Amid the oak and linden trees of Charlottenburg, there lies an event space. A marble staircase, a stained-glass backdrop, and, suddenly, an exquisite room of entrepreneurs. Over 40 Young Presidents’ Organisation (YPO) Members visited Berlin over the weekend to participate in our Transformation Bootcamp. Forty-eight hours of keynote speeches, interactive workshops, shared meals, and traded ideas and experiences ignited connections that will last a lifetime. YPO Gold Berlin and Argo Ventures presented an event that went above and beyond expectations.

Day One: The Beginning

The two-day session opened with a warm welcome by Stefan Beiten and Sascha Grumbach and a nourishing breakfast. As an invigorating first keynote, Professor Dr. Julian Kawohl, leading professor of strategic digital management at the HTW Berlin, introduced the Ecosystem Strategy Map. Through this, he articulated how corporate officials can use innovative technology to enable disruptive transformation within their existing business structure. Corporate officials, he said, must take initiative immediately in order to keep up with global megatrends. Accelerators, corporate venture units, incubators, partner models, and participation in bootcamps, like the Transformation Bootcamp, were some of Kawohl’s many solutions to this challenge.

After an inspiring initial keynote, Nina B. Fischer supplied the participants with a preliminary introduction to Design Thinking. She focused on complexity, spontaneous change, and agility as essential components of a strong company dynamic.

Then, participants were divided into seven teams and encouraged to put Fischer’s techniques to practice.

Putting Theory to Practice

A large part of the day was spent in teams, where participants were presented with real-life challenges disseminated by Berlin startups. Through Design Thinking, team members brainstormed solutions to the challenge, creating by the end of the day a business model that would provide an innovative solution to the problem.

Participants used their expertise to design exciting business solutions. Members received advice from assigned coaches, brainstormed solutions, prepared questions to pose to field experts via a live conference call, and completed a business model canvas to collect their ideas. YPOers even got creative, implementing Legos, putty, yarn, and fabric to visualize their solutions.

To supplement their innovative business solution workshops, YPOers attended an afternoon keynote by Kristofer Fichtner. The founder of thermondo provided insights into digitization and its impacts on business models. He stressed the importance of agility in capturing exponential technologies. His words energized the participants to level up the impact of their projects, and to think outside of the box in order to develop their business solutions.

Sascha Grumbach followed Fichtner’s keynote. Grumbach emphasised the need of business model innovation. Companies, through the Business Model Canvas he proposed, can escape cutthroat competition by changing the rules of the game in just nine simple steps. After this process, the business models with which the teams were engaged took on a new and stronger structure.

A Success

At the end of Day One, with guidance from many speakers and coaches, the teams presented their business models. One example of a productive solution to handling business trips was iTravel. iTravel is an AI tool used to book travel arrangements based on the digitised schedules of busy entrepreneurs. After a day of workshops, a day both intense and successful in equal measures, guests attended an extraordinary dinner together. At GRACE Restaurant, inside the Hotel am Zoo, entrepreneurs and Argo team members mingled in a relaxed, warmly-lit room.

While having a glass of wine and enjoying a decadent three-course meal, members networked from the burrata through to the classic cheesecake. Dinner guests discussed and chose the winner of the design thinking and business model canvassing challenge they had been faced with during the day. In this relaxed space, participants and organizers alike had the chance to develop further relationships.

Day Two: Practice as Theory

The second day started strong, retaining the productive spirit of the first day. Christophe Maire of Atlantic Labs presented his insights on the success of Gate5 and Nokia. His presentation gave participants a more incisive sense of how markets can be disrupted by technology, and proposed future implications of this disruption. Following this keynote, participants greeted Dr. Nandu Nandakumar for a video conference. Dr. Nandakumar, CTO at Razorthink and serial entrepreneur, shared career secrets on how to use AI to successfully scale your business. His highly informative keynote introduced how AI works, and presented various use cases to shed light on scaling with artificial intelligence.

With the theme of the morning in sight, participants were able to zoom in on business scaling with a riveting keynote by Nikolai Ladanyi. Ladanyi of scale up is an author, entrepreneur, and scale-up coach. His presentation gave interesting insights into the challenges and solutions in scaling a business. Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, he said, leads to astonishing possibilities in terms of scaling. This methodology provided several perspectives to get a better understanding of how and where to start.

