The RWTH TIM Year in Review

Despite all turbulences, 2020 was an interesting and productive year. As academics in a well-funded German university of technology, we are indeed in a privileged position. So we made the best out of it and explored many new things. Let me share a few highlights.

The old world: 2020 started with activities that today seem to belong to a past far far away: A great research colloquium and the famous WU University Ball in Vienna (on invitation by Nik Franke) – dancing in close physical contact with 1000s of people in the Hofburg, followed by a field trip with our Master students to Paris (where our largest concern was a strike of the Metro), and plenty of travel, executive seminars, workshops etc. – until March, when instead of starting into a long-planned research visit at UTS in Sydney, I got the opportunity to learn all tricks of Zoom, Slack, Miro etc. from the comfort of my home office.

TIM vs. Virus: While we still were debating whether we hold a long-planned "future of science" event in Berlin, with an opening speech by Angela Merkel, on the occasion of RWTH's 150s anniversary, the first lockdown got us all in a new position. Our Ph.D. students at RWTH TIM took part in Germany's national "wir vs. virus" hackathon with https://weareopen.business, a large collection of business model patterns to master disruptions in a crisis.

Teaching: Digital teaching in large scale turned out to be fun and rewarding. I always was a proponent of the flipped classroom: time with students should be used for discussions and interactions, not for long monologs. With the right tools and learning culture, digital provides many opportunities for inclusion and deeper engagements – from ten executives to 650 Bachelor students (and we did well: among >65 business schools in Germany, we were named as one of two leaders in digital teaching transformation). But the social time before and after a session is what truly gets lost. This is the biggest reason to go back to "physical" next fall. And with digital, you can invite great colleagues and managers into your lecture (some special ones are here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/12xsjyujq4m9u6f/TIM-GuestLectures2020.pdf?dl=0 – Thank you all!!)

Research: In June, the board of the "IfU Institut fuer Unternehmenskybernetik e.V." (Institute for Management Cybernetics) appointed me as IfU's new academic director. IfU is an independent, non-profit research institute closely affiliated with RWTH Aachen, working on applied AI, robotics, and the future of work & leadership. This is a great opportunity for research generating impact for society and industry, especially SMEs. IfU is powered by a truly multidisciplinary team. Together with Kathleen Diener, IfUs Chief Science Officer, we are looking forward to grow it into our new platform for engaged scholarship that matters. More in IfU's annual report: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lcxhqcsh253cyl4/IFU_Report_2020.pdf

In our research projects, we looked into the Corona impact on Industry 4.0, studied ecosystem emergence in the context of platform-based business models (part of our work in the National Cluster of Excellence "Internet of Production"), looked into user innovation inboard games (paper coming soon in RP), and started SPAICER, a large research program on AI as a driver of organizational resilience (we got this grant BEFORE Corona!). If you like to learn more about the later, join the Innovative Tuesday on Jan 12, 6pm CET (https://innovativetuesday.de/). This is the monthly free innovation talk at RWTH Business School. Of course, it now turned digital, and hence is open to the world (all talks are in English). On Jan 12, we will present our new framework on utilizing Industry 4.0 for organizational resilience. See you there!

All recent publications: https://tinyurl.com/piller-pub

Development: This year, we also totally relaunched our RWTH Executive MBA, a well-established program with a focus on technology leadership and innovative change. It was exciting design work to conceptualize a new curriculum with many innovative elements to adapt this program to the demands of agile leaders in today's fast-paced work environment. If this is something you consider to develop your career – or that of one of your team members, reach out (brochure for more information or https://emba.rwth-aachen.de).

2021 will bring many new things and experiences – some we cannot imagine today (hopefully good ones), but also some foreseeable events: We will (in a hybrid format) finally host the OUI 2020+1, the global conference of the Open and User Innovation community, and some other great conferences (TIM Tagung, MCPC, Losgr??e 1, …). I will explore more avatars and VR for teaching, exciting new research is lurking around the corner, and hopefully also some social pastime closer than two meters.

Our upcoming conferences:

OUI 2020+1: The 18th Open & User Innovation Conference. now: 21-22 June 2021 https://oui.open-innovation.com

RWTH TIM Tagung, The Annual Gathering of Corporate Innovators. Sept. 2021 https://tm-tagung.de

MCPC 2020+1: Towards Sustainable Customization. Nov 2021 https://tinyurl.com/y5h7xj5x

Our executive seminars - also in blended and virtual / VR formats:

Leading the Smart Factory of the Future (Industry 4.0): https://theleadershipnetwork.com/course/industry-4-0-training-course 

Leading Intelligent Engineering: AI&ML for R&D and Engineering: https://theleadershipnetwork.com/course/leading-intelligent-engineering

Chief Digital Officer: Mastering Digital Transformation https://tinyurl.com/CDO2020

The New RWTH Executive MBA: Our flagship program relaunched: https://emba.rwth-aachen.de