Global Skills in Disruptive Technology and Sustainability
“Apple is the champion of both disruptive and sustainable innovation. As a pioneer of the mobile era, the iPhone was as disruptive as it can get in the business world.”
What happens when you bring together disruptive technology and sustainability? That was the question that we asked ourselves as we looked at our curriculum for the Saturday MBA (SMBA) program. The SMBA program (formerly the Fully-employed MBA program) has been around for 24 years. We went through some minor changes in the curriculum but a true ‘revitalization’ of the curriculum was needed. Last year we decided to get a better understanding of the skills that companies seek in an MBA, not today, not tomorrow but 5 – 10 years down the road. We talked to companies across industries including consumer products, aerospace, supply chain, and more. What we found should not be surprising and we realized that it was “staring us in the face” – disruptive technology and sustainability! This was the beginning of our year-long journey of curriculum revision.
In academia, everything moves at a snail’s pace but we were very fortunate to have faculty that were excited and motivated to take on a challenge of revising the curriculum. It didn’t mean that suddenly we are experts in disruptive technology. It required a retooling of our faculty as we set off on this journey. With the support of faculty that were knowledgeable in disruptive technology from our five departments, we established a task force and were off to the races!
The true integration of disruptive technology meant that the focus needed to be on data science – developing an understanding that data is the new currency and the ability to exploit data available to an organization (e.g., enterprise systems, IoT devices, customers, competitors) is the key to competitive advantage. What we kept in mind is that our program is not an Information Systems or Information Technology degree! Our MBAs need to get a clear understanding of what is possible through data science and they don’t need to be experts in the technology itself.
Our goal is to prepare our MBAs to attack business problems and devise new business models that improve products and services through the application of new technologies. An important pillar for today’s digital age, where processes are digitized, would be an in-depth understanding of enterprise information technology fundamentals including cloud computing, and the merging of technologies (blockchain, robotic process automation, artificial intelligence, machine learning, AR/VR, cybersecurity, and more). The result is entirely new types of companies with new business models producing real business solutions.
Sustainability has been a central theme of the SMBA program for several years. The integration of sustainability and disruptive technology makes sense since sustainability is now the driving force for the emergence of many disruptive technologies. The world needs to deal with environmental and social issues such as resource scarcity, air and water pollution, climate change, a growing and aging population, and the demands of an increasingly affluent middle class. Disruptive technology provides critical tools to address those issues.
The inauguration of the integration of disruptive technology started this fall when our incoming cohort of 35 new SMBA students were introduced to “Disruptive Technology: Concepts, Tools, and Applications” by Dr. Mohamed Abdelhamid (Information Systems). Each of our courses introduces, develops and/or applies a set of technologies that fit within a given functional area. Each course is progressively more advanced, teaching students how to solve the business problems that these 21st century companies face within the sustainability framework. Whatever your career path is, our MBA will provide you with the tools and knowledge to solve business problems.
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