Past Event

2018 MIT Chicago Symposium: Digital Transformation

October 3, 2018
2018 MIT Chicago Symposium: Digital Transformation

Location

Allstate Innovation Hub
Merchandise Mart
222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza
Chicago, IL 60657, USA

Overview

Hosted by Allstate Insurance

The digital future is here, and the threat of disruption looms large. To succeed companies must embark on the difficult path of digital transformation…and that doesn’t mean creating another app. But what does digital transformation mean for your company and your business? What challenges have many high-profile companies faced and what can you learn from them? How can you prepare to succeed in a changing digital climate?

Jointly hosted by Allstate and the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, the 2018 Chicago Symposium will bring together leading MIT faculty, industry executives, and MIT startups to discuss the successes—and failures—of digital transformation from taking the right approach to squeezing the most value out of your data to embracing and maintaining the transformation.

  • Overview

    Hosted by Allstate Insurance

    The digital future is here, and the threat of disruption looms large. To succeed companies must embark on the difficult path of digital transformation…and that doesn’t mean creating another app. But what does digital transformation mean for your company and your business? What challenges have many high-profile companies faced and what can you learn from them? How can you prepare to succeed in a changing digital climate?

    Jointly hosted by Allstate and the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, the 2018 Chicago Symposium will bring together leading MIT faculty, industry executives, and MIT startups to discuss the successes—and failures—of digital transformation from taking the right approach to squeezing the most value out of your data to embracing and maintaining the transformation.


Agenda

9:00am

Registration and Breakfast
10:00am

Welcome and Introduction from MIT ILP
Senior Director, MIT Corporate Relations
Todd Glickman
Senior Director

Mr. Glickman joined the Industrial Liaison Program in January 2000, serving as the MIT liaison for companies worldwide, and joined the senior management of the office in 2005.

Prior to joining ILP, Todd was Assistant Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the professional society for meteorologists, which is based in Boston. At AMS, Todd's responsibilities included strategic planning for conferences, headquarters' liaison with AMS member boards and committees, support to the AMS Council, and public relations. In addition, Todd was Managing Editor for the AMS Glossary of Meteorology (2nd edition).

From 1979 to 1994, Todd held a variety of positions with WSI Corporation of Billerica, MA, including Manager, New Product Development, Media Marketing Manager, and Manager of the Government Program Office. WSI was a pioneer in the development of real-time weather information, providing value-added information and workstations for clients in media, aviation, industry, academia, and government. Some of Todd's projects included development of the weather data/information infrastructure for The Weather Channel; the introduction of digital satellite and radar imagery for television; planning and implementation of a network of weather briefing systems for the Federal Aviation Administration; and serving as liaison with the National Weather Service and professional organizations. In addition, Todd was instrumental in helping to develop the public-private partnership between the weather information industry and the Federal government.

Concurrently, Todd has a more than 30-year career as a radio meteorologist, and has been heard on dozens of stations nationwide. Today, he can be heard occasionally on all-news WCBS Newsradio-88 in New York City. He has chaired numerous meteorological conferences and symposia, and served on a number of boards and committees for the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He was awarded the AMS Seal of Approval for Radio Weathercasting in 1979, and was elected a Fellow of the AMS in 1997.

Todd's interests include transportation systems of all types, and he is an officer and past-trustee of the Seashore Trolley Museum of Kennebunkport, Maine. At MIT, Todd an officer and trustee of the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, which oversees the campus radio station WMBR-FM. He also volunteers as the academic advisor to a group of MIT freshman.

10:15am
President, Arity
Hallgren
Gary Hallgren
President

Gary Hallgren, President, Arity, leads strategy and operations for Arity, a connected car technology company founded by The Allstate Corporation. Hallgren has extensive experience in next-generation telematics solutions and Software as a Service (SaaS) business models, managing mergers and acquisitions, and leveraging data and analytics to create breakthrough business opportunities. Prior to joining Allstate in 2015, Hallgren served as senior vice president of Corporate Strategy at Telogis, was CEO of Remote Dynamics Inc., served as president and CEO of WirelessCar North America, Inc., and as vice president of operations at Volvo Technology of America.

