Eduardo Alvarez has more than 30 years of experience, on almost every continent, driving business and digital transformations. As global head of Operations Strategy for PwC, he led initiatives that support expansion and performance. Recognizing the integral role that digital plays in growth, he wanted to expand his skills by attending the Driving Digital Strategy program at Harvard Business School (HBS) Executive Education. He shares some thoughts about his experience.
I can think of two major changes. First, it helped to demystify and explain the components of major strategies, especially around three areas that are unique to digital: network effects, value of platforms, and monetization of data. Many of the examples we read about are directly related to managing these elements. Second, it helped to shed light on and apply structure to how digital disruption affects a company’s entire value chain.
I came away from the program with a better understanding of how digital models can help improve the scale and robustness of an existing businesses. I improved my ability to define possible threats and disruptions from current (or potential) competitors. And found valuable lessons on how to fund and when to scale these important efforts.
I am a graduate of the MBA program at HBS, so I have known the value of the case study method for the past 25 years. This approach enables participants to learn through in-depth discussion and use collective brainpower to solve big problems. Learning by doing is invaluable.
This program will help you to adapt strong, proven strategic frameworks to your emerging digital capability. It will enable you to understand root causes and capture lessons learned (both good and bad) that can help your company save millions of dollars and months of discovery by building digital strategies that are more robust and ambitious.
For me, this program was much more helpful than a traditional strategy or leadership refresher course because it applied the rigor of HBS to a new capability like digital. It was a familiar learning environment, and that enabled a much more efficient learning experience.
