.
Discover benefits
