Events Archives - Page 31 of 36 - Politecnico di Milano School of Management

MBA Recruiting Day

Posted on 27 November 2019 | by albe@mip.polimi.it

On January 24th, MIP will host an MBA Recruiting Day, dedicated to the International Full Time MBA candidates and the companies belonging to the School network.

Starting from 10.00 am companies, distributed by their own sector, such as Technology & Digital | Industrial & Energy| Retail & Consumer Goods| Luxury, Fashion & Lifestyle| Consulting & Finance will open their desks to candidates.
At the end of the interview sessions, all the participating recruiters are kindy invited for a networking lunch.

The event is open only to MIP International Full Time MBA candidates, available from May 2020 for project work opportunities in companies.

MBA candidates have an international background and 3-7 years of professional experience in different sectors and functional area such as: Sales & Business Development, Strategy, Operations, Marketing&Communication, Analytics and Big Data, PM, Legal, Digital Transformation.

The event is dedicated to Employers who have the opportunity to:

Select talented international candidates to be placed in a range of business areas and positions
Test the ability of one or several candidates by proposing a strategic project of high impact for your company, in areas such as Digital Innovation, Business Transformation, Brand Strategy, Internationalisation, Business Development, Process Optimisation, etc.
Network with other Top Employers

Companies will have the chance to publish internship and job openings before the event, while students will have the opportunity to present their applications.

Agenda

9.00 – 9.30 Company Registration
9.30 – 10.00 Welcome Coffee for Recruiters
10.00 – 13.00 Stand Opening and One to One Interviews
13.00 – 14.00 Networking Lunch for Recruiters

How to participate

The participation to this event – deadline December 4 – is reserved to a limited number of companies belonging to MIP network.

The participation will be confirmed until the available places are exhausted.

For further information please contact Unit Company Engagement& Partner Care (Company&PartnerCare@mip.polimi.it)
T. 02 2399 2832 – 2847 – 4898

Useful information

January 24th 2020 | h 9.00 – 13.30
Politecnico di Milano – Campus Bovisa | Edificio BL 28 Glass Room 1 Floor
Via Raffaele Lambruschini 4B, Milano 20156

Why human value in the digital age is even more essential

Posted on 14 November 2019 | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment

The growth of digitalization is viewed with concern by many. Yet new technologies can boost productivity and flexibility. If managers know how to spot the right opportunities

“Human interaction is the first casualty of the digital age”. It’s the title that introduces an editorial signed by Vivek Wadhwa, a tech sector entrepreneur, Harvard professor and, among other things, an early fan of social media. Over time, like many others, Wadhwa changed his mind, coming to believe that digital media have done more harm than good to interpersonal relationships. In the same way, many people maintain that advanced digital technologies can reduce the centrality of the human element in the world of work. But is that true? A series of data and forecasts show how it’s possible to take countermeasures. And how the role of managers is key in this scenario.

Human relations: between relationships and connections

A survey by the World Economic Forum, carried out in 2016 on a sample of over 5,000 individuals across five continents, reveals a widespread perception that is in sharp contrast to Wadhwa’s fears. According to the majority of those interviewed, the use of social media has actually led to a greater ability to make friendships in the real world, to maintain relationships with existing friends and with one’s partner and, surprise!, also to develop greater empathy.
But all that glitters isn’t gold. If it’s true that on one hand digital media enables social interaction, often giving a voice to minorities, on the other hand there are risks, as the World Economic Forum itself highlights in the Digital Media and Society report: it’s possible that the development of online relationship skills doesn’t correspond to a similar improvement in offline social skills. In short, it’s a scenario with light and shadows, that we also see in the workplace.

Changing work

Digital technologies are shaping the form and contents of the job offering. Among positive effects can be counted an increase in productivity and flexibility, in particular in the growing use of teleworking, or smart working, made possible by the development of increasingly fast network connections and of increasingly efficient digital communication tools. However, there are also plenty of doubts in this area. Indeed, digital media can lead to an increase in inequality, caused by the rapid evolution of the most highly sought out skills. It’s not unreasonable to expect a widening of the gap in the value (and thus also in the economic value) between employees with low level skills and colleagues with more advanced and valuable ones.

