Digital Innovation Strategy & Management 

Integrate Innovation, Artificial Intelligence, and Strategy into your Organization's DNA.

Become a more resilient, proactive organization that leverages technology-driven innovation for growth.

When you download the brochure you will also receive a link to Robert Wolcott's new book, Proximity: How Coming Breakthroughs in Just-in-Time Transform Business, Society, and Daily Life.

 

 

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A company's ability to be agile, nimble, and digitally responsive was tested on a massive scale in recent years. Organizations that rose to meet the challenge were digitally mature companies that could pivot quickly. When you attend this program, you'll gain the frameworks to infuse data, innovation, and technology into your company's DNA, increasing your company's ability to adapt to changing customer demands, make faster, more impactful data-driven decisions, and build a culture that drives innovation through digital transformation.

By attending, you will:

  • Discover how digital technologies can transform business models, value chains, and entire industries—and what to do about it.
  • Envision how your company can build a portfolio of opportunities, from radical efficiency enhancements to new growth—while achieving tangible business value.
  • Acquire a systemic framework to evaluate an organization’s current innovation profile and prioritize where innovation will most help your organization win in the future.
  • Discover how to use artificial intelligence and new analytical modes to enhance strategic decision- making in increasingly complex and evolving digital environments.
  • Develop tactical innovation tools that will help leverage outside perspectives for insights and new ideas.
  • Learn how to make decisions when data is incomplete or unreliable.
  • Discover how not to get blindsided by your blind spots when exploring innovation initiatives.
  • Examine the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the impact that evolution of platforms has on businesses moving forward.

This program is designed for mid- to senior-level executives who seek to take their organization to a new level by launching bold, new innovation strategies enabled by digital transformation. The program benefits a wide range of industries and company sizes, including digital and non-digital sectors. Companies facing significant threats from disruption will find benefit in attending as well.

Job titles and functions include: Senior leaders, business owners, managing directors, regional directors, and those in the fields of business development, innovation, digital, R&D, and operations.

Randall Kroszner

Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics
Randall S. Kroszner is Norman R. Bobins Professor of Economics. He previously served as Deputy Dean for Executive Programs at Booth, as well as a Governor of the Federal Reserve System from 2006 until 2009. He chaired the committee on Supervision and Regulation of Banking Institutions and the committee on Consumer and Community Affairs. In these capacities, he took a leading role in developing responses to the financial crisis and in undertaking new initiatives to improve consumer protection and disclosure, including rules related to home mortgages and credit cards. He represented the Federal Reserve Board on the Financial Stability Forum (now called the Financial Stability Board), the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and the Central Bank Governors of the American Continent and was a director of NeighborWorks America. Dr. Kroszner chaired the working party of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), composed of deputy central bank governors and finance ministers, on Policies for the Promotion of Better International Payments Equilibrium. As a member of the Fed Board, he was also a voting member of the Federal Open Market Committee.

From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Kroszner was a member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). He was involved in formulating policy on a wide range of issues, including responses to corporate governance scandals, government-sponsored enterprise reform, pension reform, terrorism risk insurance, tax reform, currency crisis management, sovereign debt restructuring, the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and international trade and development.

Since 1990, Dr. Kroszner has taught at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Dr. Kroszner was Director of the George J. Stigler Center for the Study of the Economy and the State. He served as editor of the Journal of Law & Economics and has been associate editor of a number of other academic and policy journals. He was a member of the board of directors at the National Association for Business Economics and the Financial Management Association.

Dr. Kroszner serves as the Chair of the Financial Research Advisory Committee of the Office of Financial Research of the U.S. Treasury. He is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago’s Academic Advisory Council and of the board of advisors of the Paulson Institute. In addition, he is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is member of the board of trustees of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a member of the board of directors of the Renaissance Society.

Dr. Kroszner has been a visiting scholar at the Securities and Exchange Commission, the IMF, the Stockholm School of Economics, the Stockholm University, the Free University of Berlin, Germany, the London School of Economics, and the American Enterprise Institute. He was the John M. Olin Visiting Fellow in Law and Economics at the University of Chicago Law School the Bertil Danielson Visiting Professor of Banking and Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics, and the SK Chaired Visiting Professor at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea.

His research interests include regulation of financial institutions, international financial crises, the Great Depression, monetary economics, corporate governance, debt restructuring and bankruptcy, and political economy. His paper on managerial stock ownership (with Clifford Holderness and Dennis Sheehan) won the Brattle Prize for best corporate finance paper in the Journal of Finance. His book co-authored with Nobel laureate Robert J. Shiller, Reforming U.S. Financial Markets: Reflections Before and Beyond Dodd-Frank (MIT Press) appeared on the Washington Post’s Book World political best sellers list.

Dr. Kroszner is a frequent commentator in the international media. He provides advice to financial institutions, government organizations, and central banks throughout the world.

Dr. Kroszner received a Sc.B. (magna cum laude) in applied mathematics-economics (honors) from Brown University in 1984 and an M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1990), both in economics, from Harvard University.

Robert Wolcott

Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship
Wolcott is Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Booth. Additionally, he is Adjunct Professor in Executive Education at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and formerly a visiting professor at the Keio Business School (Japan). Wolcott won Teacher of the Year from Kellogg's EMBA program in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017. He serves on the advisory board for the Open Innovation Lab of Norway; H-Farm, the leading digital innovation ecosystem in Italy. Wolcott is also a managing partner with Clareo, an innovation strategy consultancy serving senior executives at global corporations such as Exelon, BHP, Griffith Foods, Zurich Insurance, Owens Corning and others.

