In a digital, constantly changing world full of new challenges, people must be able to act creatively and self-determined. Repetitive work will be taken over by machines, while creative and innovative activities will remain in the hands of people. Educational institutions must play their part here in order to promote creativity and maturity in an increasingly digitalised society.
For this reason, the School of International Business and Entrepreneurship (SIBE) at Steinbeis University is currently developing a degree program concept entitled “Digital Leadership” in close cooperation with its partner companies from a wide range of industries. Based on the SIBE’s study model, the Experience Based Curriculum (EBC), which focuses on the triad of theory, practice and reflection, the future professionally integrated Master’s programme is designed to provide an understanding of digital processes and applications. In addition, this knowledge is to be put into practice in innovative digitization projects, thus creating real added value for the economy and society. With the help of scientific reflection, this structure enables the (further) development of one’s own competences relevant to a digital world.
The Master of Science in Digital Leadership is designed to take place over the course of 24 months in an interactive format on SIBE’s online campus. In English, graduates from all disciplines are prepared for design in a digital world with the help of innovative didactic approaches. At the same time, they successfully enter the job market.
Half of the content of the program is focused on the topic of “digitalization” and the other half on the subject of “leadership”. The areas of “Open Platforms”, “Augmented Reality” and “Artificial Intelligence”, on the one hand, and the areas of “(Agile) Project Management”, “Business Model Innovation”, “Change Management” and “Foresight”, on the other, will be examined in greater detail.
n the course of the Master’s programme, all students should receive intensive support from both the university and the company through fixed contact persons, both professionally and academically, as well as organisationally. In addition to the SIBE, digitization experts such as the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), the Ferdinand Steinbeis Institute (FSI) and the Steinbeis Technology Group (STG) provide technical and scientific support.
SIBE can look back on more than 25 years of experience in the field of leadership training. Approximately 5,000 innovative projects in a wide variety of subject areas have already been implemented by students and scientifically supervised by lecturers. These are, for example, the processing of superscalar data-centric business models in the context of digitalization and Industry 4.0, the implementation of artificial intelligence within strategic corporate purchasing or the integration of artificial intelligence in the user online monitoring of a company. All of these projects have contributed to the digitalization of the respective companies on a strategic and operational level.
In research, the research project “Leadership Education” was also completed in 2017 in cooperation with Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich. In various follow-up projects, including with LMU Munich and Edinburgh Business School (EBS), various research clusters are currently working on the topic of “Leadership in a Digital World”.