Professionals alert: without technology, there is no paradise. No matter the field or sector in which you are going to operate, without advanced technological training, the ability of any company to stay and, in the best of cases, be at the top is drastically reduced. The largest companies in the world by listing –which are technological– are directed or founded by a particular profile: Sergei Brin and Larry Page, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg… Leaders but, above all, technological.
Nor is it necessary to operate from Silicon Valley to understand that technology is the engine of any company. The entire structure must be up to the demands of a market that can now only be digital. Digitized markets, digitized leaders. However, technological training is still the pending subject in the curriculum of those who must lead its transformation. The reason? Technology is still seen with a focus prior to the digital world. As a tool, but not as an ecosystem in which to develop and grow.
Marcelo Royán, co-founder of the ISDI digital business school, knows this well. “We are talking about a technology understood simply as a lever for automation in the company and a lever for efficiency.” But that is only part of it: the iceberg effect of everything behind it. Royán is, in fact, director of the Technology module of ISDI’s Master Internet Business (MIB), the (Executive) MBA of the digital economy that shakes the dust off the “conventional” MBAs, and one of the people who best knows the potential that exists in a leader with advanced digital knowledge.
“There are still people in management positions who not only don’t know – which is a bit of the least, because you can learn – but who think they don’t need to know, and that’s the most worrying thing,” says Royán. The derivative is twofold: without technological training, not only are many jobs related to the digital market left unfilled, but management is left without one of its engines. At the MIB they turn this reality around with 70 hours of advanced technology training (of the 450 hours that the program lasts).
From Cloud Computing, through the Metaverse, Blockchain and cryptoactives, Cybersecurity, Mobile, apps, IoT and 5G, or application technologies in Gaming, among others. These are the foundations on which to build solid and flexible digital assets that have made the ISDI MIB the benchmark for experts in digital transformation from the most important companies in the country. To do this, they break a barrier that is still present in other academic programs: technology is their responsibility and it can be understood.
At ISDI, considered the first digitally native business school, students do not ‘go down’ to technology as complementary training, but rather technology ‘goes up’ towards them and transforms them, devoting a very important part of the program to acquiring this knowledge that, as Royán indicates, has always been a certain ‘fear’. “At the MIB we seek to lose that layer that has “well, this is too complex”, “I’m never going to understand this” or “the techies take care of this and I abstract from it”, he explains. Royan.
That is the question. Make the technological content anchor in the student so that she can apply it and transform her role within the company and the company itself. “The depth level of the content is ambitious. We want to touch the technology and not just do ‘wow’ classes in which the students leave impressed and after three days they realize that they have not really learned anything”, shares the co-founder of ISDI. “We want to teach ‘cool’ things, but explaining how they work behind the scenes”, he sums up.
“In the MIB, technical concepts are explained in a way that business people, functional people, can understand. This is the great point that the students always highlight to us, year after year, for 13 years. In this master’s degree, we make technology easy and explain it in a way that everyone can understand”, shares Royán. Technological content is divided into three groups: the first focuses on what is needed, how it is done, to build a digital asset.
A practical example: MIB students learn what criteria must be followed to define or determine how to build an application, if it is better to make a part with custom development or if it is better to use existing SaaS, advantages and disadvantages of each option, criteria to follow at the time of choosing it, etc. Without forgetting the integrations, that is, how all these pieces come together so that they work in a coordinated way.
The second great block of knowledge revolves around technology innovation. “We talk about Artificial Intelligence, IoT, 5G, Metaverse, Web3, etc. But always from the approach of actionable innovation. That is, things that already exist and that can be applied in the day-to-day of companies, and with guidance on how to take advantage of these innovations to add functionality to those applications that we build”, clarifies the director of the MIB Technology Module. Finally, there is a third block that is more complementary content, such as cybersecurity or no-code tools.
The benefits of taking the MIB are many, but one stands out above the rest: “students are able to dialogue with technicians.” It is the greatest feedback that Royán receives when they tell him that in the meetings with the technicians they can give their opinion and contribute when before they remained silent “because they did not understand anything”. Thanks to this dialogue, they are able to set up a technology team, subcontract technological development to a supplier or think of differentiating factors, using everything they have learned.
MIB or technology at the service of its leaders’ decision-making, but not the other way around. “Business people are not expected to become technologists, they are expected to understand technology and know how to apply it to the business with a competitive advantage”, argues Marcelo Royán. At ISDI they have found the formula: the MIB, a 360 program that trains professionals with a great front-end (knowledge in strategy, business, vision…) but also a great back-end (technology, tools, systems…).
