Sometimes, not even a passion for innovation, lofty professional ambitions and extensive technical skills are enough when it comes to being a successful entrepreneur.
You need specific skills to make the step up to manager. As well as the obvious management skills, it’s vital that you have strategic vision and a clear grasp of economic issues.
Just ask Alessandro Vitale, a man with a passion for new technology who dreamed of becoming an entrepreneur. In order to take his career to the next level, Vitale decided to undertake an MBA.
But not just any MBA – an MBA at MIP Politecnico di Milano. Vitale chose the best possible institution to hone his existing tech and engineering skills and fill the gaps in his business and managerial knowledge.
Vitale decided to take the plunge in 2004, spending the next year or so attending courses at the Milan-based business school.
At the end of the course, however, Vitale needed an invaluable experience in a big company to complete his profile as a credible, appealing leader.
As luck would have it, Siemens was on the lookout for an MBA graduate to join the team – and Alessandro Vitale was the perfect fit. Boasting skills in new tech and engineering, and with his newfound business acumen at the ready courtesy of his MIP MBA, Vitale served as Head of Strategic Planning and then Business Developer for Siemens South West Europe between 2006 and 2010.
It was here, as Vitale gained first-hand experience of working with the latest technology and focusing on development and innovation, that his ambitions to explore the world of Artificial Intelligence began to grow. Though AI was only taking its first steps in the tech and engineering sectors back in 2010, it had always been a dream of Vitale’s.
Drawing on the technical skills he’d gained at university, the strategic and managerial acumen he had built up during his MBA at MIP and his experience on the ground with Siemens, Vitale decided to twist once again. He quit his job to strike out on his own as an entrepreneur.
In 2010, Vitale founded Optimist AI, a big-data company working to develop Augmented Intelligence algorithms dedicated to B2B and sales.
In 2016, Vitale officially became a serial entrepreneur as he founded Conversate, a highly innovative AI start-up that was soon picked up by the most prestigious European accelerator Entrepreneur First, located in London. It is here that Conversate – which creates intelligent, versatile chatbots – is beginning to take shape and be applied in a range of industry sectors.
So what does future hold for Vitale? His objective is to revolutionise the business world, across all sectors, by creating the most sophisticated AI systems yet.
It seems a huge challenge, but it is an achievable ambition for a true business leader like Vitale, who is channelling all his entrepreneurial skills into the future of AI.
Read the full story here.
