Digital Innovation Strategy & Management
This multidisciplinary program equips executives with the tools to integrate digital capabilities, artificial intelligence, and innovative solutions into their company’s core—ultimately fostering a more resilient, proactive organization that harnesses technology-driven innovation for sustained growth.
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.
Robert Wolcott
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
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 using agile strategies and better innovations.
Janega specializes in bridging the gap between strategy and innovation, particularly identifying growth opportunities and developing products and services that serve emerging market segments.
He has taught executives and worked with consulting clients around the world, serving sectors that include consumer goods and electronics, financial services, health care, commercial real estate and insurance, energy, education, and infrastructure. He has advised startups in AI and innovative technologies that include clean tech, precision optics, and quantum hardware.
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
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
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
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The Future of Work
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Robots and Jobs
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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.”
Advance Registration Benefit
When you commit your attendance by the specific expiration dates in 2025, you’ll benefit through financial savings. The savings will be automatically applied during the registration process. For more information, review our Advance Registration Benefits FAQs.
- May 12-16: $11,250 fee if registered by February 18.
- Nov 3-7: $11,250 fee if registered by August 11.
This program typically runs twice a year, Spring and Fall.