TIME Excellence Lectures

Learning from the experience of others

Today's leaders must navigate business issues and interactions that cut across geographical boundaries and cultures. They must inspire conversations, ignite collaboration and integrate multiple perspectives to drive growth and innovation. Inspiration, first hand information, advice from accomplished individuals, are the ingredients, which constitute the flesh and bone of success, that are so often overlooked by management scholars. TIME MBE puts these ingredients front and centre, allowing you to fraternize with business leaders, practitioners, opinion makers and academic insiders through a set of lectures that deal with a range of issues such as:

Global market issues: The challenges firms face when competing in the global market and the contemporary issues surrounding world trade. It will help students develop a working knowledge of the economic drivers, challenges and opportunities present in the most important business regions in the world, including South-East Mediterranean and the Balkans.

Entrepreneurial lessons: why some succeed where others constantly fail? Integrating business examples with the latest research insights, it will help students develop a cutting-edge, integrated perspective on entrepreneurship and gain strategic tools for managing risks in emerging and developed markets.

Innovation and commercialization: Bridging the gap between an invention and commercialization was never easy. This lecture aims to identify useful examples and practices. It will examine real-world issues, products and systems, focusing on understanding innovation strategy and management from the perspective of a senior corporate manager.

Startup survival: There is no guide about how to survive the first few years as a startup. One can only learn from the ones who succeeded. Successful entrepreneurs will present their companies and business concepts while sharing personal experiences about the process of launching a startup.

Best product managerial practices: The Do’s and Don’ts, an expert’s perspective. Students will use frameworks, tools and direct experience to become effective technology product managers. Topics covered are relevant to both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs working within established technology companies.

Excellence Lectures schedule for the 2022-23 academic year.

27 September, Zhen Lei, Penn State
18 October, Carolina Castaldi, Utrecht University (this webinar is cancelled)
25 October, Bechtold Stefan, ETH Zurich
15 November, Ana Santos Rutschman, Villanova University
6 December, Margaret Kyle, CERNA, Mines ParisTech
31 January, Carlos Ponce, Universidad Alberto Hurtado
14 February, Niels Van Dijk, Vrije, Universiteit Brussels
28 February, Piercarlo Zanchettin, Nottingham University
14 March, Stephen Hilgartner, Cornell
04 April, Margo Bagley, Emory University
25 April, Madhavi Sunder, Georgetown University
9 May, Mario Biagioli, UCLA
23 May, Angelos Theodorakopoulos, Oxford

Practitioners who have participated in TIME MBE excellence lectures:

TIME strides to provide its students with an intimate understanding of the realities of the market arena through a set of lectures by leading practitioners. Trying to unravel the role of research and development for innovative ventures of all sizes, TIME has invited the following Time Excellence Lecturers who will explain to students their secrets of success and share with them their experience in managing multinational corporations and startup firms:

Costis Zombanakis

Costis Zombanakis graduated from Harvard University with a BA in Government and a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. He worked briefly as a journalist at The Economist magazine and in banking at Barclays. He is the major shareholder of the Rethymno Cretan Kings; its community-based sports model is focus on education and volunteerism. He has recently created a company for the production and export of Cretan food.

Spiros Arsenis

Dr. Spiros Arsenis is the coordinator of the NBG Business Seeds Program that finances innovative ventures. His lecture will focus on the Business Seeds Program, NGB’s Financial Technology (fintech) Accelerator, on novel crowdfunding tools such as i-fund and on how the Business Seeds Program has helped private and public initiatives in Crete.

Elias Kyriakakis

Elias Kyriakakis’s, member of the B.O.D of Grecotel S.A., special expertise lies in the implementation of national and European high tech projects (number crunching computer systems, technical computing, communications, e-commerce & multimedia). He has a broad technical experience with specialization in large scale computer systems. Previously, he was the managing director of several I.T. companies such as Brainware S.A. and Akropolis Technopolis S.A , while he also worked as a manager and direct consultant to the B.O.D. in IFS S.A., a leading enterprise software solution provider.