Digital Innovation Strategy & Management

This program emphasizes the importance of digital maturity, agility, and innovation in today's fast-evolving business environment. By attending, executives will gain the skills and frameworks necessary to embed strategic thinking, innovation, and technology into their company's foundation. This, in turn, increases adaptability to shifting customer demands, enables faster and more impactful data-driven decision-making, and cultivates a culture of innovation powered by digital transformation. By attending, you will:

• Discover how 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.
• Gain a competitive edge by using Design Thinking to turn customer insights into actionable knowledge.
• Learn de-risking techniques to innovate more confidently, efficiently, and successfully.

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.

Innovation Strategy and Foresight

• Examine how corporations perform in the present and thrive into the future- or fail to thrive.
• Explore how digital technologies transform every industry ecosystem, from raw materials to end consumers, and what it could mean for your company
• Discover the Innovation Radar, a strategic framework to think systematically regarding innovation, uncover and prioritize opportunities and win the long-term innovation game.

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

Making Innovation Happen: Structure, Process, Culture and Leadership

• Traits of market leaders 
• Examine the frameworks of quantifiable successful innovation models
• Four Models for Corporate Entrepreneurship
• Explore the essential roles of senior leadership for enabling innovation
• Understand how leaders at all levels can advance an organization’s innovation agenda

Customer Centered Innovation

• The five traits of successful innovators
• Elevating the concepts of Observing, Questioning, Associating, Networking, and Experimenting, and how to manage them
• Design Thinking: Using customer insights to turn assumptions into competitive knowledge

Finding True Innovation Risk — And Designing an Approach to Address It

• What everyone thinks is risky about innovation vs. what’s actually risky
• De-risking innovation: A new discovery and validation process that can improve your go-to-market capabilities
• Return-on-Innovation (ROI): A finance-based lens on designing KPIs for innovation

Building Innovation Capabilities Beyond Organizational Boundaries

• What if my organization can’t do everything ourselves?
• External innovation: How it works, external innovation structures, and examples of innovation partnerships
• The three key practices that will create your innovation culture

"I chose DISM because it addresses the most critical and contemporary topics in business and technology today. Chicago Booth—with its outstanding reputation, unparalleled expertise, and commitment to high-quality education—was the ideal institution to deliver such a comprehensive and cutting-edge program.

Some of the key takeaways from the program included invaluable insights from the professors on the power of proximity and innovations, captivating sessions on machine learning and AI, and comprehensive lectures on global macro trends and strategic risk management frameworks.

By delving into innovative business models and frameworks that integrate data and AI, I am now well-prepared to lead innovation strategy projects and drive global-scale digital transformation. This preparation positions me to effectively spearhead transformative initiatives within the technology and business sectors."

—Luke (Lukasz) Cichocki, Global IT Director, Water Saver Faucet Co.

“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.”