Following an engaging first keynote, Ladanyi returned after a short break for an enlightening second keynote on the topic of Culture and Team. This second discussion outlined the process of defining the team, culture, and core values within their businesses. His discussion examined methods of personal and professional development that characterise the image of a business. His presentation and integrated approach to the keynote gave the audience many ideas for further improvement in their professional ecosystems.

Bringing It Home

In the final keynote of the bootcamp, Mo Moubarak gave the participants some excellent takeaways under the umbrella of company culture. Moubarak founded MoBerries, an AI-driven SaaS platform. Mo’s candid advice covered how to identify and nourish your unique company culture. His keynote addressed the structure and process necessary to developing and sustaining this culture as you scale. The empowering speech uplifted members and capped off a transformational bootcamp.

Der Beitrag In Case You Missed It: YPO Gold Transformation Bootcamp erschien zuerst auf Argo Ventures.

Perhaps you are in a café, scrolling through your social media feeds before you head into work. Perhaps you are researching our company (and we welcome you!) during office hours. Maybe you’re even putting us all to shame, reading this article on the stationary bicycle at your gym.

No matter what the context, artificial intelligence (AI) has in some way brought you to this page. Whether Siri gave you directions to get here, or your LinkedIn account suggested this article, based on an algorithm of your specific interests. AI is responsible for getting you here, to this moment, now.

Office Goals

The modern office, especially, the modern start-up, has a great challenge to confront. The challenge: to utilise digital transformations to pioneer innovations in their businesses.

Although this challenge can be quite menacing at first, the prospects inspire hope for the future of workplace operations. AI presents a critical technological innovation, whose roots date back to more than a half-century, but whose modern implications are more ground-breaking than ever before.

For the new-age entrepreneur, at any step of their career, the acquisition of knowledge in this field can be a game-changer in their path. Let’s learn what exactly this powerful tool can do.

AI: What exactly is it?

According to HubSpot, AI “is a broad area of computer science that makes machines seem like they have human intelligence.

Is it really that simple?

Actually, yes.

Despite the extensive media portrayals of robots taking over the decision-making process for communities, artificial intelligence simply expresses the capacity of computers to be trained to interact with humans. Full stop.

The implications of this relatively simple field are excitingly complex, especially for your business. “Smart” computers can help increase the efficiency of company operations and help you focus on what’s really important. From spam filters to automated dictation of notes, AI can help you keep your eye on the prize.

Chatbots are an excellent example of established computer programs lifting the burden of repetitive business activities. While bots take care of fielding customer concerns, your employees can advance outreach methods and collect valuable data to improve the impact of your business.

Models such as these increase the value of any successful venture. However, it is important to remember that learning about these processes is as essential to your business as utilising this cutting-edge technology.

Lifelong Learning: A Love Letter

So: how do you invite artificial intelligence, and recognition of its abilities, into your life?

The first step is simple. As with any stable relationship, you must put forward an effort to get to know it.

Some ways you can engage your team through learning have already been explained in my colleague’s recent post. You can do even more:

• team workshops
• retreats
• available learning opportunities (my team presents new learning every Friday)
• classes

These simple options can increase the productivity of your team and get you on track to the next great breakthrough.

Recent years have sharpened the skill set of AI programming to a previously inconceivable, and somewhat spooky, level. Developers in Australia and the U.S., for example, designed a program called the “Nightmare Machine”, which first identifies fear and can then produce it.

First, they fed the machine visual material, which the team then responded to, to discern what imagery provokes the neural networks that are psychologically traced to fear. Finally, the program then created imagery based on this learning to simulate nightmares.

The takeaway of this program was to better understand the psychological partnership that is possible between humans and machines. Good work produces good results, and if you invest time to learn about how AI can improve your life, you can drive excellent advances in your field.

We have the power to shape digital transformations to make them work for us, not the other way around. If we open ourselves to the possibility of growth, we can make wonderful things happen.

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Der Beitrag What AI Can Do For Your Company erschien zuerst auf Argo Ventures.