10:45am

The Next IT: Innovation Transformation & The Technologies of Virtuous Cycles
Research Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, MIT Sloan School of Management
Michael Schrage
Michael Schrage
Research Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School of Management's Initiative on the Digital Economy. His research, writing, and advisory work focuses on the behavioral economics of models, prototypes, and metrics as strategic resources for managing innovation risk and opportunity. He is author of the award-winning book The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press, 2014), Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), and Serious Play (Harvard Business Review Press, 2000). His latest book, Recommendation Engines, was published in September 2020 by MIT Press as part of its Essential Knowledge series. He's done consulting and advisory work for Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, British Telecom, BP, Siemens, Embraer, Google, iRise, the Office of Net Assessment, and other organizations

Schrage has run design workshops and executive education programs on innovation, experimentation, and strategic measurement for organizations all over the world and is currently pioneering work in selvesware technologies designed to augment aspects, attributes, and talents of productive individuals. He is particularly interested in the future co-evolution of expertise, advice, and human agency as technologies become smarter than the people using them.

Data-driven digital innovation continues to redefine how organizations create and manage value inside the enterprise and out. ‘Network effects’ are now as important as networks for business success. Training algorithms has become as important as training people. The global economics of innovation have profoundly changed. So innovators and fast-followers alike increasingly look to platform architectures, business models and investments to take advantage of this growing wealth of digital opportunities. This talk explores, explains and argues that the p key to digital transformation is investing the human capital, creativity, competences and capital of one’s customers and clients. This insight is poorly understood yet key to the global success of companies ranging from Alibaba to Amazon to Tencent to Google to Netflix. Drawing from MIT Sloan School Initiative on the Digital Economy research, this talk presents an actionable framework for translating this concept into action.

11:25am

Networking Break
11:45am

Introduction to MIT Startup Exchange
Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations
Irina Sigalovsky
Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations

Irina Sigalovsky works in the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT where she builds mutually beneficial partnerships between corporations and MIT. Dr. Sigalovsky comes to MIT with 10 years of international experience in innovation strategy, technology forecasting and external innovation. Prior to MIT, Irina worked at GEN3 Partners, Inc. as a senior principal collaborating with Fortune 1000 companies to focus their innovation investments, execute strategic innovation agendas, and develop business globally. Throughout her career, Irina has taught at Tufts University, MIT Sloan, X-Prize Lab@MIT, MIT HST, Boston and Harvard Universities.

MIT Startup Exchange actively promotes collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry. Qualified startups are those founded and/or led by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni, or are based on MIT-licensed technology. Industry participants are principally members of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP).

MIT Startup Exchange maintains a propriety database of over 1,500 MIT-connected startups with roots across MIT departments, labs and centers; it hosts a robust schedule of startup workshops and showcases, and facilitates networking and introductions between startups and corporate executives.

STEX25 is a startup accelerator within MIT Startup Exchange, featuring 25 “industry ready” startups that have proven to be exceptional with early use cases, clients, demos, or partnerships, and are poised for significant growth. STEX25 startups receive promotion, travel, and advisory support, and are prioritized for meetings with ILP’s 230 member companies.

MIT Startup Exchange and ILP are integrated programs of MIT Corporate Relations.

Noon
CTO, Cogito
Azarbayejani
Ali Azarbayejani
CTO

Ali Azarbayejani is CTO at Cogito. He has 18 years of commercial experience as a scientist, entrepreneur, and designer of world-class computational technologies. Azarbayejani’s pioneering doctoral research at the MIT Media Lab in probabilistic modeling for 3-D vision was the basis for his first startup company, Alchemy 3D Technology, which created the market in the film and video post-production industry for camera match-moving software. He also has consulted in software development and business strategy and has been on the research staff at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs.

Founder & CEO, Emtropy Labs
Batlapenumarthy
Harish Batlapenumarthy
Founder & CEO

Harish Batlapenumarthy is founder and CEO of Emtropy Labs. For over 15 years, Batlapenumarthy, an MIT Sloan and IIT Bombay grad, has helped build and deploy enterprise grade applications for complex business processes from finance to HR to supply chain. He led the M&A technology integrations at Greatbatch Inc and was a product manager at Oracle Corp before that. Before Emtropy, he worked on Meemoz which used AI to automate the day in the life of a manager.