Wolcott is a regular contributor to Forbes regarding the impact of technology change on business, leadership and society. His book with Dr. Michael Lippitz, Grow From Within: Mastering Corporate Entrepreneurship and Innovation (McGraw-Hill, 2010) shares a decade of research and has been published in Chinese and Japanese. Wolcott's work has appeared in MIT Sloan Management Review, strategy+business, The Harvard Business Review, TheHill.com, Quartz.com, The Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, Business Week, The Financial Times (European Edition), The New York Times and numerous overseas publications. He is a frequent speaker at events worldwide.

In 2003, Wolcott founded the Kellogg Innovation Network (KIN), a network of senior executives dedicated to driving sustainable innovation, now an independent organization known as The World Innovation Network (TWIN). TWIN's annual summit, TWIN Global, takes place in late Spring and includes leaders from around the world who collaborate around issues of significance for their organizations and for humanity. Wolcott is also an active angel investor in enterprises such as crowd funding leader Indiegogo, student loan innovator Lumni, legal documentation platform Page Vault, healthcare data and analytics providers SA Ignite and Clearcare Online (exited to Battery Ventures in 2016), cyber security provider MagicCube and international art exposition EXPO Chicago.

Wolcott received a BA, European and Chinese History; and an MS and Ph.D., Industrial Engineering & Management Science, Northwestern University.

James Janega

Adjunct Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship

James Janega is Managing Partner at Growth Innovation Strategy Group (GIS). GIS helps organizations see how the future will develop around them, find wins in changing environments, and build growth paths through better strategies and better innovations.

Janega has taught executives and worked with consulting clients in consumer goods and electronics, financial services, commercial real estate and insurance, energy, education, infrastructure, and innovative technologies that include clean tech, precision optics, and quantum hardware. He specializes in bridging the gap between strategy and innovation, particularly identifying growth opportunities and developing products and services that serve emerging market segments.

Janega’s career brings a broad perspective to new activities. His two decades in journalism include 15 years at the Chicago Tribune Media Group. He helped develop the Strategy & Innovation group at Slalom Consulting Chicago, and worked in emerging opportunity areas at Cushman & Wakefield that included managing innovation strategy, new product strategy and development, and new business operations. He has served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the EnterpriseWorks incubator at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign since 2015, and is a startup advisor at the Duality quantum accelerator in Chicago.
Janega holds an MBA from Chicago Booth, an MA in public affairs reporting from the University of Illinois at Springfield, and a BA in journalism from Northern Illinois University.

When not teaching or consulting, Janega’s interests include laughing with his wife and their two children, exploring the outdoors, racing in Ironman triathlons, and performing jazz music.

Kristian Hammond

Former Associate Professor in Computer Science at the University of Chicago and Founder of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Chicago

Kristian Hammond, a previous associate professor in Computer Science and founder of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Chicago, research has always been focused on artificial intelligence, machine-generated content, and context-driven information systems. He is the co-founder and chief scientist of Narrative Science, which turns data into actionable stories and insights. He is also a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University and received his PhD from Yale University.

Selected Publications:

Please don't Hire a Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, Harvard Business Review, March 29, 2017

Why this Company will Help Change the Future of Artificial Intelligence, Computer World, February 8, 2017

5 unexpected sources of bias in artificial intelligence, Tech Crunch, December 10, 2016

Global Macro Trends: Strategic Risk Management Frameworks

  • Examine disruptive global macro trends and develop a strategic risk management framework for executives to build resilient organizations that are prepared for such macro risks.

Innovation Strategy and Foresight – Part I

  • Examine how corporations perform in the present and thrive into the future- or fail to.
  • Explore how digital technologies transform every industry ecosystem, from raw materials to end consumers- and what it could mean for your company

Innovation Strategy and Foresight – Part II

  • Discover the Innovation Radar, a strategic framework to think systematically regarding innovation, uncover and prioritize opportunities and win the long-term innovation game.

Making Innovation Happen: Structure, Process, Culture and Leadership – Part I

  • Examine the frameworks of quantifiable successful innovation models
  • Four Models for Corporate Entrepreneurship

Making Innovation Happen: Structure, Process, Culture and Leadership – Part II

• Explore the essential roles of senior leadership for enabling innovation
• Understand how leaders at all levels can advance an organization’s innovation agenda

Artificial Intelligence: Integrating Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence into your Organization

  • A New Philosophy on Artificial Intelligence
  • The Future of Work
  • Robots and Jobs
  • Generative AI  
What participants say about Digital Innovation programs with Professor Wolcott:

 

“Professor Wolcott has an excellent command of the subject matter and I enjoyed his high energy teaching style. Professor Wolcott helped to demystify the digital space, and built bridges between innovation and strategy in the digital era.”

—Marty Proctor, President & CEO, Seven Generations Energy


“Great, thought provoking content...Rob [Wolcott] did a great job describing the underlying models and theory and then using a practical example to illustrate. This created an environment of thoughtful questions and discussion.”

—Steve Hammock, Senior VP Growth and Strategy, Chugach Government Solutions, LLC


“Professor Wolcott was able to provide very useful and objective ways of approaching an abstract problem like Digital Innovation.”

—Ashish Ranjan, Global Client Partner, Wipro Technologies


“Professor Wolcott delivers an outstanding course [with] practical innovation knowledge, not just theoretical.”
“[I had] so many takeaways; I found the program incredibly valuable.”

Upcoming Courses

Date Fee
May 6-10, 2024 $12,500 Register Now
November 11-15, 2024 $12,500 Register Now

 

This program typically runs twice a year, Spring and Fall.