Daiichi Sankyo’s first European Top Talent Programme (ETTP) was launched in March 2020, right at the start of the first COVID-19 outbreak on the continent. From a hybrid set-up made of virtual encounters and local workshops in Munich, Madrid, London and Rome, we had to re-think the whole journey both in terms of content and format to be able to meet our participants’ needs, which had considerably evolved at least from a short-term perspective, due to this unprecedented sanitary crisis. Yet the goals of this ETTP had remained the same: retain and develop our most promising current and future leaders to prepare them to take over more key leadership positions – and provide the company with a pool of pre-identified talents to fill open critical roles. In a nutshell: the “why” had remained the same, we just needed to envision a different “how”. And while the beginning was filled with uncertainty, 15 months after, we can safely say that this minimum viable virtual programme designed on the go, has been a success.