Intense learning and connection
What drew me to the programme was the interception between innovation and strategy. For my business objectives, it was important to explore and gain a new perspective on the bridge that connects innovation and strategic planning. To see how our company and key customers could do better, defining where we want to go and how we are going to get there. I needed a course that would develop my leadership skills, challenge me, and tease me a bit from the status quo of what I knew from my role, and being in the company for so many years. I wanted the international environment that London Business School has to offer, with people from all over the world coming together to collaborate.
The most useful element of the DSVC programme was to be able to step outside my everyday job and get a helicopter view of our business. Thinking about, where do we want to go? Which directions can we guide our customers in their strategic roadmap for the future of the company? Where do we want our competitive advantage to be? I was also inspired by the fact that, alongside traditional strategy, the programme had a focus on the latest key innovations in the world of finance and tech for example, and how they can be applied. Strategy can be quite theoretical at times, and I wanted to go beyond that.
Ahead of the programme you identify and set out your current business challenge, then work through it during the course. By using newly learnt frameworks and tools, I was able to create and strategise a competitive advantage, while identifying how to create value to our customers versus our competitors.
I was impressed by how organised everything was from the moment I started. From the user experience on the portal, the latest technology we used, to the fact that the facilitators proactively nurtured networking and knowledge sharing. A WhatsApp group was created for our cohort and there was a session organised three months later to see how we’d applied our knowledge – it all felt very tailored. We left the programme with big smiles, as we felt it was time well spent away from the day-to-day business, and we had made the most of the course in terms of putting theory into practice.