The curriculum is structured into ten modules of 3 ½ hours each. Each module will be highly specialized, interactive, and based upon real-world business and technology best practices. Instructors will be top-rated Rutgers faculty members and experienced industry practitioners steeped in engineering, science, and technology. Topics include:
Business Strategy
For technology firms, business strategy is about how to create value for shareholders. This module provides the tools necessary for you to make key decisions about which markets to compete in and how to win against the competition in those markets. Gaining a competitive advantage is critical to winning. This module will also help you determine the capabilities and management systems that are necessary for you to execute the strategy.
Business Ventures and Innovation
Creating and launching new technology ventures and introducing novel products and new services to fresh markets, and doing so successfully, are based on creating new opportunities and implementing innovations within existing organizations. This module introduces participants to entrepreneurial thinking and different methods of effectively executing new ideas. Topics include evaluating opportunities to recognize the good ideas, forming great teams, preparing business and technology commercialization plans, pinpointing and obtaining necessary resources, designing test scenarios, and developing and knowing when to use exit strategies.
Managing New Product Development
Technology product development has become somewhat of an arcane art. A visionary invents the spreadsheet or the iPhone--or some other better mousetrap--and millions beat a path to the door. But is that all it is--a stroke of genius? Lean Product Development shows us a new way based on the realization that making the technology work is usually the easy part of technology product development. Finding something people actually want to buy--that's the real challenge. Whether you build for internal clients or external customers, you must test with your user base throughout the development process to make sure your technology actually meets the mark.
Analyzing Financial Statements
Understanding technical descriptions, complex schematics, and engineering models are a given for today’s technical professionals. But when presented with financial reports, technical professionals might as well be reading in another language. This module will acquaint participants with how to read and analyze financial statements as well as understand the underlying story they tell. Topics include the balance sheet and the income and cash flow statements, as well as fundamental financial analysis using net present value, time value of money, rate of return, and other measures of investment attractiveness, trade-offs between risk and return, and making effective capital budgeting decisions.
Keys to Successful Negotiation
This module could be subtitled "How to Get What You Want and Move the Relationship Forward." Using discussions, exercises, and humor in a relaxed atmosphere, each participant will have the opportunity to evaluate and improve their communication skills. The premise of this module is that while everyone has been negotiating to obtain satisfaction of their wants since they were infants, they usually have not considered the reasons why they succeed or fail. During this module, each participant will individually evaluate their goals, strategies, and tactics to learn how they can be employed to achieve a successful negotiation.
Impacts of Global Economics
This highly-applied and 'real world' module is designed primarily for participants who have technical backgrounds. It will demystify the role of the Federal Reserve and of national fiscal policies not just here in the US, but also in the Eurozone, India, and China. Given the global supply chains, any macroeconomic analysis that is not global would be seriously deficient. Engineers and scientists today "wear many hats" and are key players in the design of global R&D strategy, which necessitates a thorough analysis of the global/monetary backdrop. This module will ensure that technical professionals and engineers alike will be well-equipped to thrive in today's multi-faceted workplace.
Data Driven Problem Solving
Problem-solving is an essential skill in today's fast-paced and ever-changing workplace. This module provides a systemic multi-step problem-solving for consequential business decisions with significant outcomes in a diverse global workforce. The course utilizes case scenarios giving specific examples to illustrate the steps in problem-solving and decision-making. It provides frameworks to mitigate and avoid common mistakes at each stage to ensure successful problem-solving. It aims to make you an effective business manager who proactively solves business problems using data and anecdotes.
Customer Experience
Being a customer-centric organization isn’t just about having the best customer service people. It’s also about ensuring that every function in the organization is aligned to this goal. And in our fast-paced world of tweets and texts, keeping all functions aligned to that goal is necessary and challenging at the same time. Topics in this module include understanding the value of CX and building an effective business case for investing in it; an overview of journey mapping and various measurements used to monitor your CX results.
Sales and Marketing in Practice
Just because you built something cool doesn't guarantee customers will come. But sales and marketing can often be seen as, at best, a "necessary evil" among technology teams. That shouldn't be the case. Products and promotion should work hand-in-hand to help you reach your best customers -- and provide them the products that solve their problems. A number of useful frameworks exist that will help you integrate all the components of sales and marketing throughout your product development and management process. And move marketing from a "necessary evil" to simply "necessary."
Leadership
As organizations constantly transform in an effort to maintain competitiveness in a dynamic and uncertain business environment, effective leadership often makes the distinguishing difference between success and failure. This module explores the human dimension of work and considers both the theory and practice of leading and managing people in contemporary, successful organizations, with a focus on Level 5 Leadership.
Program Overview
For an overview of our Mini-MBA for Engineers and Technology Managers program plus program benefits and outcomes, please click here.