Sitting with a Staff Remi Walbaum

What is your current role at EHL today?

My current role at EHL is Chief Innovation Officer, which means I am working on identifying the evolution around education and deriving scenarios from it. I have been working for the past years on what could happen to us in the future. For instance, with my team, we designed a project called EHL Next, a concept to position EHL in the future of big data, and understand what a data-driven university could be doing and where the position for EHL would be, in particular within hospitality and education. We found out very rapidly those who own the data on hospitality will be able to do serious lifelong learning in the sense that they will be able to follow a professional hospitality path from anywhere in the world whilst expanding their level of knowledge and so be ready to potentially change job. And that should be under the control of the EHL Next in the future.

What were the obstacles in achieving what you have

Rémi Walbum Chief Innovation Officer

When you're talking about the future, the biggest obstacle is being confronted by people who say “there is no need to change, we’re doing very well, we've always done it like this”. So there are two mentalities that you have to fight against. The first one is, we've always done it like this. The second is working in a company that works well. Change is not seen as necessary and does not need to be radical. Whereas if you work in a company that is suffering, people understand that they need to change.

Running the innovation processes, what are some of the changes you have implemented and how has it affected EHL?

I think the primary change management that we've done was during the design of the future campus, which was very innovative in the way that we used the crowdsourcing of ideas. The future campus was designed by over 300 students involved throughout the globe. The second-biggest contribution is undoubtedly our business plan on EHL Next, which is a breakthrough. Apart from that, one of the things I've liked doing most is thinking about the future. For the students, for instance, I tried to introduce art here at EHL, but again it was too innovative and too early, however I'm sure it will come back. The message is: our students should be exposed to various elements from the outside world.

The industry is being drastically disturbed by the importance of data. Hoteliers needs to understand this. If they don't control it and participate, they will no longer successfully manage their hotels. Ownership of and flexibility of running the operations will be critical. Suppose Google and Amazon own your data, plus if they own your payment system, this will eventually put you in a very weak position when running your business.

Where do you see the innovation processes at EHL in five years, and where will it take the students?

Hopefully, the innovation process will be embedded in every student's brain; again, they will know what design thinking means and what minimum viable products require. It will certainly be a new area for the school's management where we will need to be able to turn around programs and initiatives much faster than we did before. I can already see this at the student level and at management level, and as a consequence for all employees.

What is your plan for the upcoming winter holiday? And what are you hoping for in 2022?

I intend to go ski touring if the snow is here as a Christmas present! And in 2022, I hope to spend more time with my grandchildren.