Munich Business School logo

Cloud Computing for Digital Transformation: From Course to Conference

I have been teaching a course on Digital Transformation for a few years now, normally with Ben Ellermann, Managing Director of MUUUH! Next and Future of Voice as well as a frequent collaborator in past projects. We have run the course at Munich Business School and were recently invited teach it at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg as well. While I focus on the relevant frameworks, models and up-to-date research literature, Ben usually brings his perspective from practice and contributes several real-world examples he has been working on lately.

After a discussion of some well-known frameworks, I have broken up the course into so-called immersion sessions, in each of which we discuss relevant sub-topics to the field of Digital Transformation, normally presented by course participants. Topics covered in these immersion sessions include digital (transformation) strategy, business model innovation, digital platforms, data analytics, digital labs, agility/scrum and cloud computing. Depending on the set-up, course participants may also need to write a seminar paper on an immersion topic of their choice.

Continue reading Cloud Computing for Digital Transformation: From Course to Conference

New Course: Human Resource Management in the Digital Age

Over the past year, I’ve been working on a MOOC, a Massive Open Online Course, with the title ‘Human Resource Management in the Digital Age’ (you can find the trailer below), together with my colleagues Karina Piersig and Andreas Eckhard. I’m quite excited about the launch of the course in early October. At its core, it is about human resource management, but it will focus specifically on how new information technologies affect the HR function. Quite appropriately, we’ve chosen the MOOC format for this course. We’re partnering with NovoEd, a technology provider specifically focused on social learning. This approach allows us not only to transmit domain-specific knowledge via video lectures, but to let participants work in small groups on assignments, thereby developing their own digital competencies. The course is part of our MBA program at GGS, however it will be opened up to externals, e.g. HR practitioners or students from our international partner schools. Registration is now open, so make sure to sign up! Continue reading New Course: Human Resource Management in the Digital Age

SNA Courses and Summer Schools in 2013

I’ve been closely following the offerings for courses with a focus on social network analysis over the past couple of years. Roughly two years ago, I compiled a list of events taking place in Europe. Back then, I decided for an introductory course taking place in Trier, Germany, which I really enjoyed. Recently, I’ve repeated my search and here is a selection of a few, slightly more international, courses that are of particular interest to me:

Although the Sunbelt conference is conveniently close this year, the courses offered are fairly short. Therefore, I’m likely to attend the Greenwich course which is spread out over a week. Interestingly, Christopher Tunnard has also converted the spreadsheet I linked to earlier into a website listing all SNA courses with a business focus around the world.

List of Social Network Courses in Europe

One particularly useful source of information that I draw on frequently is the SOCNET mailing list. Sometime towards the end of last year Christopher Tunnard collected information on the different types of social network courses being offered internationally. He consequently collected the data in a spreadsheet and you can now browse all courses by institution, instructor, category and name. I think this is pretty helpful when you’re trying to locate a course near you in a particular academic field. So, if you’re based in Europe and you’re interested in organization studies, psychology and communications – just like myself – you may find the following courses insightful:

Aarhus University: Introductory Social Network Analysis & Organizational Network Analysis

Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona: Theory, Methods and Applications of Social Networks (Summer School)

University of Essex: Introduction & Advanced Social Network Analysis (Summer School)

University of Glasgow: Assessing the Impact of Social Networks on Organizational Performance

University of Greenwich: Business Networks

Universität Trier: Sum­mer School on So­ci­al Net­work Ana­ly­sis

Tilburg University: Interorganizational Relationships