Emerging Technologies – tech talk for managers making business decisions

Posted on June 01, 2018
Emerging Technologies – tech talk for managers making business decisions

Get past the hype and learn how you can leverage key emerging technologies

Adopting new technology is often a go-slow process for organizations – there are so many considerations at play that the decision is often to wait until some unstated point in the future or even avoid it altogether. Sure, delaying a decision on new tech can save money, but it can also result in lost opportunity and seriously affect competitive advantage. How do you decide?

Henry KimHenry Kim, professor of operations management and information systems at the Schulich School of Business, knows how companies react to these kinds of changes and why they should have a structured framework for understanding the implications of emerging technologies and seeing, not just the risks, but also the opportunities they present. The goal, he says, is to make more critical and pragmatic decisions about how and when to deploy technology for maximum innovative impact.

In his new three-day open enrolment program designed for Schulich ExecEd, titled Emerging Technologies: Business Implications and Opportunities Kim will help participants reduce the mystery and anxiety around these key emerging technologies and show how the results of data analytics can be aligned with management-level decision making. “When they do, I believe that transformative business processes and practices, as well as business models are possible,” says Kim.

The program is not about future trends, it’s about technologies, such as the Blockchain, Internet of Things, and Big Data and Data Analytics, that are impacting organizations now.

“These technologies are ‘ready for prime time’,” said Kim. “The most compelling story to me is how organizations will realize value from deploying these technologies, not how the technologies work. And that’s the story that I want to share.”

Kim’s research at the Schulich School’s BlockchainLab, where he is a co-director, focuses on the development of information systems for data-driven decision-making in the context of these novel, emergent technologies. He is bringing the results of his research to those who can apply it to their businesses now.

What You Will Learn

  • How to better strategize and evaluate emerging technology projects in your business and industry
  • Strategic insights into AI, Blockchain, Internet of Things and Virtual/Augmented Reality
  • Design-thinking use cases in your business and industry
  • Hands-on use of emerging technology tools

The program is designed for executives and managers who are responsible for digital strategy within their business or who have chief information/technology operations responsibility, as well as VPs, directors, or project managers of finance, operations, or corporate strategy. Any business managers seeking to understand the power and challenges of key emerging technologies, both within the organization and across the industry, will also benefit from this program.

Participants will work on design-thinking use cases for their own business or industry in small groups with individual coaching by the instructor, leading to a use-case pitch competition. The sessions include a hands-on tutorial of emerging technologies in the Schulich Blockchain lab.

About the Instructor

Henry Kim is professor of operations management and information systems at the Schulich School of Business and co-director of the BlockchainLab. The lab is engaged in projects with the Canadian Government, the United Nations, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Don Tapscott’s Blockchain Research Institute and various start-ups and companies. Kim has written about, or advised on, blockchain applications in supply chain, minerals mining, agriculture and insurance. Moreover, for 25 years, his primary research has been in enterprise modelling using AI-based ontologies.