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Bridging the
Management-Tech Gap
THEBOTTOMLINE Notallbusinessschoolsareeagertointroduce
technologytracksfortheirMBAs,worriedthatthenewcourseswilldisplace
traditionalmanagementandleadershipinstruction.Employers say schools should
better prepare MBAs to grasp
business and techILLUSTRATION BY KATI SZILÁGYI◼ SOLUTIONS Bloomberg Businessweek November 11, 2019It’s notable that Chenjie Ding works in technology.
Two and a half years ago, when she was a journalist, Ding
would’ve been the first to tell you she lacked the skill set
to work at a tech company. “When I started at [UCLA]
Anderson, I was not good at data, and I was very con-
scious of that,” she says. She sought out data projects in
her externships and logged extensive coursework in data,
analytics, and technology management.
On Nov. 4, Ding hosted 117 tech-focused Anderson stu-
dents at Amazon.com Inc., where she’s a senior program
manager. It’s one stop on a weeklong, two-dozen-com-
pany itinerary to expose the students to potential employ-
ers in Seattle and San Francisco. Well more than a third of
Anderson students go on to work at tech companies, up
from 14% a few years ago. Ding arranged a keynote, a panel
discussion, and one-on-one meetings.
Graduates such as Ding are the new normal for busi-
ness schools, which find themselves producing larger
numbers of future technology workers, as well as execu-
tives who will be called on to bridge the gap between busi-
ness and tech. No matter where they work, executives can
expect to oversee engineering, data, or IT departments.
“There’s a real communication gap between data sci-
entists and managers,” says Paul Oyer, a professor of
economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Managers have institutional knowledge, he says, while
data people don’t know which questions need to be
answered through the data. “The person who can go in
the middle is becoming more and more valuable.”
Six years ago, most students enrolled in B-school todevelop leadership skills. Raghu Sundaram, dean of New
York University’s Stern School of Business, says he’s heard
from executives at companies such as Citigroup Inc. and
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. “They had people with an excel-
lent grasp of business or an excellent grasp of technol-
ogy, but not both,” he says. So Stern set up an advisory
board and created the 12-month Andre Koo Technology
and Entrepreneurship MBA to prep students for tech roles.
In Madrid, Martin Boehm, dean of the IE Business
School, heard the same message from executives at
Google, Amazon, and Facebook, as well as from consult-
ing firms. The school identified two roles companies have
struggled to fill: product managers who oversee digital
products and consultants who work with technology cli-
ents. Next year, IE will launch a 10-month tech MBA to pro-
duce 50 students who could fill such jobs.
Basic technology education has pervaded MBA pro-
grams over the past decade. At Columbia Business School,
almost half of the 750 second-year MBA students are
enrolled in Introduction to Programming Using Python.
“Another 100 to 150 students have engineering back-
grounds and don’t need it,” says Costis Maglaras, dean of
the B-school. Business Analytics and its sequel class are
similarly popular.
New technology courses inevitably will displace tradi-
tional management and leadership curricula. Some deans
and professors have held off on creating tech tracks within
MBA programs. It’s become a hot topic among professors
and administrators. Management purists say the best way
to address tech needs is to add a specialized grad degree.
Foreign students, especially, are driving the push for tech-
nology coursework. STEM-designated graduate programs
enable international students on F-1 visas to apply for
STEM OPT extensions, which allow them to stay in the
country for two additional years.
“There’s a pattern where students are getting MBAs and
then getting specialized degrees, such as master’s in busi-
ness analytics or technology management,” says Barbara
Coward, an MBA admissions consultant in Washington.
“For now, the tech sector is where all the cool jobs are. I
have not yet met anyone who said they want to go to Wall
Street and make a ton of money.” �Arianne Cohen