Head of Growth, Enigma
Bair
Tor Bair
Head of Growth

Tor Bair is the Head of Growth for Enigma, a company building privacy solutions for the decentralized web. He has previously worked at Snapchat, Spotify, and Hubspot on growth, revenue, and data science. Bair also worked for four years as an options and derivatives trader at Optiver US. Bair holds a BA in Economics from Brown University, where he took a strong interest in behavioral economics and game theory, and an MBA from MIT Sloan, where he focused his studies on blockchain technology, marketing, and data analytics.

Enigma is using groundbreaking privacy technologies to build the first platform for scalable, end-to-end decentralized applications. By creating a secure computation protocol where distributed nodes can compute over encrypted data, Enigma aims to become the privacy layer for the decentralized web. This technology can revolutionize dozens of industries that rely on sharing and computing over private and sensitive data, such as healthcare, finance, credit, and IoT.

Cofounder and CEO, Legit
Osman
Matthew Osman
Cofounder and CEO

Before cofounding Legit, Matthew Osman was the youngest Vice President at a $1 billion structured credit hedge fund in London, where he specialized in credit strategies and tax structuring. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2015 and has a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from the University of Oxford.

An operating system for R&D powered by AI
Legit uses Natural Language Processing to interpret free text descriptions of a product, idea, or technology and then compares that description against 100 million pieces of technical literature, internal documentation, and customer requests. Legit is able to provide quantitative feedback on how differentiated products are from what already exists and how closely they align with market needs. Through this approach, Legit increases R&D efficiency, creates timely close-loop communication between R&D and customers, and allows for unprecedented real-time transparency into R&D spend and efforts.

Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Lecturer, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; Chief Product Officer, Relativity6
Meyer
Nick Meyer
Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Lecturer, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; Chief Product Officer

Nick Meyer is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, Senior Lecturer at MIT, and Chief Product Officer at Relativity6. He is a serial co-founder having been the lead engineer for software companies across several industries.

Cogito: Real-time emotional intelligence software with live behavioral guidance.
Emtropy Labs: AI-driven behavioral insights to improve talent acquisition and development.
Enigma: Secure data sharing.
Legit: An operating system for invention powered by AI.
Relativity6: Customer retention platform.

12:40pm

Lunch and Startup Exhibit
2:00pm

Future Ready: Four Pathways to Digital Business Transformation
Research Scientist, Sloan Center for Information Systems Research
Nick van der Meulen
Research Scientist, Sloan Center for Information Systems Research

Dr. Nick van der Meulen is a Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR). He conducts academic research that targets the challenges of senior level executives at MIT CISR's member companies, with a specific interest in how companies need to organize themselves differently in the face of continuous technological change. His work on digital workplaces and the employee experience resulted in a range of academic and industry publications, in outlets such as the Journal of Information Technology, MIS Quarterly Executive, and the European Business Review. Currently, he examines how organizations are developing a skilled workforce with the decision rights to rapidly adapt to changes in both innovative and cost-effective ways.

Nick earned his PhD in Business and Management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Prior to joining MIT CISR, he was a faculty member at the University of Amsterdam.

Just about every large, established company is embarking on a digital business transformation journey, often without a playbook. The goal is to become 'Future Ready': to use digital capabilities to transform a traditional company into a top performer in the digital economy. Studies at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR) found that companies can take four viable pathways to become Future Ready—each with pros and cons. This talk outlines the four pathways and their impact on organizational performance. It also features insights from the transformation journeys of hundreds of companies and highlights several in-depth examples to describe the organizational changes that are required to succeed.

2:40pm
Founder, Global Opportunity Forum, MIT Office of Open Learning
Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management
George Westerman
Founder, Global Opportunity Forum, MIT Office of Open Learning
Senior Lecturer

George Westerman is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Founder of the Global Opportunity Forum (http://gof.mit.edu).

George’s work bridges the fields of executive leadership and technology strategy. During more than 20 years with MIT Sloan School of Management, he has written three award-winning books, including Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation. As a pioneering researcher on digital transformation, George has published papers in Harvard Business ReviewSloan Management Review, and other top journals.  He is now focused on helping employers, educators, and other groups to rethink the process of workforce learning around the world through the GOF and several research collaborations.

George is cochair of the MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Awards, a member of the Digital Strategy Roundtable for the US Library of Congress, and member of the Board of Directors for Workcred. He works frequently with senior management teams and industry groups around the world. Prior to earning a Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained more than 13 years of experience in product development and technology leadership roles.

