INNOVATION AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN ORGANIZATIONS

Digitization is an excellent opportunity for organizations to be very effective in present and future markets. To this aim, the UMFST Student Entrepreneurial Society together with ALUMNI Association of UPM (AUPM) and the  Romanian Research Group for Corporate Finance (RORCF) on the occasion of the UMFST Days organized the conference "Innovation and Digital Transformation in Organizations" on 12th December.

Key speaker, prof. Univ. Dieter Hertweck, leader of the Digital Working Group - EU Danube Region, talked about the importance of digital solutions for organizational sustainability, presented case studies on innovation hubs and partnership opportunities for creating an innovative framework in the region.

At the same time, the workshop was accompanied by a demonstration of digital solutions tailored to the health care sector and a discussion session in which they interacted with those present from categories as: businessmen from Târgu Mureş, university professors and public authorities.

DIGITRANS WORKSHOP IN KARLSRUHE

Another DIGITRANS workshop took place in Baden-Württemberg, Germany: Under the leadership of MFG Baden-Württemberg and Herman Hollerith Zentrum, interdisciplinary teams of SME representatives experienced the DIGITRANS method to develop new digital business model ideas during one day.

With a case study, the participants have adopted the role of an organic farm and have, based on this, developed digital business models. They were supported by two coaches, Petra Newrly (MFG Baden-Württemberg) and Martin Kinitzki (HHZ), who guided the teams through the DIGITRANS innovation circle, e.g. by working with the Blue Ocean strategy to identify where the company currently stands in comparison to the market or the value proposition canvas to understand the customer’s needs and in the end with the business model canvas to structure their digital business model idea. At the end of the day, the interdisciplinary teams built prototypes based on their results and had them tested by other team members. The pictures below give an impression on the creative ideas developed.

TO COMPANY’S DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN 1, 2, 3!

Digitalization demands constant adjustments, airing out existing solutions and finding new ones. Entrepreneurs and everyone making strategic business decisions in companies need to pay that much more attention to updating processes. For this purpose, we carried out a workshop within the DIGITRANS project at Venture Factory in Maribor on Tuesday, 2 October 2018. The workshop was dedicated to teaching the basics of the digital model that gets its name from the project – Digitrans – and the participants learned what digital transformation is and how its systemic changes can contribute towards better business operations of the company.

Using the Digitrans method to gain a comprehensive overview 
Within the DIGITRANS project, in which Venture Factory colleagues are also participating, the project partners designed a method for comprehensive and effective development of digital business models – Digitrans. Workshop participants thus spent a day intensely working on their business idea and learning how to tackle the implementation of digital transformation into their business processes. Under the mentorship of business consultants and using practical examples, they learned how to use a combination of new and existing tools and steps necessary to design a new business model that includes all the key advantages offered by digitalization.

As Darinka Stošič from Bijolada said, the “biggest value added of the workshop is that one takes some time and completely focuses on a single very important topic. Not only for today, but also for the future.” The workshop itself is designed in a way to allow the participants to start introducing digitalization processes into their work on the very next day.

Concrete help and solutions
Through examples, tools and accessories, the participants obtained concrete information that they will be able to use immediately. “Digital transformation is incredibly important for every company in the 21st century. Everyone knows that it is very difficult to start studying these processes by yourself, so I’m very grateful for workshops such as this one,” said one of the participants, Luka Vrtovec.

Due to the excellent response from participants and interested entrepreneurs, we are going to prepare a repetition of the workshop in the upcoming months, so don’t overlook the event posts on our websiteand Facebook profile.

The workshop took place within the DIGITRANS project, financed by the European Union within the Transnational Interreg Danube 2014-2020 project, supporting small and medium-sized companies in their development of digital business models.

DIGITRANS PROJECT SUCCESSFULLY PRESENTED AT DIGITAL TRANSFOMATION CONFERENCE (DTC) IN ZAGREB

Project DIGITRANS was successfully presented at Digital transformation conference at hotels Westin and Panorama in Zagreb.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CONFERENCE was held at Zagreb from 6th till 8th November 2018. On the first day of the conference, section named “Digital transformation in economy: disruption, data and artificial intelligence” was chaired by asst. prof. Katarina Tomičić-Pupek, PhD (Faculty of Organization and Informatics, UniZG). First lecture in this section was dedicated to presenting FOI’s role in the Interreg project DIGITRANS and to the introduction about the key output of the project – the DIGITRANS methodology. 

Also during first two days, info desk has been organised where conference participants could get more information about the project and its key activities and outputs.

On third day of the conference, in cooperation between Faculty of Organization and Informatics (FOI) and Technology Innovation Centre Medimurje Ltd. (TICM), digital transformation workshop has been conducted. Participants were delighted by the workshop and by the possibilities of applying the presented DIGITRANS method in their business environment.

Fourth DIGITRANS PROJECT MEETING

DIGITRANS project partners have recently met for the fourth time in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria. With project official ending closing rapidly, there are still couple of challenges to address.

The meeting took place on 25th and 26th September in Sofia Tech Park JSC, the first science and technology park in Bulgaria. The park is meant to boost cooperation between scientific, educational, business and public sectors.

The first day kicked off with project steering committee discussing strategic questions. Afterwards, the rest of the project consortium joined in. The first day’s main topics were blended learning trainings (BLTs) and project administration. The lead partner, MFG Innovation Agency Media and Creative Industries Baden-Württemberg, has already completed all three BLT cycles and they kindly shared their experience with the rest of the team. A discussion on BLTs’ structure revision ensued followed by defining content for BLT trainer’s guidelines. After the lunch, the focus shifted from BLTs to project budget and quality control.

The first topic of the second day was project sustainability. Partners shared their thoughts and ideas regarding the sustainability workshops’ structure. Its main goal is to try to include the project’s results and conclusions into policies of each region and in that way strengthen SMEs’ capacity for digital transformation. This was followed by discussion on guidelines for local and regional authorities.

The meeting continued with communication activities review and plans for the upcoming period. Special attention was paid to DIGITRANS LinkedIn community and DIGITRANS.me platform, both serving as networking and learning hubs for all things digital transformation.

The two days in Sofia have been very productive and in addition to the meeting, partners had a chance to continue their discussion in a more informal environment during a dinner.

In the following nine months there is still a lot to do but the effort will most certainly not be in vain once the project’s goal is accomplished.