Exploiting technology, enhancing the value of humans

To avoid these risks, the figure of the leader becomes central. They must have “the knowledge and skills to recognize and anticipate digital trends, understand the implications for their business and use technology to their advantage to keep up to pace”, states the report Digital Media and Society. It’s up to the organizations, and therefore to their managers, to develop appropriate strategies to integrate digital media in the workflow, and to be proactive in tapping into the opportunities and avoiding the dangers their employees may face. Another report from the World Economic Forum, Our Shared Digital Future, shared further guidelines to thrive in the digital revolution: what is key is the creation of a network of responsible leaders that encourages the reskilling of employees. If it’s true, as suggested by the 2018 Future of Jobs Report, also prepared by the WeF, that by 2022 automation will replace humans in a significant percentage of their workload, it becomes fundamental to enhance those activities that artificial intelligence still can’t carry out: an apparent paradox, but the competitive advantage of companies and workers will increasingly depend on the ability to show themselves to be inimitably human. Despite digital innovation.

Symplatform: an international symposium on digital platforms

Posted on 11 November 2019 | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment

Over the last years, the relevance of digital-based business model increased significantly. Airbnb, Uber or BlaBlaCar showed the great potentialities of companies that aim to get together different groups of customers – like travelers and hosts – through the opportunities provided by digital technologies.

We are pleased to launch the first edition of Symplatform, a symposium on digital platforms that aims to get together both scholars and practitioners.

Symplatform is a joint project developed by Trinity College Dublin, Politecnico di Milano School of Management and Audencia Business School.

The first edition will take place at the Trinity Centre for Digital Business at Trinity College Dublin on April 16th and 17th, 2020.

The symposium is going to be based on various formats: parallel sessions with academic papers, “Pitch your challenge” sessions led by practitioners and collaborative workshops to help the platform field to move forward.
Further information can be found at Symplatform.com.

Prada Group presents “Shaping a Sustainable Future Society”

Posted on 4 November 2019 | by albe@mip.polimi.it | Leave a Comment

The Prada Group will present “Shaping a Sustainable Future Society” on November 8th 2019 in New York, marking the third edition of the Group’s conferences dedicated to stimulate a debate on the most significant changes taking place in contemporary society.

This year’s event will explore the meaning of social sustainability seeking to define what this truly means. The speakers will reflect on the responsibility of business and institutions to foster an environment that encourages freedom, equality and justice. Dialectic thought and diverse perspectives will underpin the day’s discussions and the various speeches. True to the Shaping series usual format, rigorous academic research will be an integral part of the day.

The morning will start with a keynote speech by acclaimed architect Sir David Adjaye OBE, followed by a roundtable dedicated to discuss on how businesses can keep abreast of new challenges posed by an ever-evolving society; the conversation will be moderated by Professor Gianni Riotta, journalist and Executive Vice President of the Italy-US Council.
The panel will involve speakers with diverse experience and expertise, including Richard Armstrong, Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation; Amale Andraos, Dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; Mariarosa Cutillo, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) – Chief of Strategic Partnerships; Amanda Gorman, poet and activist; Kent Larson, City Science Director at MIT Media Lab and Livia Pomodoro, President of Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, former Magistrate and President of the Court of Milan.
The roundtable will be followed by the contribution of Paralympic champion Simone Barlaam.

The event will continue by offering the contribution of the two academic partners, the Schools of Management of Yale and Politecnico di Milano, to explore the conference’s theme from two different perspectives. The Yale Center for Customer Insights will present a survey developed in partnership with the Prada Group on how consumer choices and behaviors are affected by social issues. Moderated by Gianni Riotta, a free-flowing discussion between Professor Raffaella Cagliano from Politecnico di Milano School of Management and Professor Kate Crawford, writer, composer and producer will follow, to examine how innovative digital technologies, including Artificial Intelligence (AI), are reshaping our daily lives, and how society should anticipate and manage the risks of biased or unethical use of digital technologies.
The day’s closing remarks will be provided by Rula Jebreal, award-winning journalist, author and foreign policy expert.

