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Bridging Business and Technology: Carnegie Mellon University's Engineering & Technology Innovation Management Program |
By Kelly Roncone Zappas, TMS News Editor
Posted on: 10/3/2007 12:00:00 AM... At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a new type of manager is being trained: one who can excel in managing innovative technologies. In January, Carnegie Mellon launched its new Engineering & Technology Innovation Management (E&TIM) program, a one-year, accelerated master's degree program offered through the College of Engineering. The degree requires students with technical backgrounds to take courses and participate in projects that train them to understand the relationship between business and technology.
"This program is for people who really are excited about the technology and want to help make something happen with it," said Eden Fisher, the E&TIM executive director and professor of the practice. "The program is unusual because the core focus is innovation management, which is different than most engineering programs. Engineering students in this program really look at technical possibilities from a different perspective, and the vision is that this perspective will help in the realization of innovation. The difference between innovation and invention is value creation. These are people who really want to make something happen in terms of creating value."
Fisher holds a Ph.D. in engineering and public policy from Carnegie Mellon, but she worked in technology planning and innovation management at Alcoa for 20 years before returning to academia. In her experience, bridging the differences between business and technology professionals is an important issue.
"This program doesn't teach how to be a marketer or a finance person, but it does teach a technical person to see how a marketer or finance person looks at the world, how technology connects to their world, and how to communicate with them," said Fisher.
To teach these skills and perspectives to students, the program relies on a variety of techniques including classroom education, case studies, hands-on project courses, and internships.
"As part of the program, I teach a seminar course called innovation management in practice, and a big part of that class is bringing in practitioners to speak about different aspects of innovation management," said Fisher. "It's really a great interactive forum. The students have had the chance to talk to people from start-up companies as well as established firms, to speak to people who are really doing the technology as well as to people who have other roles in the organization. My hope is that these students will be important connections within the organizations they serve."
Project courses are another learning tool the program employs. In these courses, students are given real-world projects sponsored by a local industry. These projects help students to gain experience working in teams and designing projects to meet customer needs.
Another major component of the program is the internship. Every student must complete an internship in the middle of their course studies. Unlike most degree programs, the E&TIM program runs from January to December, and it is structured so that students take one semester of courses in the spring, followed by an internship, and then a second semester of courses.
"One of the things that we think is very important is real experience in an industrial innovation management environment," said Fisher. "The internship happens during the summer in order for students to both prepare for it and learn from it."
This unusual timing also means that application deadlines are a bit different than other schools. The 2008 program is accepting applications now.
Fisher believes that Carnegie Mellon is an ideal place for such a program to grow because students can draw from the many technical disciplines offered within the university's College of Engineering, as well as its College of Sciences and College of Computer Science.
"The benefit is that students' technical focus can draw on those areas and allow them to create their own technical focus that crosses between those areas," said Fisher. "This is particularly important, because innovation is often about the intersection of interesting ideas that are being brought together in new ways, so the fact that this allows you to put together different combinations really contributes to the opportunity to do something exciting."
For example, one of the first students in the program is a materials scientist who is studying data storage in Carnegie Mellon's electrical and computer engineering department. By taking this as one of his technical electives, he is able to draw on his material background and integrate these two different areas. This particular student also had the opportunity to work on product strategy for a start-up company with a new materials technology, allowing him to learn more about an emerging technical area while bridging the gap between business and technology.
"The traditional skills of an engineer are a very important foundation: to analyze problems, design potential solutions, test solutions, and learn from this cycle," said Fisher. "These are critical for managing innovative technologies, as is the specific domain knowledge that engineers bring. But beyond that, I think the skills that this program works to develop are to recognize the opportunities that can create sustainable economic and social value and to understand the approaches and processes that bring together a firm's activities and assets and relationships in a complementary way that will capture the value from innovation."
This focus on innovation and increasing understanding between those with business and those with technical backgrounds is something that Carnegie Mellon hopes to integrate into its undergraduate curriculum as well.
"We hope to have some of these approaches, processes, and intuitions built into the way we do engineering education at all levels," said Fisher. "The vision is to learn this perspective throughout your engineering education, and draw upon it throughout your career."
For more information on the E&TIM program, visit www.cit.cmu.edu/etim/index.htm.
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