Business, innovation and financial situations evolve over time. This requires an adaptation of leadership styles, which must be kept up to continuously develop the most effective leadership skills to adjust to and facilitate changes. Attendees of the RSM Leadership Summit 2015 will be inspired by Dorothee van Vredenburch, chief change and organisation and member of the management board at NN Group; Marijn Dekkers, chairman of the board of management at Bayer AG; and Merel van Vroonhoven, chairman of the executive board at the Netherlands Authority of the Financial Markets (AFM). They will share their experiences and views on the winning leadership skills to be successful in 2020 and beyond.
Leveraging cultural heritage
Marijn Dekkers has been CEO of major innovation-driven companies in the USA and in Europe. He will share his perspectives on leading in both worlds, and reveal a scientist’s approach to optimising gut feeling. The chairman of the management board of Bayer will also talk to the audience about how organisations can live up to their global challenges by turning cultural heritage into corporate advantage.
Connecting purpose, people and performance
Dorothee van Vredenburch, chief change and organisation and member of the management board at NN Group, believes leaders must master three levels of communication, which she will reveal during the RSM Leadership Summit. She says that once leaders are able to build bridges between these three elements, they are actually connecting purpose, people and performance.
Corporate social responsibility
The chairman of the executive board at AFM, Merel van Vroonhoven, will share the impact of voluntary work on her daily life as a leader or member of several charity organisations. Van Vroonhoven will address the responsibility of including people, especially those who may need more support. She will reveal the great link between her views on leadership and the inspiration she gets out of her work related to autism in the Netherlands.
Academic perspectives
In addition to interacting with these influential senior leaders, the RSM Leadership Summit allows participants to discover the latest research and perspectives on the subject of leadership skills. RSM’s renowned academics Prof. Rob van Tulder, Prof. Lucas Meijs and Prof. Joep Cornelissen will provide academic insights to the views of the executive speakers, and network with RSM’s business school community – alumni, students, VIPs, corporate relations, faculty and staff.
RSM Leadership Summit
The RSM Leadership Summit does what Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University promises to do: to provide a lively platform where today’s top business practitioners, RSM’s top academics, its valued alumni, and corporate connections come together for a day of high-level networking and the sharing of knowledge. The first RSM Leadership Summit was held in 2009. Since then, the popularity of the event – which also kicks off the RSM alumni reunion weekend, and features the RSM Distinguished Alumni Awards – has grown dramatically, attracting more and more participants each year.
The RSM Leadership Summit will be moderated by Dutch TV journalist Twan Huys. It will take place in the iconic Van Nelle Fabriek in Rotterdam on Friday 2 October. Participants can add a tour of the Van Nelle Fabriek, a UNESCO World Heritage site, which takes place prior to the conference. Tickets to the business event and guided tour are available via the summit’s registration page, with ticket fee information for business professionals, including RSM alumni, and students.
Business leadership
During previous editions of the annual RSM Leadership Summit, prominent business leaders such as Frans van Houten (CEO Philips), Guus Dekkers (CIO Airbus), Søren Hansen (VP IKEA Group), Ulla Kruhse-Lehtonen (Vice-president of customer insight and analytics Sanoma), Pieter van Oord (CEO Van Oord), Rene Hooft Graafland (CFO Heineken), Paul Smits (CFO Port of Rotterdam), Roland Schütz (CIO Lufthansa) and Chris Zook (Partner Bain & Company) discussed the latest ideas, trends, and models impacting business leadership. Past summits focused on topics such as business opportunities, and the risk and challenges with big data, reinventing the future, and creating value at the edge of technology.
