IBM Steps up Business School Partnership Program

IBM has taken its business school campaign to the next level with these latest partnerships, taking its total past the one thousand mark and showing little sign of abating. The latest schools to sign up include Georgetown University, George Washington University and the National University of Singapore.

It all forms part of IBM’s Academic Initiative, which was launched after IBM identified a skills gap in ‘Big Data’ analysis. For example, a 2011 report by McKinsey Global Institute and McKinsey’s Business Technology Office found that by 2018 the USA could face a shortfall of 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how required to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions.

In fact, IBM themselves estimate that about 4.4 million jobs will be created worldwide to support Big Data by 2015. Therefore, the company took the decision to team up with business schools to help develop future leaders that are comfortable with rapidly evolving technology.

The Manager of Global Academic Programs at IBM is Richard Rodts. He said, "Leaders in business, education and government must take action to foster a new generation of talent with the technical expertise and unique ideas to make the most of this tsunami of Big Data."

IBM Initiative Provides Resources and Curricula Needed to Train MBAs in Big Data

The Academic Initiative is all-encompassing in its approach and seeks to engage at all levels of higher education. At MBA level, many partnerships center on IBM tweaking the curricula to highlight business analytics and then supplying MBA students with the requisite resources. This has been the case at Yale, for instance, since 2011.

However, more recently, IBM has helped to set up a dedicated Centre for Business Analytics at the National University of Singapore as well as co-developing entire courses for MBA students on the 2013-14 Strategy Specialization program at HEC Paris.  

Implicit in this is that MBA career prospects with IBM will be extremely strong. Indeed, Rodts confirms this theory: “We really need those kinds of professionals in the marketplace. In many cases, we want them to be part of the IBM team”, he said.