Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/90487
minors, dual master's degree pro- grams, or second degrees. He adds, "If I'd wanted to be an orthopedic surgeon, I would have started with a mechanical engineer- ing degree to learn about joints before I learned about medicine. Today, if I want to run a business based on logistics, I'd learn the math behind it before I studied how companies like FedEx and Walmart have optimized that math to run better businesses." ■ Develop partnerships with other schools and universities. Teaming is a good strategy for business schools that want to add technological depth to their pro- grams but don't have the resources on hand. In fact, EuroCIO has sponsored this strategy among several European schools that are starting to offer a range of pro- grams in IT and business. The first EuroCIO MBA for Corporate Information Manage- ment was launched by Nyenrode Business School in conjunction with Delft University of Technol- ogy, both of the Netherlands. This EMBA in business and IT has been so successful that it is being expanded into additional European universities. EuroCIO's first Pro- fessional Programme in Business and Enterprise Architecture, which focuses on business and manage- ment elements more than techni- cal design, launched in September 2012 as a collaboration between Henley Business School in the U.K., Ecole Central Paris in France, Technical University of Munich in Germany, and TiasNimbas Business School of the Netherlands. EuroCIO has focused on execu- tive education and EMBA pro- grams because its administrators 22 November/December 2012 BizEd believe that candidates are more likely to benefit from such offerings if they've had enough professional experience to "appreciate the prob- lems in the first place," Frick says. "Marrying professional experience with academic experience is what makes these programs relevant." ■ Target likely candidates for such programs. Potential stu- dents might be older working CIOs who want to become top business leaders or ambitious mid-level managers who want to optimize the role of technology in their organizations. In fact, the new programs spon- sored by EuroCIO so far have drawn three types of people, says Frick. "About 50 percent have a technical background, 25 percent have a busi- ness background, and the remaining 25 percent are people from SMEs," he notes. "All of them would like to merge business and IT in order to run their companies better." Says Hoit, "CIOs used to start out in operations, sometimes as facilities managers. They knew how to keep the technology run- ning and the infrastructure sound." But as they've become strategic business partners within the orga- nization, they've recognized the need for more business skills. He believes that many of them will start out by getting undergraduate degrees in math and science, and then take master's business courses to learn how to apply this knowl- edge within the organization. Leading the Way With business schools already strug- gling to pack the curriculum with all the necessary pieces—from ethics classes to global consultancy proj- ects—it might be hard to convince administrators to add the techni- cal element. Fonstad thinks the answer is to provide tangible proof of how valuable technology is to the organization. He has worked with CIONET, an association with nine regional offices in Europe, to produce 2011 and 2012 editions of "The IT-Enabled Leadership Report" (www.insead.edu/elab). To compile the report, Fonstad and his fellow researchers survey more than 100 European CIOs, using a survey tool developed by Peter Weill and Stephanie Woerner at MIT. They also ask regional offices of CIOnet to nominate can- didates for the European CIO of the Year award and interview the nominees to learn how they spend their time. Profiles of the top nomi- nees appear in the final report. "This is a fantastic way to explain to non-IT colleagues that IT professionals today don't simply manage technology," says Fonstad. "They also manage busi- ness processes and enhance the customer experience." As digitization becomes more prevalent, he continues, it becomes even more essential that business schools prepare their graduates to operate in a tech-enabled world. "I believe digitization is following the