I encountered this interesting (Dutch) initiative “Emerce Business Course” that offers best of both worlds, creating an immersive experience. It’s an MBA-level course on online strategy at the heart of the Internet’s industry: Silicon Valley. This enables participants to have intimate strategic discussions with real Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors. The participants will visit start-ups as well as established pure-players to get a feel for what doing business in the Valley is all about.
Contents
The course is from 2-6 April in Silicon Valley, in short, the business course is build around 5 topics:
Topic 1 – The origins of Disruption
“This topic focusses on the fundamental drivers behind the disruptive nature of internet technology. Why and how are current business paradigms constanly being challenged? What are the characteristics of winner-takes-all markets? Which players are prone to be affected most and why?
During the sessions we will constanly compare new models to existing ones, identifying the factors causing disruption, as well as accompanying opportunities for innovation. Together we will discuss how these developments affect your business now, and in the future.”
Topic 2 – Dealing with Infinite Touchpoints
“From a world with limited and fairly isolated customer contact channels in the ‘pre-digital’ age, we have quickly evolved to the digital and mobile age in which the amount of customer contact channels in theory is infinite. In this new age, it is not enough to simly replicate your activities across different channels to manage cross channel customer behaviour effectively and efficiently.
The management of a large amount of customer contact channels requires a systematic approach that capitalises on each channel’s strenght, while at the same time making optimal use of existing resources. It requires using different analytics and selecting the right KPI’s to measure ROI.
The sessions on this topic discuss how brands and organizations can cope with this new reality, its opportunities and its consequences for channel strategy development and management practice.”
Topic 3 – When consumers talk to each other
“Social media are word-of-mouth on steriods”, said Gary Vaynerchuck in 2008. And they have proven to be just that, and more! Although most organization are aware of the simple fact they should embrace social media, only few actualy do. And many of those who do experience that embracing social media requires structured social strategy development as well as flawless execution throughout the organisation.
This topic focusses on the succesful use of social media for your organisation, with special attention to social media analytics.”
Topic 4 – The Platform Battle: Mobile internet
“Mobile First! This strategic choice of internet powerhouse Google illustrates the fundamental shift in thinking about internet communication as a consequence of the rise of mobile internet. Together with developments in cloud computing this is probably the most fundamental disruptive technological development of the decade.
Sessions on this topic aim to explore new business models enabled by mobile internet technology as wel as the implications of the current battle for mobile platform dominace between the three key players: Apple OS, Android and Windows.”
Topic 5 – Exploring the Valley
“The last day of the business course will be completely focussed on experiencing the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial spirit. Several visits to Silicon Valley companies will offer a unique view behind the scenes of one of the most vibrating and innovative business environments in the world.”
For all information, have a look here.
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