Amidst the hype over digital transformation, there is an important truth: Some companies manage it better than others. In seven years of research with more than 400 organizations, the key capabilities of Digital Masters were identified. These large traditional companies, which exist in every industry, are better able to translate technology into transformation again and again. In this session, we will examine how Digital Masters are different from their peers, share numerous examples, and discuss how you can turn your company into a digital master.

3:20pm

Final Thoughts
3:30pm

Adjournment with Networking
  • Agenda
    9:00am

    Registration and Breakfast
    10:00am

    Welcome and Introduction from MIT ILP
    Senior Director, MIT Corporate Relations
    Todd Glickman
    Senior Director

    Mr. Glickman joined the Industrial Liaison Program in January 2000, serving as the MIT liaison for companies worldwide, and joined the senior management of the office in 2005.

    Prior to joining ILP, Todd was Assistant Executive Director of the American Meteorological Society (AMS), the professional society for meteorologists, which is based in Boston. At AMS, Todd's responsibilities included strategic planning for conferences, headquarters' liaison with AMS member boards and committees, support to the AMS Council, and public relations. In addition, Todd was Managing Editor for the AMS Glossary of Meteorology (2nd edition).

    From 1979 to 1994, Todd held a variety of positions with WSI Corporation of Billerica, MA, including Manager, New Product Development, Media Marketing Manager, and Manager of the Government Program Office. WSI was a pioneer in the development of real-time weather information, providing value-added information and workstations for clients in media, aviation, industry, academia, and government. Some of Todd's projects included development of the weather data/information infrastructure for The Weather Channel; the introduction of digital satellite and radar imagery for television; planning and implementation of a network of weather briefing systems for the Federal Aviation Administration; and serving as liaison with the National Weather Service and professional organizations. In addition, Todd was instrumental in helping to develop the public-private partnership between the weather information industry and the Federal government.

    Concurrently, Todd has a more than 30-year career as a radio meteorologist, and has been heard on dozens of stations nationwide. Today, he can be heard occasionally on all-news WCBS Newsradio-88 in New York City. He has chaired numerous meteorological conferences and symposia, and served on a number of boards and committees for the American Meteorological Society (AMS). He was awarded the AMS Seal of Approval for Radio Weathercasting in 1979, and was elected a Fellow of the AMS in 1997.

    Todd's interests include transportation systems of all types, and he is an officer and past-trustee of the Seashore Trolley Museum of Kennebunkport, Maine. At MIT, Todd an officer and trustee of the Technology Broadcasting Corporation, which oversees the campus radio station WMBR-FM. He also volunteers as the academic advisor to a group of MIT freshman.

    10:15am
    President, Arity
    Hallgren
    Gary Hallgren
    President

    Gary Hallgren, President, Arity, leads strategy and operations for Arity, a connected car technology company founded by The Allstate Corporation. Hallgren has extensive experience in next-generation telematics solutions and Software as a Service (SaaS) business models, managing mergers and acquisitions, and leveraging data and analytics to create breakthrough business opportunities. Prior to joining Allstate in 2015, Hallgren served as senior vice president of Corporate Strategy at Telogis, was CEO of Remote Dynamics Inc., served as president and CEO of WirelessCar North America, Inc., and as vice president of operations at Volvo Technology of America.

    10:45am

    The Next IT: Innovation Transformation & The Technologies of Virtuous Cycles
    Research Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, MIT Sloan School of Management
    Michael Schrage
    Michael Schrage
    Research Fellow, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy

    Michael Schrage is a research fellow with the MIT Sloan School of Management's Initiative on the Digital Economy. His research, writing, and advisory work focuses on the behavioral economics of models, prototypes, and metrics as strategic resources for managing innovation risk and opportunity. He is author of the award-winning book The Innovator’s Hypothesis (MIT Press, 2014), Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become? (Harvard Business Review Press, 2012), and Serious Play (Harvard Business Review Press, 2000). His latest book, Recommendation Engines, was published in September 2020 by MIT Press as part of its Essential Knowledge series. He's done consulting and advisory work for Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, British Telecom, BP, Siemens, Embraer, Google, iRise, the Office of Net Assessment, and other organizations

    Schrage has run design workshops and executive education programs on innovation, experimentation, and strategic measurement for organizations all over the world and is currently pioneering work in selvesware technologies designed to augment aspects, attributes, and talents of productive individuals. He is particularly interested in the future co-evolution of expertise, advice, and human agency as technologies become smarter than the people using them.

