Below a selection of some of the events I initiated / hosted / key-noted on the responsible innovation and reorganization themes over the years, such as the:
2024 Harvard Business Review Diamond Japan event on responsible M&A
It has been a great honor to be invited as a speaker on sustainable M&A strategies at the prestigious Harvard Business Review Diamond event in Japan, alongside distinguished corporate leaders such as the CEO of FujiFilm and the CEO of Nestle Japan as well as my dear coauthor and excellent host during my research stays at Tokyo Institute of Technology, prof.dr. Shintaro Sengoku.
During the event I explored ways in which M&A can enhance both short-term and long-term value creation or disruption, thereby reflecting on research on the Japanese context of corporate restructuring and responsible M&A.
2022 Strategic Management Society pre conference on Behavioral Biases in Strategic Decision making
This fall prof. dr. Koen Heimeriks of Warwick Business School and I organized an Extension Conference on ‘Behavioral Biases and Corporate Transformation Strategies’ for the Strategic Management Society in London, in collaboration with Atos London as our business partner: an event that was very well received by the business and academic participants that gathered at Atos London and the Hilton conference venue this Fall.
In the heart of London, we discussed the intriguing theme of ‘Behavioral Biases and Corporate Transformation Strategies’. With keynote speakers from Warton Business School and Pennsylvania State University, and a panelist set of prominent and outspoken individuals from both academia and practice, the event was inspirational on various fronts: Sessions revolved around original examples, new insights and evolving theories that shed light on how behavioral bias affect strategic decision making. With excellent attendance we clearly touched upon a phenomenon that can significantly implicate strategic decision making and implementation of strategic tasks.
As part of the conference program we had a series of inspirational speakers and panelist feature in various formats, amongst them:
- Phil Dunne, Managing Partner Ronald Berger London
- Robert Hoskisson, George R. Brown Professor Emeritus of Management, Rice University
- Francesco Castellaneta, Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, SKEMA
- Emilie R. Feldman, Michael L. Tarnopol Professor of Management, University of Pennsylvania
- Arjan Groen, former Partner at EY-Parthenon, Senior Executive & Advisor in Transformation & Strategic Growth
- Chris Vialle, Partner Monitor Deloitte
- Mark DesJardine, The Pennsylvania State University
- Gerry McNamara, the McConnell Professor of Management, Michigan State University
- Mario Schijven, Assistant Professor of Business Administration, University of Illinois
The discussions that followed highlighted new insights and theories that shed light on how behavioral bias affect strategic decision making. We offer a full day program, based on three distinct, yet intertwined themes across several sessions on behavioral biases in strategic tasks. Each of the sessions will showcase various angles on the initiation of and the responses to strategic tasks. Relative to the main (track) questions, a variety of panelists combining academic and practitioner backgrounds discussed the characteristics of strategic decisions (to be) made, as well as the behavioral characteristics of management relative to those of other active stakeholders to the decision making and implementation process.
The various track details are recapped here for your convenience
Other events that I organized or co-organized recently include:
- Symposium digital entrepreneurship in the financial sector November , 2021
This symposium was organized in collaboration with Our IMR Centre for Organization Restruturing and Atos France (headquarters). The focus was on the importance and challenges of entrepreneurship using digital technologies, and the role played by policy-makers and large organizations in fostering new financial ventures. On the day after the symposium, the FINDER PhD students and their academic supervisors had one-on-one meetings with the Atos departments responsible for connecting the outcome of the conference to the individual research projects of the students.
- Strategic Management Society Special Conference in Berkeley – Professional development workshop on the strategic management of social networks, November 5th, 2020
Related to the Collaboration for Innovation theme I work on with several of my PhD students I was granted the opportunity to organize a professional development workshop as part of the Strategic Management Society Special Conference in Berkeley (USA) “Designing the Future: Strategy, Technology, and Society in the 4th Industrial Revolution”, which was set to take place in March 2020.
