Block Seminar 2016

The academic year 2016/2017 for the new CEMS class at the University of Economics, Prague has been kicked-off with the Block Seminar, which was held between August 29 – September 5, 2016. The Block Seminar is a compulsory part of the CEMS MIM curriculum.

An attractive topic “Digital Strategies of Family Businesses – Case of Hilti” has been prepared in cooperation with Hilti for a group of 35 CEMS students of 16 nationalities coming from 8 CEMS partner universities.

The academic part has been supervised by doc. Jiří Hnilica, Ph.D., Head of Department of Strategy at Faculty of Business Administration and Vice-Rector for International Relations and Information Systems and Ladislav Tyll, MBA, Ph.D., CEMS Academic Director. The diverse teachers from CEMS partner universities, Alberto Gimeno from ESADE (Barcelona), Hermann Frank and Julia Süss-Reyes from WU Wien, Hilti representatives – Jan Radil, Head of Sub-region Eastern Europe (EU), HR Manager Josef Plachý and Petr Šmíd, Country Marketing Manager CZ, SK, HU, Baltics at Google contributed to the rich program of the Block Seminar.

The main students’ task was cooperation on projects on the given topics, which were chosen by Hilti. 8 students’ teams were working on the digital strategy topic regarding the range of Hilti products. Student teams presented the results of their whole-week effort during the last day of the seminar. A jury of VSE and Hilti representatives decided on the winning team, whose members were Johanne Olimb Kirkerud, Natia Manjgaladze, Klára Šarkovská, Frank Hunold Schulleri and Gabriela Takáčová.

The Block Seminar was closed by a gala dinner and awarding the winning team. The rector of VSE, Prof. Hana Machková, also participated in this ceremony. Prof. Machková is a member of the CEMS Strategic Board. VSE representatives would like to thank to Hilti and Google representatives, guest teachers and CEMS Club Prague for their effort with this successful seminar.

The CEMS Block Seminar was also rich in social and teambuilding activities. Students from CEMS Club Prague prepared a game, whose aim was to discover sights in Prague. Saturday was dedicated to the trip to a family glassworks RÜCKL CRYSTAL a.s. in Nižbor and canoeing on the river Berounka.

In 2012 – 2015 the Block Seminar has been organized in cooperation with ŠKODA AUTO on the topic “Marketing in Automotive Industry”.

In case of your interest, see the photo-gallery.