The tremendous power of digitalization to change is confronting companies with new challenges. With the dynamics and power of change of digitalization, markets and customer needs are also changing. German companies must gain a competitive advantage by adapting to the digital world. For this reason, companies have to question their business models, adapt them to the digital change and develop them further in order to be able to offer customers a certain added value.
With the recently established professorship at the Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL) for Digital Innovation in Services Industries, Professor Dr. Claudia Lehmann will not only hold her first own professorship, but also the first professorship at a German university focusing on this topic. The aim of the professorship is to develop methods and tools to make innovative technologies usable, to transfer them into new digital business models and thereby enable digital services that would not have been possible without the new technologies. The professorship, which is funded by the LF Group – hence the title LF Group Professorship for Digital Innovation in Service Industries – has above all a special significance for the transfer of research results into practice: the professorship is to contribute to supporting German companies in the service sector, to opening them up for digitalization, to discover and use it for themselves. In addition, the focus will be on the interdisciplinary and interactive communication of innovation competence for service engineering in the digital transformation. The aim is to enable companies to design and implement digital services and business models. Behind every company, business models and technical implementation stand people who make the whole thing possible. Specialists and managers need certain skills to prepare themselves and their employees for the digital transformation. The professorship for Digital Innovation in the Service Industries is investigating which competences are necessary in the digital change so that employees can be integrated and taken along into the transformation processes, as well as the relevance and application of agile working methods.
Rector of the Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL) Prof. Dr. Stephan Stubner:
“Prof. Dr. Lehmann is the expert for the development of digital service innovations. […] As a graduate industrial engineer and economist, she is able to bring together the technical and economic sides. We are extremely pleased that Professor Lehmann will enrich our faculty.”
Markus Rosenbaum, Managing Director of the LF Group:
“For us as a medium-sized company, the endowment of the professorship is a very large investment. We are making it with full conviction because we know that the future cannot be shaped on our own”.
“Production is never an accident!”
We are so happy and excited for you, dear Claudia!
Vita of the professor:
Claudia Lehmann – born in Brandenburg in 1981 – studied at the Technical University of Dresden with a focus on aviation engineering, technology and innovation management and gained practical experience at Lufthansa Cargo in San Francisco. After graduating as an industrial engineer, Claudia initially worked as a consultant before she received her doctorate in 2015. For four years now, she has been head of the Center for Leading Innovation and Cooperation (CLIC) at HHL. She has already worked as a lecturer at universities in Germany and abroad and gives international lectures on topics such as “Industry 4.0”.