PhD students presented their research to previously assigned scholars in dedicated break-out sessions (to cover the workshop aspect of the initial design). The participating panelists were Dr. Fleur Deken (VU), Dr. Yulia Snihur (Toulouse Business School), Koen Heimeriks (University of Warwick), Dr. Saeed Khanagha (VU), Dr. Martin Friesl (University Bamberg), Rick Aalbers (Radboud University), Dr. Sotirios Paroutis (University of Warwick) and Sebastian Schäfer (TechQuartier and lecturer at Goethe Business School).
- Symposium Inclusive Digital Innovation in the Financial Services aka Inclusive digital innovation event week March 15th – 18th, 2021
This symposium consisted of five one-hour sessions on five topics revolving around digital innovation in the financial services. Various expert panelist we pulled together here for group level phd discussion purposes, in a format that abridged practitioners and early stage researchers, as listed below per discussion theme:
How to de-risk corporate-startup innovations while improving speed and cost? Josemaria Siota, Executive Director IESE Business School, explained how to engage in venturing as a corporation by pulling from his latest research report (available here). The session was facilitated by Nikhil Chouguley, Global Head of Product Governance & ESG Oversight at Deutsche Bank. Click here for a summary of the session. and GAIA-X: The future of the European data cloud by Hubert Tardieu, Chairman of the Board of the GAIA-X AISBL, introduced the European business to business data sharing initiative GAIA-X. Click here for a summary of the session.
- Research Excellence Workshop at Atos Amstelveen, February 10th and 11th, 2020
Together with the fintech hub at Atos I organized a two day Research Excellence Workshop in close collaboration with Atos. The workshop, focused on advanced methodologies and research publication strategies, aimed to increase the knowledge of the participants on qualitative and quantitative research methods at advanced levels. Attending students represented universities such as Radboud University, VU Amsterdam, University and Research Wageningen, RijksUniversiteit Groningen, Tilburg University, Universiteit Hasselt, National University of Ireland Galway.
- Organizer of Start up weekend – October 2021
This was a public event to help start-up entrepreneurs with creative ideas for digital entrepreneurship start their innovation journey. This two-day event provided for a platformon early stage start up profiling, while at the same time it will offer an excellent opportunity for the continuation of the accomplished research by a larger group of researchers and professionals. Participants included from 3 continents, incl. UK, German, Nepali and Nigerian based inclusive finance fintech startups.
- Organizer of the EGOS Colloquium Sub-theme: Collaboration and the (Ir)Rationalities of Decision-making in a Digital Landscape – 8+9 July 2021
This sub-theme pivots around the question how digital technologies influence systems, practices and processes for inclusive decision making within and across organizations, exploring the (ir)rationalities of decision making in a digital landscape as organizations experiment with new ways of organizing EGOS – SUB-THEMES [main Colloquium] – European Group for Organizational Studies (egosnet.org)
- Symposium digital entrepreneurship in the financial sector
This symposium was organized in collaboration with Our IMR Centre for Organization Restructuring and Atos France (headquarters). The focus was on the importance and challenges of entrepreneurship using digital technologies, and the role played by policy-makers and large organizations in fostering new financial ventures.
- Fintech training and community building event in Frankfurt, Germany, April 8th and 9th, 2019
A two day training event I organized in collaboration with Atos Germany and TechQuartier aiming to introduce a multinational and interdisciplinary group to each other. PhD students and academics of amongst others VU Amsterdam and KU Leuven on the one hand, and prominent corporations on the other hand: Atos (a global leader in digital transformation and European number one in Cloud, Cybersecurity and High-Performance Computing) and TechQuartier (a cross-industry innovation platform created to bring startups, corporates and new talent together to work, meet, learn and collaborate on new technologies and digital business models). Topics of discussion included (amongst others) reflection on research and community building opportunity, insight in the Frankfurt eco system and various case studies, e.g. Komuno (Helaba spin-off) know both worlds (presented by Robert Wassmer), Deutsche Börse Venture network (presented by Peter Fricke), Creditlinks – participation of both Papillon & Compliance Navigator (presented by Tilo Kraus) and Trends in Fintech: the future of digital twinning (presented by S. James Ellis).
