When Xavier Dupont began his MIT Sloan Executive Education journey in 2018, he was the Hong Kong-based CEO of Maestro & FALCOM Holdings Limited, a leading supplier of wireless IoT products. He recognized that the company would have to grow and evolve to keep up with the changing global business environment, and he had to figure out how to reinvent it. So he turned to MIT Sloan Executive Education.
“I was looking at how to leverage the most promising tech, such as AI, IoT, and Blockchain. So the first part of my journey with MIT Sloan was to learn and experiment with this technology and discover how I could apply it to my business,” says Dupont, who reveals that not long after taking his first Executive Education courses, including Artificial Intelligence: Applications for Business Strategy, his company was acquired by Lantronix, Inc., a global provider of secure data access and management solutions for the industrial IoT space. This placed him in an entirely new role within the corporation, and he leaned in further to the varied opportunities within MIT Sloan Executive Education, selecting more courses from all three tracks: Technology and Operations, Management and Leadership, and Strategy and Innovation.
“Being an entrepreneur and having run companies for 20 years, I realized that I had to fill some gaps as I changed positions in this new corporate environment,” observes Dupont, who relocated to Lyon, France, after the purchase of his company. “Communication was going to be critical as I navigated how to align myself with and refocus my strategy for the company that acquired mine. Fortunately, the MIT courses were designed in a way that provided me with ready-to-use knowledge and frameworks.”
The Best of Both Worlds
Dupont’s new position within Lantronix put him at the crossroads of sales, engineering, and operations. He also stepped into a company that was about to undergo a transformation from a hardware company into a software one. He saw his Executive Education courses as a chance to step back and have a little breathing space so he could gather this thoughts and learn how to proceed at various points during the many transitions in which he found himself. He took a variety of courses, such as Communication and Persuasion in the Digital Age, Mastering Design Thinking, and Managing Technical Professionals and Organizations. He ultimately realized that he was on a path to achieve his Advanced Certificate for Executives in Management, Innovation, and Technology (ACE).
"Being an entrepreneur and having run companies for 20 years, I realized that I had to fill some gaps as I changed positions... Fortunately, the MIT courses were designed in a way that provided me with ready-to-use knowledge and frameworks."
“The ACE was a good target because it gave me the incentive to keep going,” Dupont says. What’s more, he discovered that he could select courses that would focus on the two main categories he needed to address: technology and internal process. “I needed information about today’s technology tools and how I could apply them to the business, but I also needed to think about the internal process of the company and how we could both communicate and innovate better,” he continues. “All of the frameworks I learned are highly practical and applicable, and I see them as tools for life.”
The Last Courses Lead to a New Course
The last few courses Dupont took to achieve his ACE were Implementing Enterprise-Wide Transformation and Implementing Industry 4.0: Leading Change in Manufacturing and Operations. These two classes ended up changing his professional path.
“Implementing Enterprise-Wide Transformation with Professor Douglas Ready was highly inspiring and helped me decide to go back into entrepreneurship. He said, ‘Leading is a privilege.’ In Implementing Industry 4.0, Professor John Carrier also said something that really resonated with me about the fact that I had a feeling of unfinished business when I sold my company,” Dupont says. “With all of that in mind, I recently decided to get back into the role of an entrepreneur , taking up new challenges in technology with the intention to disrupt the market with my mix of 20 years’ experience and my new knowledge acquired at MIT Sloan.”
In April 2023, Dupont started Antell, a company that holds the mission of helping companies to become digital masters by providing critical IoT data which help them transform their business and lead their industries. “Operating industrial equipment and giving user critical field data will help them focus on their core business and the new insight IoT provides,” Dupont says. Launching the new company is a challenge for which he feels fully prepared, and one that he knows will lead to even more challenges in the future. Yet, he is ready to face any obstacles with the help of MIT Sloan. He concludes, “Learning is a lifelong journey, and in this age, things are moving so fast. Not looking at executive education is a mistake because you can become outdated so quickly. I will be back at MIT Sloan on a regular basis to search for inspiration and also to refresh my knowledge, as well as to meet more inspiring individuals. I thank the entire MIT Sloan team for making this journey possible.”
Learn more about MIT Sloan Executive Certificates.