Alumnus hosts Techweek 2020 event
AUT alumnus Erik Bast is co-hosting Bridge the Gap: Identifying Value Drivers and Accelerating Strategy Execution, at Techweek 2020.This free interactive 45-minute session will take you on a journey to learn more about enterprise wide value management and how to embed it into your organisation – so you can focus on delivering your strategy.
We asked Erik - who graduated with a Master of Computer and Information Sciences with first-class honours - a few questions about the event and his career journey.
Who would you recommend this session to?
I’d recommend anyone who is interested in enterprise value management to attend as we will demonstrate our holistic framework and approach to measure, articulate and optimise value creation in an enterprise context. This allows organisations to get away from focusing on financial value only (e.g. ROI, NPV) and instead apply a more meaningful, complete view of value.
What does presenting at Techweek mean to you?
It’s both a great honour and opportunity. Opportunity because we can reach more people with our idea and honour because we will be presenting alongside some of New Zealand’s best entrepreneurs and innovation leaders. Having personally been to a number of start-up events and innovation conferences around the world, I can hand on heart say that New Zealand entrepreneurs are punching above their weight, so we are proud to be amongst them.
Tell us a little bit about your current role/business
OutPace helps organisations with portfolio management and prioritisation based on a holistic and comprehensive value model. The model and our approach to embed the model into day to day decision making are a powerful and necessary combination in order to drive long term meaningful change. My co-founder and I are working with well-known organisations in New Zealand and Australia in areas such as technology advice, data analytics and modelling as well as enterprise wide strategy.
What has been a career highlight so far?
A couple of times in my career I have been “thrown in the deep end” and had to solve fairly complex problems in a very limited amount of time with very limited information. While it was very stressful, often involved long hours and a huge degree of uncertainty, the reward from solving the complex problem and working with motivated and super smart people have always been my highlights.
What was a highlight of studying at AUT?
Right from the first day when I landed in Auckland and was welcomed by Elberta Chan from the International Student Office, to meeting many interesting students from around the world, spending a few all-nighters in the lab all the way to working with current AUT students who are now completing their practical projects with my businesses, what always stood out was the friendliness of people combined with the professional drive to excel. If I had to name the highlight – knowing that Elberta’s International Student Office team is doing an amazing job welcoming new students every semester and the welcome students get these days is no different to what I got more than 11 years ago.