Women in executive positions: It is a double-bind

Josefine van Zanten, an internationally acclaimed learning and organizational expert, spoke last week about the double-bind dilemma for female executives as part of the WU Executive Insights series on diversity and inclusion. In an interview with the WU Executive Academy, she talks about the fatal errors of a "female" future and how the double-bind dilemma in companies could be resolved for the benefit of all.

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What a great day: The 10/15 Year Reunion of the Classes 2004 and 2009

At the end of May, we invited our MBA graduates from 2004 and 2009 to the WU Executive Academy to celebrate their 10th and 15th graduation anniversaries. An exciting day for everyone - with many interesting workshops and a lot of time for networking. Many of the alumni had not yet seen the new campus because they had studied in the picturesque venues of the Palais Liechtenstein and the MOYA (Museum of Young Arts) in the city center of Vienna. In any case, the alumni celebrated for old times' sake.

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Pioneering at A1: Agile behavior at Austria's leading telecommunications provider

New feedback culture, new roles, a new understanding of leadership: Michaela Huber-Kroneisl not only changed her attitude towards leadership, but also revised the Strategic Purchasing Department at A1. Thanks to WU Executive Academy’s "Pioneers of the 21st Century" program, she received important inputs for her personal and organizational transformation.

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Is crowdsourcing really the magic bullet for any innovation issue?

NASA, Coca-Cola, and Greenpeace have one thing in common: they rely on crowdsourcing competitions to boost their innovative force. The spectacular outcomes achieved so far have given rise to a flood of both individual competitions and crowdsourcing platforms. In this month’s EI insights, Prof. Nikolaus Franke, Academic Director of the Professional MBA Entrepreneurship & Innovation at WU Executive Academy, analyzes whether crowdsourcing is in fact a universal cure for innovation-related issues and why the crowd always comes up with better ideas and concepts than highly paid in-house experts.

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10 years of the MBA Energy Management: The 10 greatest moments

This year, the WU Executive Academy's MBA Energy Management celebrates its 10th anniversary. Many students from all over the world have graduated from this MBA program. Throughout this unique MBA, they have learned a lot about energy markets, renewable energies, analysis tools, and business strategies with a bright future. Often, it's not the facts and figures that stay in our minds but the personal, unexpected and emotional moments we experience.

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Ferdinand Klauser: The power of ideas - why it's better to be the disruptor than to leave it to others

“Complexity and complacency are the silent killers of organizations. The only thing that’s certain is change. Therefore, we either disrupt ourselves or leave it to others,” says Ferdinand Klauser, General Manager at KISKA China. Find out why the Professional MBA Marketing & Sales alumnus relies unconditionally on the power of multidisciplinary teams and why he quickly realized after his screenwriting and photography studies that creativity alone is not enough for economic success in his unique career story.

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Why "Smarketing" can do more than marketing & sales

In many companies, marketing and sales are still regarded as separate, even competing areas. However, a holistic understanding of one another's needs is the key to professional success in both marketing and sales. Prof. Barbara Stöttinger, Dean of the WU Executive Academy, and Dmitry Osokin, Business Unit Manager at the pharmaceutical company Takeda, who overlooks both marketing and sales from a joint perspective, explain how „smarketing“ works best in practice.

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How to ensure that your MBA will be a real career booster

An MBA helps you make that long-desired career step, increase your responsibilities and take home a bigger paycheck. However, only if you do it right. In the following article, Kerstin Knapp, Chief Human Resources Officer at Puma Energy and a graduate of the Global Executive MBA, and Andreas Landgrebe, Managing Partner at Boyden Executive Search, explain what really matters when it comes to ensuring that your MBA will give your career that desired boost.

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Mental accounting: The truth lies in the big picture

“Our brain has a tendency to simplify complex issues, if not necessarily always in a rational manner: we tend to suffer from tunnel vision when it comes to the “mental checking account” in question, ignoring the correlations with other “accounts”, says Prof. Manfred Frühwirth. How you can beat this psychological phenomenon to keep the "big picture" of your own portfolio in mind, is explained by the Academic Director of the Professional MBA Finance in the 11th part of our GEWINN/WU Executive Academy series "The biggest investor mistakes".

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Have you tried it already? Leading and learning "with the brain"

“Brain-friendly” leadership? Sounds weird, but it's not. Andy Habermacher knows how efficient learning and a good leadership style are connected to the power of the brain. He also knows what they can do for both a company as a whole and its individual employees and has suggestions for what good managers can do differently in this respect. During the last Business Breakfast at the WU Executive Academy at the end of May, the British neuroleadership expert explained which potentials are released inside us if we learn and lead "with the brain" rather than against it.

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