The whole conference will be live-streamed on www.pradagroup.com, starting at 9.30 am EST / 3.30 pm CET. Follow the day on social media via @Prada, which will tweet live from the event and join the conversation with #ShapingASustainableSociety
An overview of the event, as well as the agenda of the day and the gallery of speakers are available on the Prada Group website in a dedicated section.
For further information: Prada Press Office Tel. +39 02 567 811 e-mail: corporatepress@prada.com www.pradagroup.com
About “Shaping a Future” conferences:
Since 2017, the Prada Group has hosted an annual conference with the aim of stimulating a debate on the most significant changes taking place in contemporary society. In both editions, Prada collaborated with the Schools of Management of both Yale and Politecnico di Milano.
The first conference in 2017, entitled “Shaping a Creative Future” addressed the links between creativity, sustainability and innovation. The second conference in 2018, “Shaping a Sustainable Digital Future” explored the relationship between sustainability and digital innovation.
The conference series format consists of keynote speeches, panel discussions, and students’ competitions.

Knowing how to learn: the biggest challenge for tomorrow’s leaders

Posted on 29 October 2019 | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment

In an increasingly uncertain and rapidly evolving world, it becomes more and more important for a manager to have the ability to learn and to adapt to new situations. This is why soft skills are destined to become more important than hard skills

Managers of the future can’t do without soft skills. This becomes clear when reading the Future of Jobs Report 2018, the lengthy white paper published by the World Economic Forum that takes stock of global trends in the world of work. According to forecasts, by 2022 the market will favour a workforce able to think critically, to innovate, to create, to learn. This is true for everyone, but even more important for those who prepare to fill a leadership role.

A rapidly changing context

The fine-tuning of artificial intelligence and of machine learning, along with the explosion of big data, will shift the man-machine balance. And the political and economic future of the planet will be increasingly difficult to predict. It’s easy to see why the acronym coined in 1987, VUCA, is once again in vogue with its terms that perfectly describe both today’s world and that of the future: Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity. It’s due to these factors that hard skills are no longer enough.

Watchword: reskilling

It’s not surprising, therefore, that the Future of Jobs Report talks about imperative reskilling: where hard skills are no longer enough, the watchword becomes requalification. But, to do that, it’s important to be equipped with the right tools. This is how skills such as analytical thinking, learning strategies, creativity, originality, spirit of initiative will surpass in the rankings both hard skills and soft skills that previously had dominated (the “classic” example of problem solving is a case in point): learning and knowing how to learn is by far the most important ability, especially if we think of a leader who, like it or not, will be forced to deal regularly with VUCA situations. The leaders of tomorrow, as the US magazine Forbes also notes, “must be agile and able to embrace and celebrate change (…) they won’t see change as a burden, but as an opportunity for growth and innovation”. A challenge that’s certainly complex, but unavoidable: according to the World Economic Forum, the reskilling process will involve at least 54% of managers.

Leading people, orienting yourself in the world

All this without forgetting that the qualities of leaders also involve and will continue to involve abilities that are strictly tied to their role, like strategic vision, the ability to communicate objectives to one’s team and to motivate it, to give a few examples. Also on this front, old leadership models soon will no longer work, because the composition of the workforce will change: Millennials have different expectations than their grandparents and parents, and they tend to be much less “faithful”, if they perceive a lack of stimuli and gratification. The leader of the future must also take this into account, in addition to being able to navigate in the world that surrounds them, they must understand its changes, even sudden ones, and know what possibilities are offered by new technologies. Objectives that can be aimed for only by those who have the appropriate soft skills. The World Economic Forum explains clearly that “a skills deficit (…) can significantly hinder the adoption of new technologies and, therefore, the growth of the company”.

Financial Times Masters in Management 2019 Ranking

Posted on 28 October 2019 | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment

The School of Management of Politecnico di Milano among the top 5 technical schools in the world for its Master of Science in Management Engineering

Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management holds its place among the world’s leading business schools and is in the top five for schools belonging to a “technical” university with a specific focus on engineering and technology, with its Master of Science in Management Engineering.

