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My favorite course this semester: Emerging Technologies and Business Innovation

I started a Tech MBA so I could “speak and understand” technology, but mainly to use it as a tool to face business challenges and scale solutions. I am enjoying the program as the mix of courses is accurate for this goal. There are incredible courses related to business and others to technology. There are many special courses, but my favorite one has been “Emerging Technologies and Business Innovation,” dictated by the professor Alex Tuzhilin.

This course wraps up what every person who wants to develop a career around innovation would need to know. It starts explaining innovation as the interaction between business, technology, and regulation. With this in mind, we discussed a framework that was present all over the course: the can-do/ should-do. This is a useful perspective to understand how and when to use certain technologies considering their feasibility, context, ethics, and business sense.

We reviewed the history of innovation and technology, watching how certain technologies faced a phase of hype due to an excitement of the market (many times overreaction), but then they lose its attention (and its capital) because they are not useful. Sometimes they just die, or sometimes they come more solid and disrupt markets. Getting to see this in a conceptual analysis, with a big picture perspective, is useful to be able to understand the nature of innovation and use it.

After this framework, we analyzed technologies that passed through the phase of gloom and now are succeeding. These technologies have the potential to shape many fields in business and human activities. We saw virtual reality, big data, knowledge management, and artificial intelligence. In each case we reviewed what industries are impacted and the challenges around them for the present and the future. We saw industries like healthcare, education, work, among others.

During the course we not only studied these conceptual topics, but also reviewed cases around each topic and received guest speakers to put what has been learned in perspective. I really enjoyed the course because it was totally conceptual – now I feel more prepared to analyze our fast-moving world. I feel I have the tools to feed my curiosity looking to the future with a more structured framework.

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Why I Chose Stern’s Tech MBA Program

I always hoped I might go to business school, but five years into working, that goal felt more and more overwhelming. I didn’t see a world in which I would be willing to take two years away from my career trajectory and feel like the ends justifies the means. Working in the tech industry where new programs, technologies, and companies are launched daily, taking two years away from the hustle felt impossible.

Once I started to look into different programs, knowing I wanted to stay in New York City, I was pleasantly surprised to discover the Tech MBA program at Stern. At first I thought this must be too good to be true – how could one complete a full MBA program in just one year? Upon speaking to current students in the program, I grew more and more excited about the opportunity to complete an MBA in a year, within my specialized industry, and to join a cohort of students who share the same passion and commitment to the tech industry. 

I’d like to tell you about a few components of the program that make it special, and that have benefited me throughout the experience. First, spending one consolidated year in school felt like the right choice, because I would need to be very intentional about the classes I took and how I spent my time with clubs and social activities. I have really learned in to the experience – it flies by so quickly! 

Next, I wanted the option to take very technical courses and strengthen my product management acumen. I had always told myself I would learn how to code in my free time, but having the access to a blended business and technology core has helped me realize this goal. Taking classes like Dealing with Data, Data Science for Business, and Foundations of Mobile Networks have allowed me to learn how to code in Python, run data models in Weka, and understand the basics of network connectivity. We even had a session about UX design and a workshop on Figma, which I had always been too intimidated to learn in the past!

Finally, I was also attracted to the small class size of the cohort for the Tech MBA. While a typical MBA class might have up to one thousand students, I am really pleased that my Tech MBA cohort has fifty diverse, smart, and emotionally intelligent students. Over the summer, we were one of the only student groups on campus, and took all of our core classes together. This helped foster an amazing bond between the small cohort, and created strong, genuine friendships. We have taken East River boat cruises, planned Friendsgiving dinners, attended concerts, and hosted holiday dinner parties. I felt like I already had a community after living in New York for many years, but can say definitively that the cohort students from across the country and the world have become lifelong friends and future business partners. 

I can’t recommend the Tech MBA program enough – please get in touch if you’d like to hear about my experience further!

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My Favorite Class This Semester

One of the best parts about Stern is getting to learn from incredible professors who are experts in their fields. While many of my classes are engaging, there is one class that stands out above the rest: “Strategic Foresight and Predicting the Future of Technology” with professor Amy Webb. The objective of the class is to introduce students to the methods, concepts, frameworks, tools and techniques of strategic foresight, a multidisciplinary approach to deriving new insights about the future. To deliver on this promise, the class is organized into three sections each week 1. Introduction to methodology and a foresight tool 2. A deep dive into an emerging area of technology and 3. Practicing what we learned and applying concepts and tools to our final group project. Not only is the topic of strategic foresight extremely interesting, but the structure of the class also ensures that discussions are relevant and concepts can be applied to any business sector. We learn to identify signals in the world and make connections to form potential trends. We are challenged to imagine what the future of meat consumption will look like in 10 years, what the future of work will be in 15 years, and what the future of media will look like in 20 years. We learn to address assumptions and state uncertainties and back up our scenarios with quantitative and qualitative evidence. To give you a sense of the breadth of what I’ve learned so far, here are some of my favorite things we’ve discussed in class…

1. Why is Nintendo the most innovative company? When we think about Nintendo, we might think about Mario Party or Pokemon, but Nintendo was founded in the 1880s. Nintendo originally sold hand-painted playing cards. As the world evolved and technologies developed, Nintendo paid attention to the signals on the “fringe” and made bets to ensure they could stay in business. Nintendo transitioned from selling playing cards to developing games for malls, handheld gameboys, commercially available video game consoles, the motion sensor Wii, and many more innovations. This example clearly highlighted how companies can use strategic foresight to prepare for the future and remain ahead of their competition.

2. How will a refrigerator be used in 2031? At the start of class we are asked to do a re-perception exercise in which we imagine how everyday objects might be used in the future. Recently we discussed how refrigerators might be used to grow our own food at home, store essential pharmaceuticals, or in new areas of the supply chain as the world becomes warmer. This led to a discussion about when an object is still considered the original object…

3. What are the implications of synthetic influencers? We’ve learned about synthetic influencers like Lil Miquela and K-pop group “Eternity” in class. Prior to this class, I was not familiar with synthetic influencers and their potential impact on not only the entertainment and media industries, but also on society at large.

Throughout the semester, we work on a final group project. This is a great opportunity to apply the theoretical concepts and frameworks we learned step by step.

If you are interested in technology, want to challenge yourself to think differently about companies, societies, and governments, like to imagine what our futures look like, or just love learning new things, then this class is for you. Every week I look forward to rich discussions that develop because this class is a safe space for learning and taking risks. Each week the class time flies by as I absorb information from the professor and her guests lecturers/ class coaches. If you have the chance, definitely take this class!