L'X and Télécom Paris launch an online specialization course on business digitalization

Designed and developed by academics from École Polytechnique and Télécom Paris, the "Digital Business" specialization course is the first to be launched by the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, of which both Schools are founding members, and which has made the challenges of digitalization one of the main focuses of its training, research and innovation strategy.

Drawing on the expertise and research of both Schools, this innovative specialization course aims to give participants the key concepts to understand the transformation of business and entrepreneurship in the digital world.

Available on the Coursera online training platform since May 25, it includes four courses, three of which present a dozen key concepts for understanding the challenges of digitalization and one course dedicated to implementation through three case studies of companies very different in terms of background, size and business.

The first course focuses on a detailed understanding of the digital world and in particular of terms that are often overused, such as digital disruption or the functioning of platforms or ecosystems, and also introduces essential theoretical notions such as externalities or multi-sided platforms.

The second focuses on how to act in this new world and in particular on its consequences for the "traditional" businesses, for intellectual property or the rules of marketing...

The third episode is dedicated to growth in the digital world and examines winning strategies in this new paradigm or building a business on connected objects. Several episodes are dedicated to entrepreneurship and answer questions such as how to make a pitch, what are the new logics of investors, what is "growth hacking"?

The fourth course consists of applying the knowledge acquired by analyzing how three companies with very different profiles - the luxury group LVMH, the Chinese telecom giant Huawei and a French energy start-up, Energy Square - have adapted and developed in the new digital environment.

"This is a MOOC that is unlike any other. It is not a MOOC where we film a speaker for 90'. The MOOCs that make up the specialization program include 10 modules, each of which is worked on in a very dense manner over a period of 10 minutes to maintain the attention of the participants, who are required to watch it again several times to fully understandall of the content", stresses Rémi Maniak, a professor in the Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Department at École Polytechnique and one of the course designers.

"Each episode combines theory and practice with many examples of both web giants such as (Amazon, AirBnB, Google, ...) but also industrial groups of traditional sectors such as automotive or telecoms or startups or SMEs such as Qarnot Computing from the X and Telecom Paris", adds Rémi Maniak.

The other designers and lecturers of the "Digital Business" course are Thierry Rayna and Cécile Chamaret, respectively Professor and Senior Lecturer in the Management, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Department at École Polytechnique.

Laurent Gille, Valérie Fernandez and Thomas Houy are respectively Emeritus Professor, Professor and Associate Professor at Télécom Paris are the stakeholders for Télécom Paris.