After my recent post on improved demand for my IT elective course at HBS, an alum sent me the following email:
Hi Professor McAfee-
Just read your latest post and wanted to chime in with some thoughts-
I’m an HBS ’04 and while I didn’t take MIA, I did take a number of the other "tech" focused HBS second year courses- David Yoffie’s strategy course and Alan MacCormack’s product development course.
I think you’re absolutely on to something- the technology market (and valuations) is certainly heating up, but more importantly managing technology has become a normal aspect of everyone’s job. Its good to see that MBA’s are finally starting to realize that managing technology is no longer the function of a CIO who used to be a developer.
Collaborative technologies within the workplace (blogs, wikis, RSS, etc.) are becoming more commonplace and with them they bring a host of management and new communication challenges. (As an aside, I shared your AvenueA intranet post with a number of people as an example of how we could improve our internal intranet at TripAdvisor).
I run the search engine marketing group at TripAdvisor- I spend my days figuring out how to drive traffic to our site via paid search marketing as well as natural search optimization. Paid search marketing is becoming a norm within the marketing world- you simply cannot be out building a brand or ad campaign without thinking about the online aspect of marketing including search marketing. Success requires that you understand traditional direct marketing analytics as well as website technologies that allow you to track and optimize the performance of these accounts. Even if you’re outsourcing it to an SEM agency, you still need to be capable of managing your marketing IT infrastructure. Natural search optimization is significantly "geekier" and pretty much requires that you be willing to get into the weeds with your site engineers.
This is not what I would consider a typical job for an HBS graduate and yet why shouldn’t it be? I manage a huge budget, I "own" more than 70% of our traffic, I manage internal marketing and engineering resources and external partners, make data-driven decisions, think about market strategy and product positioning. Post that job description on the HBS Job board and people would love it. Mention that its "search engine marketing" and half the interest likely goes away. Are people just scared of being technologists? I also spend a fair amount of time working on acquisition integration. When we’re out buying companies, we are, in essence, evaluating their IT infrastructure (can they scale) and their web infrastructure (where are they getting their traffic, what are the economics). I’m generally acquiring engineers and working with our own engineers to integrate features. As a manager, I need all the skills they taught me in LEAD with an additional filter for how to motivate, prioritize projects for, and manage engineers
Anyway, I thought I’d let you know that I enjoy reading your blog posts.
-Adam Medros
Adam makes a really interesting point. By most of the standard yardsticks, he has a great job for a recent MBA — plenty of responsibility and autonomy, a large budget, use of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ skills, a role to play in large deals like acquisitions, etc.. And at a company like TripAdvisor I’m pretty sure he’s not painting himself into a career corner by taking a job related to the company’s online presence. As he says, that presence is becoming more and more important for marketers, brand builders, retailers, and many others.
So he has an interesting job, the chance to use and build skills, and a career trajectory that looks good. So what’s not to like here? Maybe his pay is lousy, but I suspect not. I suspect he’s right — that jobs like his are still not seen as being in the ‘sweet spot’ for most business school grads. I think and hope that this will change; the world needs more business-IT / geek-suit boundary spanners.
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If you’re looking for a complete “boundary spanning” masters, have a look at the Master of Business & Technology (MBT) from the University of New South Wales in Australia. I completed my MBT in 2005. A fellow graduate describes the benefits as follows: “The knowledge I gained by doing the MBT degree has meant that I donÂ’t get left behind when talking business and technology issues with key stakeholders. IÂ’m able to understand senior and operational managers and often perform a translator function because I can bridge the gap between business requirements and technology delivery. This means that IÂ’m well prepared for negotiations between business groups, steering committees and vendors, and internal and external technology providers. There are no mysteries or surprises!”
I’m Columbia B School ’04. One of my most memorable classes was High-technology marketing and entrepreneurship (http://www3.gsb.columbia.edu/courses/selection/describe.cfm?WHATCOURSE=B9601-051&GSB=YES).
Not only was it interesting with excellent classroom discussion; the coursework was/is highly applicable.
It was the only technology-focused class that I recall being offered at CBS. Perhaps that has changed.
I was at the MIT Enterprise Forum’s Brave New Web conference last week and there was a lengthy (and I what I found to be a bit trite) discussion of what the Boston business community can do to build more successful technology companies. There was the expected back and forth between entrepreneurs (in this case mostly engineers) and venture capitalists who were lobbing the responsibility into the other court.
From my perspective, having spent a number of years in Silicon Valley, and now being back in the Boston area, it’s a simple matter – and this discussion of education gets at the heart of it. For a very long time (and I still see this today), when people discuss ‘technology’ in Boston they immediately assume ‘engineering’ and their eyes glaze over. In Silicon Valley everyone – regardless of job or position – lives and breaths technology. And technology is about so much more than how it is engineered – it’s about what it enables and empowers; it’s about allowing people to focus on the things they find most fulfilling; it’s about building better ways to do things. From my perspective – and I am not an MBA – technology classes should be required in any business school because technology (not engineering) is affecting every aspect of our lives and our society and to not study how it affects organizations is equal to putting your head in the sand as a manager.
IÂ’m able to understand senior and operational managers and often perform a translator function because I can bridge the gap between business requirements and technology delivery.
Not only was it interesting with excellent classroom discussion; the coursework was/is highly applicable.
It is so great to see the impact of the IT on business and their leaders and still fighting for a good cause.But in the business world a great revolution has been brought by the IT we cannot refuse it anyway.
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thanks for sharing
wow you have a great job, hope someday I can grab that kind of opportunity
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