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Why Information Technology Professionals Should Get MBAs
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I frequently get asked why I went ahead and got myself a Masters in Business Administration (MBA). It never occurred to me until this started to happen quite often that it would strike Information Technology (IT) Professionals as an unusual or questionable choice. Honestly, I think that it was one of the smartest choices that I ever made concerning my career and for that reason, it is something that I highly recommend to others in our profession.
Here are my reasons why I think that it was a brilliant idea:
First, it immersed me in the vocabulary of the business side of information technology. I am never at a loss in any type of business meeting or conversation.
Second, it exposed me to methods of strategic analysis and thought that are very uncommon in the enterprise IT world. So much so that I think this is one of the key hurdles for most CIOs to overcome.
Third, it gave me a true appreciation for the purely financial part of business operations. When people say things like, “It’s not personal… it’s business…” I now completely “get it”. Plus as a bonus, I am virtually immune from the pseudo-money talk that so many IT consultants like to use to explain why their new product or serve will “save my organization money”!
Fourth, as information technology services continue to get commoditized and managing them vice enabling them becomes the role of the IT pro, I really think that the highest paying IT jobs will become much more “MBA-like” in character and a lot less technical.
Finally, it truly opened my eyes to how differently the CFO/COO/CEO/CMO see the world from the way that most CIOs do. Their bare bones, numbers-based approach to business decision making is really quite a bit different from the entitlement-based, good vs. evil methods that I so frequently encounter in the information technology world.
So those were my reasons for pursuing an MBA vice advanced IT certifications or degrees. Each must make their own choices and only time will tell if mine was the best path to follow.
What do you think about this? What certifications or degrees have been most helpful for your career? What do you think that your next career milestone will be like?
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for July 27, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin
Image Credit: Tatar Consulting
Information Age Beauty: Three Laws of Robotics
0I have always been a huge fan of Isaac Asimov . I believe that history will record his contributions to technology in the same manner as Johannes Gutenberg , Issac Newton , and Thomas Edison . Asimov wrote so many wonderful science fiction novels that it is a shame to suggest that his efforts as an author might not be his greatest legacy. He inspired many generations of authors who came after him to independent greatness and to derivative works that continued his amazing forays into the morality of technology — the ethics of computers and robots. I sincerely expect that his Laws of Robotics will be credited with being the yardstick to which every artificial intelligence effort of the next 100 years gets measured. They will be his most enduring contribution.
For those of you not familiar with his work, here are his original Three Laws of Robotics:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Asimov conceived of the three laws as a plot device for a series of short stories about robots and their interactions with humanity. He was fascinated not with tech for tech’s sake, but with the ways in which it reflected most on our morality and ethics. Of note, nearly every story that Asimov ever published ended up being part of a single rich tapestry of storytelling with these three laws at the nexus. A truly masterpiece of a life based upon just a few sentences. Though, I don’t intend to spoil his work for you if you have not sampled it, as he aged he saw the need to expand these laws both to a zeroth level and beyond, but he always found his way back to this core set.
Today, we stand on the cusp of am age of artificial intelligence. The ability for machines to learn and grow. Just as children must not only learn their ABC’s, but the golden rule, some basis for ethical decision making will be required for the infancy of artificial intelligence. I truly believe that Asimov’s rules will be that template.
I think that reality frequently follows art that predicts it. Much of our technology today was first envisioned in science fiction of yesterday. What stories do you know of that inspired inventions today? Do you think that authors who conceive deserve as much credit or more credit as inventors who achieve? Do you think that Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics will be considered relevant tomorrow?
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 27, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .
The Rise Of The Netbook
0I think that netbooks are here to stay. I have seen more netbooks this week in public than Amazon Kindles. They are starting to become adopted. Netbooks combine unprecedented low cost, mobility, and portability with real productivity potential. We, Information Professionals, need to start thinking about how to get the maximum benefit from this new platform.
A netbook is a miniature laptop. It normally has a screen of 10 inches or less, a 1.6 GHz or less CPU, 1 MB of Ram, wifi, and either a solid state drive (SSD) or 100+GB hard drive. Many even have cellular modems built-in now. The cost is usually less that $400 and frequently less than $300. Their performance is not stellar, but it is more than enough for web surfing, office work, and video playing. They don’t have internal optical drives, but easily take an external one to load software.
They run on Windows XP or Linux. There are no Apple produced netbooks, though some people have hacked them to get OS X running. They are sold by every other major computer company including Dell, HP, and Asus. Their killer feature though is that this inexpensive computer comes in a package that weighs less than 2.5 lbs and is about the size of a trade paperback.
My objective is not to worship the gadget qualities of netbooks, but to point out their paradigm changing qualities for the Information Professional. To be honest, if I owned a business I would be hard pressed to not buy one for all of my employees to decouple them from the office. When they were in the office, I would simply set them up with a docking station to provide a larger monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
Frankly, I have not observed such a disruptive influence on computing since the arrival of the truly smartphone. When is the last time that you saw a business professional without a Blackberry or an iPhone? I think that their laptops will soon all get traded in for netbooks.
Their cost is right. They enable true mobility. They also fit in perfectly with cloud computing. So what is the excuse now for not having a 100% mobile workforce? I think the we are witnessing the rise of the netbook.
Do you own a netbook? Do you love it? Is this the next step in mobile computing? Is your organization deploying any yet? What do you think? Enjoy the thoughts!
That is my Information Technology Thought of the Day (ITTOD) for April 18, 2009 ©Scott Coughlin .