This is according to the Financial Times, which has published its Masters in Management Ranking 2019, placing the Milanese school’s long-standing program among the top 94 in absolute terms and among the top five for programs taught at business schools connected to technical universities, as is Politecnico di Milano. And that is not all, the School’s Master of Science in Management Engineering is also among the top five globally for Management Engineering, that is, among programs with a similar structure and set of contents.

The ranking examined a series of aspects, giving high scores for the graduate’s career prospects, both in Italy and abroad, the pay levels that this program can lead to and the opportunity for students to be offered internships in leading companies during their studies. Other factors include the School’s excellent price-quality ratio, its highly international faculty and the study and placement opportunities offered outside Italy.

“Very few Masters in Management Engineering can be measured directly against ours”, confirms Stefano Ronchi, President of the degree course in Management Engineering at Politecnico di Milano. “Our distinctive feature is that we place courses in management, economics and finance alongside our teachings in engineering and technical subjects, which are indispensable to understand and oversee the digital transformation that will increasingly permeate throughout company development. We are able to give our students a strong grounding in management while helping them to cultivate an analytical and engineering mindset that can be applied to identifying and solving problems”.

The School of Management of Politecnico di Milano brings together the Department of Management Engineering and MIP, the Business School of the Milan-based university.

In a joint statement, Alessandro Perego and Andrea Sianesi, the Department’s Director and the President and Dean of MIP, respectively, explain: “The FT’s recognition is, as always, extremely important for all our Master students, alumni and graduates. For years, we have concentrated on an international approach to our courses and on competencies linked to digital transformation. The Financial Times’ conclusions show that we are on the right path, as it places us among the best management schools in the world with a strong emphasis on technology and engineering”.

What are the differences between an MBA and an Executive MBA?

Posted on 25 October 2019 | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment

The Master’s programmes offered by the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano differ in the seniority of the students (and thus also in teaching approach). But the objective is always the same: to create genuine business leaders

The Executive MBAs and the MBAs of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano are intensive Master’s courses with a specific focus on general management. The main objective of both programmes is to enable participants to develop the extensive managerial skills required to become a true business leader. The substantial difference between an Executive MBA and an MBA is instead the seniority of the course participants. An MBA is aimed at students and graduates who have between three and five years of experience, while an Executive MBA is aimed at those who have more than five years’ seniority, i.e. managers and professionals who want to improve their professional career in business.

New graduate or experienced manager? We have a Master in Business Administration to suit both

Antonella Moretto, Deputy Director of the MBA & EMBA area, explains that, in reality, the seniority found in Executive MBAs can even be much higher. “On an Executive course, the average seniority in the classroom is 13-14 years’ experience. This affects the teaching approach: given that we are talking about individuals with a great deal of experience, the objective is not only to transfer knowledge, but also to work a lot on brainstorming within the classroom, on opportunities for discussion, on heterogeneity. The expertise of the students themselves is a resource that we exploit.”
Therefore, the level among participants is very high: you learn to read the current macrotrends in enterprises and in international scenarios, so that management figures can become more effective decision makers.

The teachers are managers with vast experience

Another difference concerns the figures engaged in the classroom. The traditional lessons of the MBA and Executive MBA are complemented by learning by expert and learning by doing activities. “The Executive MBA courses engage teachers who hold the top corporate positions, such as managing directors and director generals,” explains Moretto. “These are recognized leaders, with particularly advanced soft skills. This allows participants to build a valuable network, by learning from persons of recognized reputation.”
“The MBA course is similar but different. The principle is the same but the management figures involved are younger,” continues Moretto. “Their experience in the classroom can be an added incentive towards understanding how to reach the same objective. In addition, in the MBA courses, learning also involves role play: students can immerse themselves in simulated situations with complex problems that they have not yet had the opportunity of tackling in their everyday real work.”

