Leadership in digital times means taking on the challenge of developing the 'missing middle', says Professor Karlien Vanderheyden. That means that you are committed to a successful collaboration between man and machine.

How can Paradise City Festival combat cup pirates using digital tools? This was just one of the challenges our students had to find a solution to during the digital strategy elective. Organised as a one-week “sprint”, it had the support of Vlerick’s Professor Arne Buchwald and seasoned Accenture coaches.

In the past, CFOs mainly worried about yesterday’s results. Nowadays the emphasis is on tomorrow’s value creation. What will the CFO’s role look like in the future and what can he or she do to keep up with the times? That is the theme that the leading experts of The Board are exploring together with Vlerick Professor Filip Roodhooft in the Dutch magazine Management Scope. ‘It’s all about business and data analytics. The rest is merely hygiene.’

Notwithstanding several important measures taken during the past decade, the Eurozone is still facing huge fragilities, which may threaten the survival of the Euro. Politicians and regulators may not be sufficiently aware of these risks, but the situation can quickly become critical. In order to address these fragilities, the European Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee advocates in this statement written by Professor David Veredas that European policymakers urgently start working on some pre-emptive measures.

Health organizations are taking protective measures against the new coronavirus. Likewise, companies must make their supply chains resilient to what might become the new normal. At the moment, it’s unclear when Chinese factories will be back up to full operation. So, mitigating the risk of a potential supply disruption is of utmost urgency.

The electricity directive from the Clean Energy Package (clean energy for all Europeans) was recently adopted. It is down to the individual Member States to implement the new deal for energy users described in this directive.

Government bodies are in the midst of a digital transformation. But the design of new solutions often gets no further than merely the technical level. “If government bodies still want to be relevant in five years’ time, they will need the courage to set the bar higher and act as choreographers within their own ecosystem”, says Vlerick Professor Stijn Viaene. But what does it mean to take on the role of a choreographer? That is what we will be investigating with LoQutus over the next two years.

From 11 to 16 November, 40 iGMO members headed to South Africa for their annual inspiration field trip. Their aim was to take a step back from their own companies for a while and acquire some food for thought, both from academic lectures at our partner institution Stellenbosch University, and from visits to local entrepreneurs in the townships. Professor Hans Crijns: “Here, entrepreneurship is born of necessity, but at the same time it expresses something incredibly hopeful.”

The right use of data can give companies a strategic advantage. CFOs are ideally suited to working with this data due to their analytical abilities, says Kristof Stouthuysen, Professor of Management Accounting.

The arrival of autumn brings the return of the first viruses. What better time to talk about a mysterious, world-famous virus that has spread among the highest echelons of management at lightning speed: the CEO disease.