Working on projects and developing leadership competencies – module for innovators!

16 Sep 2013

The participants of the first group of the MS in Innovations & Entrepreneurship finished their last academic module. Now they will work with mentors because the presentations of their projects are scheduled for December of this year.

The module was held at the new academic building of UCU, and some of the workshops and lectures were held at Ideas Lab. During the four days of intensive work, everybody had the opportunity to focus on the major principles of building business models.

During the first day, the participants together with the head of LvBS Advisory Board Pavlo Sheremeta examined the case “Fast Heat: How Korea Won the Microwave War.” On the basis of this they built the strategic map of Norton-Kaplan.

Dmytro Symovonyk, director of Citadel Capital,spoke about the strategic value management of a company and ways to evaluate it: “Business evaluation is an art, be creative and use different methods. When you build your company, think first about factors which influence its value,” the expert advises.

The participants had an opportunity to look at budget creation together with Liubomyr Tarnovskyi, director of the UCU Finance Department. HR director of N-iX, Olha Sadokha, spoke about how to define the competencies of project participants, select people into the dream team, and also how to manage time effectively.

Valeriy Pekar, president of Euroindex, described to the participants today’s main trends and the rules of how they operate in the market. At the end, Oleksandra Baklanova, a partner of pro.mova, conducted exercises to determine the leadership competencies that all participants must have or must develop, and also she described how these skills can be applied to work on a project.

Also as part of the module, two workshops were held: with Yaroslav Maksymovych, angel investor in more than 10 Ukrainian IT projects, and Claire Smith, a British diplomat who has experience in negotiating at the highest state levels.

In addition to the workshops, the participants had a chance to receive feedback from Joao Perre Viana, founder of investment fund LeonardShop: “Transform your guesses into facts – nobody will invest just in the idea,” the lecturer advised.

The module finished on September, 14 with the presentation of project ideas by several participants of the program, including the experts Yaroslav Maksymovych, Dmytro Symovonyk, and Taras Verveha, member of the Board of Directors of SoftServe.

Now participants will work on projects and a few times a month will meet with the program mentors and professors at the LvBS Ideas Lab. We wish them good luck!