A sole objective: to create business leaders

Aside from these two aspects, the subjects covered and the objectives are the same. “Our MBAs and Executive MBAs cover all the specific issues on how businesses work. Students come to understand all the processes and the different functions. The objective is to understand how a company works, inside and outside, the main managerial decisions to be taken,” explains Moretto. “In both courses, the issues covered start from basic business economics, organizational issues, innovation management, process management, project management, strategy and finance. The objective is not to create a specialist in a certain area; on the contrary, we want to create a figure who has the ability to become a business leader and manager, who understands the whole of the company, who knows how to interpret the dynamics of all functions and can speak a transversal language. This manager will be able to communicate effectively with any stakeholder, any function, any actor inside or outside the company.”

What skills do you acquire in an Executive MBA?

Posted on 25 October 2019 | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment

Making decisions requires critical thinking and a solid understanding of your field. Without forgetting personal relations skills, which, in the long term, can make the difference between a simple manager and a true leader of change

“Few things give us more satisfaction than hearing from students who, after having attended one of our Executive MBA courses, contact us years later to tell us how relevant the skills they learned continue to be,” states Antonella Moretto, Deputy Director of the MBA & EMBA area of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano.
“People who choose to follow an Executive MBA have high expectations. It is aimed at professionals with significant seniority, already established in the world of work and willing to sacrifice a considerable part of their time. It is therefore an important commitment as well as a real investment in the future. This is why it is crucial to develop managerial skills that can be exploited in the long term.”

The first skill is the critical thinking

But even before the skills, the educational approach common to all our Executive MBAs involves the development of a primary capacity: of all the course objectives, critical thinking is fundamental. “All the subjects covered by the Master’s course are tackled from this perspective,” explains Antonella Moretto. “Students learn to take decisions mindfully, thanks to a critical approach that enables them to analyse situations rapidly and thus find solutions to even the most complex issues.”
This forms the essential basis for the actual skills: “We go from analysing and interpreting business procedures to the ability to draw up a business plan, read a financial statement, understand the dynamics of business and identify the channels in which investors may be found. But a particularly important aspect, from our point of view, is innovation management.”
In international scenarios, competition is at its highest levels, fuelled in part by increasingly invasive digital transformation: knowing how to manage and exploit it is fundamental. “Innovation should be planned carefully. It cannot be implemented without having fully understood the existing dynamics,” warns Moretto. “Only on the basis of this expertise can you revolutionize existing projects, products and business models.”

The soft skills of a competitive manager

Don’t imagine that, being a technical school, the Politecnico overlooks soft skills in favour of hard skills. Quite the opposite. The Future of Jobs Report, produced by the World Economic Forum in 2018, shows clearly that, in 2022, it will be precisely soft skills that will be the most in demand on the labour market, especially in those areas with a noticeably fast growing economy.
The MIP follows this path. “We have always believed in hard skills and continue to do so,” explains the Deputy Director of the MBA & EMBA area, “but it has been demonstrated that, in the long term, the difference between a manager and a true leader of change within your company is given by the ability to develop excellent soft skills.” Within this same context, these skills can branch out in multiple directions: “We go from the multicultural team management to team management in increasingly virtual environments, more traditional and also more emotional leadership skills. Not forgetting public speaking and time management. All these skills were once regarded as an added benefit, whereas today they are considered indispensable for anyone aiming towards career development.”

With Epson and Re Mago, MIP Politecnico di Milano has created the first Smart Classroom in Italy, geared towards collaboration and encouraging brainstorming

Posted on 3 October 2019 | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment

MIP has completed its digital classroom project. The most advanced video-projection and collaboration technology applied to the classroom delivers fully interactive and highly engaging lessons.

MIP, Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management, has completed its project to create fully digital lecture rooms, and today is inaugurating its first “special” Digital Classroom designed to share information visually and encourage brainstorming. This milestone underlines MIP’s continuous high commitment to tap into the opportunities provided by cutting-edge digital tools and offer its students the best possible learning experience.

Along with the other 13 lectures room in the Bovisa Campus equipped with similar tools, the Milan lecture room uses the most innovative technological solutions elaborated by Epson in partnership with Re Mago Ltd, a British company that worked with a largely Italian development team to create visual collaboration and brainstorming software, ideal for Smart Classrooms and Smart Working. This software can be used to share, add notes and present digital material (text, sound, graphics, video, links) and information in real-time using any personal or mobile device physically in the lecture room or connected remotely. All these actions are simple and intuitive, backed by a software user-interface designed with even the least keen technology user in mind.

