Keynote Speaker - Prof. Dr. Lukas Rohr
Project management across cultures on the example of a multinational EU-Research-Project for "An Open Platform for the Smart City"
Prof. Dr. Lukas Rohr
Director Engineering and Information Technology, Bern University of Applied Sciences
Abstract:
In august 2016 Bern University of applied science has won an important EU-funded project together with partners in Japan and Europe. The goal is to develop a platform on which open government data combined with the internet of things is provided to a variety of users.
We will discuss general project management guidelines based on theories of Hofstede, Hall and Trompenaars and focus and highlight on experiences and investigations found on this special project [1].
We will analyze what project managers must consider in such an international and intercultural project. We will explain how conflicts can arise and be resolved in an international project, and examined communication in an intercultural environment always with the goal to maintain a smooth working relationship.
1. Project management across cultures 2017, Bachelor Thesis by Patric Jenni, Bern university of Applied Sciences
Biography:
Lukas Rohr holds a PhD in Physics of the University of Basel and a MBA of ETH Zürich.
His career began in an industrial R&D section before he became in 1993 head of the new founded materials technology department at EMPA (Swiss federal laboratories for materials testing and research) in Thun. There he was responsible for several international research projects in the framework of EU and many R&D contracts with industry.
2007 he was elected as a director of Bern University of Applied Sciences in Engineering and Information Technology.
He is involved in many activities fostering start-ups and transfer of R&D results to the industry. He serves therefore in several boards as for example as President of the Board of the Foundation for technological Innovations.
He served for almost 10 years as a Swiss delegate in a technical committee of COST (European Cooperation in the field of Scientific Research)
He was always convinced of the innovation potential of multicultural teams and interested in leading such research teams. Therefor he did 1996/1997 an Europreneurial-Education at the Centre Européen de Management in Colmar (F) in collaboration with University of St. Gallen and INSEAD at Fontainebleau
Lukas is married to Mayumi Yoshida and they have 3 adult children.
They live in Thun (Switzerland) for almost 30 years.