    Data-driven digital innovation continues to redefine how organizations create and manage value inside the enterprise and out. ‘Network effects’ are now as important as networks for business success. Training algorithms has become as important as training people. The global economics of innovation have profoundly changed. So innovators and fast-followers alike increasingly look to platform architectures, business models and investments to take advantage of this growing wealth of digital opportunities. This talk explores, explains and argues that the p key to digital transformation is investing the human capital, creativity, competences and capital of one’s customers and clients. This insight is poorly understood yet key to the global success of companies ranging from Alibaba to Amazon to Tencent to Google to Netflix. Drawing from MIT Sloan School Initiative on the Digital Economy research, this talk presents an actionable framework for translating this concept into action.

    11:25am

    Networking Break
    11:45am

    Introduction to MIT Startup Exchange
    Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations
    Irina Sigalovsky
    Program Director, MIT Corporate Relations

    Irina Sigalovsky works in the Office of Corporate Relations at MIT where she builds mutually beneficial partnerships between corporations and MIT. Dr. Sigalovsky comes to MIT with 10 years of international experience in innovation strategy, technology forecasting and external innovation. Prior to MIT, Irina worked at GEN3 Partners, Inc. as a senior principal collaborating with Fortune 1000 companies to focus their innovation investments, execute strategic innovation agendas, and develop business globally. Throughout her career, Irina has taught at Tufts University, MIT Sloan, X-Prize Lab@MIT, MIT HST, Boston and Harvard Universities.

    MIT Startup Exchange actively promotes collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry. Qualified startups are those founded and/or led by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni, or are based on MIT-licensed technology. Industry participants are principally members of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP).

    MIT Startup Exchange maintains a propriety database of over 1,500 MIT-connected startups with roots across MIT departments, labs and centers; it hosts a robust schedule of startup workshops and showcases, and facilitates networking and introductions between startups and corporate executives.

    STEX25 is a startup accelerator within MIT Startup Exchange, featuring 25 “industry ready” startups that have proven to be exceptional with early use cases, clients, demos, or partnerships, and are poised for significant growth. STEX25 startups receive promotion, travel, and advisory support, and are prioritized for meetings with ILP’s 230 member companies.

    MIT Startup Exchange and ILP are integrated programs of MIT Corporate Relations.

    Noon
    CTO, Cogito
    Azarbayejani
    Ali Azarbayejani
    CTO

    Ali Azarbayejani is CTO at Cogito. He has 18 years of commercial experience as a scientist, entrepreneur, and designer of world-class computational technologies. Azarbayejani’s pioneering doctoral research at the MIT Media Lab in probabilistic modeling for 3-D vision was the basis for his first startup company, Alchemy 3D Technology, which created the market in the film and video post-production industry for camera match-moving software. He also has consulted in software development and business strategy and has been on the research staff at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs.

    Founder & CEO, Emtropy Labs
    Batlapenumarthy
    Harish Batlapenumarthy
    Founder & CEO

    Harish Batlapenumarthy is founder and CEO of Emtropy Labs. For over 15 years, Batlapenumarthy, an MIT Sloan and IIT Bombay grad, has helped build and deploy enterprise grade applications for complex business processes from finance to HR to supply chain. He led the M&A technology integrations at Greatbatch Inc and was a product manager at Oracle Corp before that. Before Emtropy, he worked on Meemoz which used AI to automate the day in the life of a manager.

    Head of Growth, Enigma
    Bair
    Tor Bair
    Head of Growth

    Tor Bair is the Head of Growth for Enigma, a company building privacy solutions for the decentralized web. He has previously worked at Snapchat, Spotify, and Hubspot on growth, revenue, and data science. Bair also worked for four years as an options and derivatives trader at Optiver US. Bair holds a BA in Economics from Brown University, where he took a strong interest in behavioral economics and game theory, and an MBA from MIT Sloan, where he focused his studies on blockchain technology, marketing, and data analytics.

    Enigma is using groundbreaking privacy technologies to build the first platform for scalable, end-to-end decentralized applications. By creating a secure computation protocol where distributed nodes can compute over encrypted data, Enigma aims to become the privacy layer for the decentralized web. This technology can revolutionize dozens of industries that rely on sharing and computing over private and sensitive data, such as healthcare, finance, credit, and IoT.