The Smart Classroom has eight Epson EB-710U interactive laser video-projectors arranged in pairs along its four sides, transforming it into four shared work areas where teacher and students can write, share, take notes and modify documents, with every step being recorded, and everything saved at the end of each session, to retain a complete and fully usable digital copy.

In the words of Federico Frattini, Associate Dean for Digital Transformation: “MIP as a school of management is addressing the business world’s needs through specialised post-graduate and post-experience training courses, designed for people who are already embarking on their professional careers. By creating our Smart Classrooms, we intend to give our teachers and students ever more interactive, modern and engaging means for working together in the classroom.”

What is a Smart Classroom and how does it work?

In the educational and corporate worlds alike, the challenge for true and optimal collaboration is to ensure that all the parties involved can act using all the tools and functions available in a simple, intuitive and user-friendly way that does not upset their own personal methods of working but instead gives them that extra help and support.

Each of the two video-projectors placed along the four Smart Classroom walls can be used to project a range of material (for example, the teacher’s lesson and the students input) or to create a single large working area. In either case, the entire projected area is interactive, and people can join in using the pens provided with the video-projectors or even their fingers (using the Finger Touch function). Or, if they are connected remotely, they can write on their own devices – smartphones, tablets or PCs – connected via cloud to the session.

In this way, the area can be used for brainstorming sessions, for drawing and for sharing all sorts of files (images, videos, pdf files, MS Office documents, links to internet sites), and also for browsing purposes and to access and present apps. The full complexity of AI services (machine learning) is hidden behind simple tools, like Re Mago’s “Lasso Tool”. These advanced tools can, for example, recognise and suggest vector images that are as close as possible to the user’s original free-hand drawing, and these images are then used in presentations. Other special functions like recognition software for writing (OCR) and geometric shapes as well as online searches for images, videos and websites are all at the user’s fingertips or at their verbal request. The outcome of the search just needs to be dragged onto the work area for it to be used and consulted. Files can easily be shared between (to and from) any local storage system or cloud service.

Another benefit is that, during or at the end of a lesson, participants do not have to take photos of the work area or take notes, because the complete record of what was done (including sketches, notes, files, audio and video recordings etc.) can be saved, stored and shared through a number of channels.

QS World University Rankings by Program 2020

Posted on 26 September 2019 | by Veronica Rafaniello | Leave a Comment

Global MBAs and Specialising Masters: Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management stays among the best business schools in the world

QS World University Rankings 2020 confirm high positionings for Masters in Management, Business Analytics, Finance and Marketing and Full-Time MBA.
Among the Business School’s strengths are the ease with which its students have access to the business world, its particular care for diversity and its “thought leadership”.

Greater opportunities to enter the business world, a high return on investment, excellent quality-price ratio and particular care for diversity: these are several of the “plus” points that once again place Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management among the best business schools in the world. This position is endorsed by the QS World University Rankings 2020, with this international classification of Master programs giving stand-out scores for the School’s Specialising Masters in Management, Business Analytics, Finance and Marketing and Full-Time MBAs. The just released 2020 rankings analysed nearly 700 courses offered by 400 Business Schools and Universities in 50 countries across the world.

The School of Management of Politecnico di Milano is always placed in the upper regions of the rankings. The International Master in Project Management (iMPM), once again performed best at global level, with above average scores for “Value for Money”, “Employability” and “Thought Leadership”.
The Full-Time MBA also performed well and, within the Global MBA Rankings, is in 33rd place among the European programmes examined, and is very competitive for “Employability” and “Diversity”, an indicator measuring the percentage of women and non-Italian nationals in both the student body and the faculty.

“Our reputation remains solid in Europe and around the world”, notes Andrea Sianesi, Dean of MIP Politecnico di Milano, “this underlines our sound and valid choices, first and foremost our process of internationalisation and the attention to diversity in all its forms”.

Politecnico di Milano’s School of Management is also listed in the rankings for its Master in Business Analytics (BABD), Finance (MIFRIM) and Marketing (IM4).