Course syllabus

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IKA097 Leading in a Digital World

lp3 VT21 (7,5 hp)

The course is run by Teknikens ekonomi och organisation.  The course will be conducted in both English and Swedish.

 

Teachers

Examiner and Primary Teacher

Teaching Assistants (TAs)

  • PhD Candidate Adrian Bumann (adrian.bumann@chalmers.se), Entrepreneurship & Strategy, Chalmers University of Technology (Link)
  • PhD Candidate Maria Kandaurova (maria.kandaurova@chalmers.se), Entrepreneurship & Strategy, Chalmers University of Technology (Link)

 

Purpose and learning objectives

The purpose of this course is to expand your knowledge of leadership and strategic thinking in a global and digital world. The course provides you with an overview of how digitalization and digital technologies have created profound changes in value-creating activities among companies, industries, and society in recent years as well as insights into value creation in the future.

The course will also enable you to develop your understanding and skills related to leadership and strategic thinking in a global and digital world through applying the appropriate frameworks, concepts, and methods in groups in a Live Case project for Akademiska Hus (https://www.akademiskahus.se/). For this Live Case project, your student group will develop and pitch a digital innovation for Akademiska Hus.

Learning objectives

Related to knowledge and understanding, you should be able to:

  1. Understand and account for basic concepts such as digital innovation, digitalization, and digital transformation.
  2. Understand how digitalization and digital transformation influence organizations and the foundations of competition as well as the structure of society.

Related to skills and abilities, you should be able to:

  1. Acquire basic information about digital technologies or digital technology solutions and present and argue for a so-called business case around the same.

Related to analytical skills, you should be able to:

  1. Evaluate and describe how digitalization and digital technologies can influence business models and strategy as well as value creation in society today and in the future.
  2. Critically evaluate and discuss digital technology and technical systems in relation to organizational characteristics and the structure of society.

Schedule

Please refer to the schedule on the Canvas calendar and not to TimeEdit.

The course starts on Jan 18, and the correct course schedule is on Canvas and not on TimeEdit.

Please check Canvas regularly to keep up to date on any schedule or other course changes. We have made some changes to the original TimeEdit schedule and we may make further ones during the course.

All Live Case sessions are obligatory. Makeup assignments will be given.  Please send Robin an email by the start of the session if you cannot attend. Also, we have organized an impressive list of guest lecturers, and we expect you to respect their time by attending and engaging in all of these guest lectures.

Please note that all sessions will be delivered digitally over zoom (unless otherwise posted). A zoom link will be posted on the Canvas calendar. Please note that the zoom room may change.

Office hours: Please approach us directly after in class sessions. All questions between lectures are handled by the TAs Adrian and Maria.

Pedagogy and organization

This course might be quite different from what you have experienced before at Chalmers.

In this course, you should view the teachers more as enablers of learning than as traditional teachers. As such, we will conduct many of the class sessions like seminars in which our role is that of a moderator, questioner, or facilitator. We will try to awaken your curiosity to learn more about the course’s topics and to develop your skills so that you may better practice lifelong learning.

Throughout the course, we will integrate practice with theory in order to encourage critical thinking about real life problems. Management education in recent years has been criticized for encouraging a disconnect between what goes on in the classroom for training managers and the practice of management. We would like to close this gap by enabling you to work on real life problems and by encouraging you to critically think about these real life problems, and–as far as possible—do so together with managers.

To achieve this, the course involves a variety of activities, such as lectures, seminars and discussions using pre-assigned readings and in-class exercises, external speakers working with real company examples from different industries, and the live case project that involves group work and presentations. For many activities, you will work in groups and on real live issues. You will self-select your groups on Canvas, and these groups will be the same for both the seminars and the Live Case.

The course is organized around the following:

1) A series of lectures based on four themes or topics related to Leading in a Digital World: a) Leadership and People, b) Business & Societal Transformation, c) Exponential Technologies, and d) Global Future Outlook. (These topics have been inspired by Stellar Capacity, who will present them in the Introduction Lecture.) We have put together a list of guest lecturers from a variety of organizations that we think you will find interesting for these topics. There will also be a set of seminars based on the lectures. Readings and assignments are listed on Canvas under the Assignments and Modules sections for the corresponding lectures and seminars.

The seminars are 45 minute sessions and your group will attend one 45 minute session on each of the seminar afternoons. These seminars will be held virtually, subject to possible changes due to Covid-19. Your group will be able to sign up in advance on Canvas for these 45-minute seminar sessions.

2) The Live Case: ”The Akademiska Hus Challenge” with lectures by Akademiska Hus, presentations by you and your groups, and coaching sessions. More information is in the Akademiska Hus Live Challenge Overview to be uploaded on Canvas.

To learn the most from this course, we expect that you will come well prepared to each session. You are to complete the readings and assignments thoroughly before each class. Being prepared includes being able to discuss the assigned literature and relating it to your experience. You or your group will be asked to present in class, particularly in connection with the live case. In addition, we expect those students who are not presenting to be prepared with questions and comments and to contribute to the discussion.

Finally, we are interested in the quality of your participation. Quality is the extent to which you offer key insights on course topics and readings, relate your comments to the topics at hand, and relate current topics to previous topics or material from other classes. Comments that add value to our conversations possesses one or more of the following attributes:

  1. Offer a different, unique, and relevant perspective on the issue at hand.
  2. Contribute to moving the discussion and analysis forward.
  3. Build on others’ comments. Too often students and managers fail to listen to the comments of others.  Good comments might begin with “In agreement with what Jane has just said…” or “I’d like to disagree with Ted’s point….” or “I think we’re all missing a key point here…”
  4. Transcend the “I feel” syndrome. In other words, a quality comment includes some evidence or analysis of inherent tradeoffs and demonstrates reflective thinking.

Literature

The literature is a mix of publications, reports, and videos that will be uploaded on Canvas or found through provided links for the relevant session. There is no textbook. To keep the content as timely as possible, some additional material may be presented at the latest one session in advance.  For some of the material, you will find links to where it is located on the internet. The majority of literature is free. Some articles may need to be downloaded from the School’s databases, some we will distribute, and some you may need to buy, e.g., for the lecture on Jan 27. 

 House rules for digital class sessions

  • Be prepared and on time.
  • Be active and engage throughout the sessions.
  • Use your full name when signing in to Zoom sessions.
  • Turn on camera.
  • Mute microphone unless talking.
  • Be prepared to be cold-called (no heads up) or warm-called (some heads up) to answer questions related to what has been discussed.
  • Do not record sessions or guest lecturers without asking for permission first.
  • Write questions or comments in the chat.

Examination

The course consists of a Live Case (2.5 hp, group) and an Exam (5 hp, individual and group). To pass the course, you must pass each.

The Live Case is assessed with U/G. The exams are graded according to the below scale:

  •       For grades (3) minimum 40%
  •       For grades (4) minimum 60%
  •       For grades (5) minimum 80%

More information will be provided at the course's start.

Academic honesty

You are expected to follow the Chalmers’ guidelines for academic honesty and integrity.

Course summary:

Date Details Due