Certificate Course on Strategic Foresight 2017

Aarhus University - School of Business and Social Sciences

Participate in our  MBA Elective on Strategic Foresight. We now offer the four-day seminar as a Certificate Course.

This course qualifies you as a foresight practitioner and organizational change agent that designs and implements organizational systems that promote prospective strategizing and the exploration of new markets.

What is strategic foresight

Today, many organizations are affected by disruptive change. Digitalization is altering the rule of the game in an increasing number of industries. In addition, increasing mobility of capital and ideas (globalization) and the increasing availability of international risk capital, has led the proliferation of plug-and-play organizations. This new breed of companies like AirBnB, Uber or Apple can enter, disrupt and dominate industries within a few years and established companies find it increasingly difficult to prevent being displaced.

While the 20th century was dominated by companies that were rich in assets and good at managing their core competencies, winning in the 21st century will depend the ability of organizations to excel in:

  • Speed in execution
  • Creativity in developing novel value propositions
  • Managing the complexity of large and changing networks of value creation partners

This also led to the need to upgrade organizational reflexes, become more agile in strategizing and grow more aggressive in business development. At the same time the need to embrace uncertainty to be able profitable growth requires novel management practices.

Strategic foresight offers a set of novel methods, tools and practices that enable organizations to renew their competitive advantage, enter new business fields, and build robust scenario-driven strategies.

Strategic Foresight is growing increasingly relevant for

  • governmental organizations that are confronted with societal challenges and disruptive change
  • non-profit organizations that have to identify the needed ingredients for their future success and to understand how they can actively promote needed boundary conditions
  • companies in mature industries and industries with a high competitive intensity.

Certificate course content

The course builds on more than 10 years of experience in benchmarking and working with leading organizations. Building on our maturity model the course introduces you to the six core capabilities of strategic foresight and to its three core practices. You will learn how to:

  • Perceive, using networks of scouts as well as public and exclusive databases in order to detect change ahead of your competitors
  • Prospect, using scenarios, roadmapping and backcasting in order to build a deeper understanding than your competitors and be able to drive the transition in your industry
  • Probe, into new products, services and new businesses and match the agility of start-ups

The course follows a “learning-by-doing” philosophy and you will apply the new knowledge to real-life cases. In addition, you will have the opportunity to apply sophisticated IT tools and work with exclusive databases. You will learn both how to plan and execute strategic foresight projects as well as how to design and implement strategic foresight systems in different organizational settings.

Duration and schedule

The course consists of two modules of two consecutive days in-class and online teaching.

Certificate Course - Strategic Foresight - Overview

The lecture days are:

  • 3/4 February 2017
  • 7/8 April 2017

Classes will be held at the Aarhus University, Building 2610 – Fuglesangs Allé 4, 8210 Aarhus V

Admission fee

The admission fee is 17.000 DKK including the two two-day in-class sessions as well as the online teaching.

Faculty

René Rohrbeck

Rene-c-WEB_cropRené Rohrbeck is Professor of Strategy at the Department of Management, Aarhus University. Before joining Aarhus University he worked both in public and private organizations. His previous positions include

  • Director of Innovation in EIT ICT Labs (large public private organization funded by the European Commission and private enterprises)
  • Head of Innovation Management of the EICT GmbH (funded by Daimer, Deutsche Telekom, Siemens, Technical University of Berlin and the Fraunhofer Institutes)
  • Innovation Management and Technological Foresight at Deutsche Telekom and Volkswagen AG.

He advises medium to large companies on innovation management, strategic foresight and technology management. He has worked with companies from a large variety of industries including automobile, oil & gas, pulp & paper, information & communication technologies (ICT) and energy.

Tobias HegerTobias Heger

Tobias Heger is founding and managing partner of Rohrbeck Heger. As industrial engineer he has a background in business and technology and has been working in industry, public-private-partnerships and closely with scientific institutions and startups in the last years.

Tobias is also an business angel, runs his own investment company and advises founder teams, with a particular focus on new media, digitalization in general and particularly within logistics.

Jan Oliver SchwarzJan Oliver Schwarz

Jan Oliver Schwarz is a Professor at the AMD Academy for Fashion and Design, Munich, Germany, a Research Associate at the Aarhus School of Business, Denmark and an Associate Principal at Decision Strategies International (DSI).

He obtained his Ph. D. in strategic foresight at the Berlin University of the Arts, Germany, and has published numerous articles on strategic foresight and business war gaming.

Exam

In the course you will be asked to work on one large real-life case, which will form the basis for the final oral examination.

In addition small in-class assignments will help you to prepare for the take-home assignement and ensure that you acquire the needed methodological skills.

Lene Merete PedersenApplication and registration

To learn more about how to apply and the opportunities to receive a certificate and/or join our MBA program, contact Lene Merete Pedersen.

You can also download our information 1-pager for our certificate course.

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