    Cofounder and CEO, Legit
    Osman
    Matthew Osman
    Cofounder and CEO

    Before cofounding Legit, Matthew Osman was the youngest Vice President at a $1 billion structured credit hedge fund in London, where he specialized in credit strategies and tax structuring. He was called to the Bar of England and Wales in 2015 and has a degree in philosophy, politics, and economics from the University of Oxford.

    An operating system for R&D powered by AI
    Legit uses Natural Language Processing to interpret free text descriptions of a product, idea, or technology and then compares that description against 100 million pieces of technical literature, internal documentation, and customer requests. Legit is able to provide quantitative feedback on how differentiated products are from what already exists and how closely they align with market needs. Through this approach, Legit increases R&D efficiency, creates timely close-loop communication between R&D and customers, and allows for unprecedented real-time transparency into R&D spend and efforts.

    Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Lecturer, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; Chief Product Officer, Relativity6
    Meyer
    Nick Meyer
    Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Lecturer, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship; Chief Product Officer

    Nick Meyer is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, Senior Lecturer at MIT, and Chief Product Officer at Relativity6. He is a serial co-founder having been the lead engineer for software companies across several industries.

    Cogito: Real-time emotional intelligence software with live behavioral guidance.
    Emtropy Labs: AI-driven behavioral insights to improve talent acquisition and development.
    Enigma: Secure data sharing.
    Legit: An operating system for invention powered by AI.
    Relativity6: Customer retention platform.

    12:40pm

    Lunch and Startup Exhibit
    2:00pm

    Future Ready: Four Pathways to Digital Business Transformation
    Research Scientist, Sloan Center for Information Systems Research
    Nick van der Meulen
    Research Scientist, Sloan Center for Information Systems Research

    Dr. Nick van der Meulen is a Research Scientist at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR). He conducts academic research that targets the challenges of senior level executives at MIT CISR's member companies, with a specific interest in how companies need to organize themselves differently in the face of continuous technological change. His work on digital workplaces and the employee experience resulted in a range of academic and industry publications, in outlets such as the Journal of Information Technology, MIS Quarterly Executive, and the European Business Review. Currently, he examines how organizations are developing a skilled workforce with the decision rights to rapidly adapt to changes in both innovative and cost-effective ways.

    Nick earned his PhD in Business and Management from the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. Prior to joining MIT CISR, he was a faculty member at the University of Amsterdam.

    Just about every large, established company is embarking on a digital business transformation journey, often without a playbook. The goal is to become 'Future Ready': to use digital capabilities to transform a traditional company into a top performer in the digital economy. Studies at the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems Research (MIT CISR) found that companies can take four viable pathways to become Future Ready—each with pros and cons. This talk outlines the four pathways and their impact on organizational performance. It also features insights from the transformation journeys of hundreds of companies and highlights several in-depth examples to describe the organizational changes that are required to succeed.

    2:40pm
    Founder, Global Opportunity Forum, MIT Office of Open Learning
    Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management
    George Westerman
    Founder, Global Opportunity Forum, MIT Office of Open Learning
    Senior Lecturer

    George Westerman is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Founder of the Global Opportunity Forum (http://gof.mit.edu).

    George’s work bridges the fields of executive leadership and technology strategy. During more than 20 years with MIT Sloan School of Management, he has written three award-winning books, including Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation. As a pioneering researcher on digital transformation, George has published papers in Harvard Business ReviewSloan Management Review, and other top journals.  He is now focused on helping employers, educators, and other groups to rethink the process of workforce learning around the world through the GOF and several research collaborations.

    George is cochair of the MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Awards, a member of the Digital Strategy Roundtable for the US Library of Congress, and member of the Board of Directors for Workcred. He works frequently with senior management teams and industry groups around the world. Prior to earning a Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained more than 13 years of experience in product development and technology leadership roles.

    Amidst the hype over digital transformation, there is an important truth: Some companies manage it better than others. In seven years of research with more than 400 organizations, the key capabilities of Digital Masters were identified. These large traditional companies, which exist in every industry, are better able to translate technology into transformation again and again. In this session, we will examine how Digital Masters are different from their peers, share numerous examples, and discuss how you can turn your company into a digital master.

    3:20pm

    Final Thoughts
    3:30pm

    Adjournment with Networking