eMBA Forum 2014 – embracing #digitalisation

Last week we spent two very inspiring days at eMBA Forum 2014, where our executive MBA students came together to learn about digital economy and digital marketing.

We started Wednesday morning by learning that digitalisation is not so much about technology, but utilisation of new applications and practices. Petri Rouvinen, CEO at Etlatieto Oy, pointed out that a true bottleneck is the ability to see possibilities just beyond the horizon. Companies should be brave and agile, and encourage skunkworks projects.

According to Ville Tolvanen – an entrepreneur, advisor for growth, strategy and differentiation – digitalisation implies a behavioural change both on an individual and on an organisational level. He encouraged everyone to be open in the digital world – sharing is caring! As a group assignment, participants took Ville’s advice into practice and brainstormed 10 digital business ideas.

Teemu Arina, a technology entrepreneur and a biohacker, gave us a very good illustration of the old wisdom by Peter Druckes:

What gets measured gets managed.

His example was very personal: how you are able to improve your life on a personal level by tracking and measuring things. But what would this imply on the organisational level? If you started to track and measure your organisations’ digital presence or the sentiments of your digital community, what would it imply in terms of processes and practices?

Johannes “Hatsolo” Hattunen provided us a living example of the value of storytelling. He emphasized that a goal without a plan is just a wish. One should change their attitude from “I got to” to “I get to“. THEOPPORTUNITYISNOWHERE!

Thursday morning Mika Pantzar (PhD), research professor in National Consumer Research Centre, took us to the factory of the future. We saw various examples of deriving value from the big data, but we also realised that the “value” may sometimes also seem problematic when regarded from a different angle.

Janne Saarikko, strategy director at Zeeland Oyj, told us among other things to stop broadcasting and gatekeeping, and rather to encourage people to participate in discussions about their companies and businesses.

And finally, Tuomas Lonka, marketing director at Rovio, provided us with an excellent example of developing and nurturing a brand community and creating partnerships which might provide huge opportunities for brand and community extensions.

The overall goal of this 2-day session was to make the participants, our executive MBA students, think of the challenges and possibilities of digitalisation, but also to make them realise the opportunities it offers for their organisations.

The digital barometer published by Rouvinen and his colleagues reveals that Finnish companies – although having the best preconditions in the world for digitalisation – are actually lagging behind countries like China, Italy and Russia in the utilisation of digital channels and practices.

In the end we hope the participants walked out of the 2-day session better equipped to promote the change and manage it in their own organisations. Seeing the final group work presentations at the end of the second day made us very confident they will!

You can catch some of the atmosphere via this video:
http://youtu.be/k6Z04ykysCY – or by reading the tweets.

Post co-created by: Riitta Birkstedt & Timo Oksanen.