When Kevin Gallagher decided to get an MBA with a concentration in innovation at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, it wasn’t because he wanted to start a company.
Gallagher, 28, had a bachelor’s in biochemistry with a minor in economics from Boston College and had already worked in medical device development at Massachusetts General Hospital. What he wanted was the expertise he would need to help companies improve their processes and more quickly get new products to the patent stage.
“The program gave me the ability to work with people who are different from me, and it showed me who needs to be in the room to have an educated and informed discussion” about innovation, Gallagher says. After he graduated in May 2014, he parlayed the experience into a job at pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb, where he focuses on improving research and development processes.
Carnegie Mellon is one of several universities stepping up their business school offerings in innovation. To a large degree, these colleges are responding to demand from students who want to start their own companies: 45 percent of people who graduated from b-school between 2010 and 2013 pursued startups, versus just 7 percent who graduated before 1990, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council. But as Gallagher’s experience shows, inventing new products and services is key to established companies’ success as well.
Learn how [MBA programs are evolving to meet student needs.]
Carnegie Mellon’s Integrated Innovation Institute, launched in 2014, brings together faculty from the engineering, design and business schools, and offers the MBA innovation track as well as several master’s degrees for students in other fields, like design. Students work in teams to develop new products and services, which so far have included a car that cleans itself with a built-in robot — a project sponsored by Nissan.
Many of the schools with master’s and MBA degrees in innovation permit students to design a program that will most benefit their projected career path. The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, for example, offers courses in a wide range of industries, from real estate to the Internet to global finance.
Discover [10 MBA programs that lead to jobs.]
For Aparna Misra, 26, the two years she spent at Polsky were invaluable for developing her Web and mobile app, HighStride, which offers personalized training plans for runners.
“I was pretty strong operationally, but I didn’t have the selling skills I needed,” says Misra, who will graduate from Booth in 2015. So each quarter, she selected at least one class that would give her marketing experience, using her own company as a case study. She reached well over 100,000 downloads in just her first year in the program.
Several schools have designed innovation programs around local industries. The University of California–Berkeley‘s Cleantech to Market program teams scientists and engineers from the school and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with business students to commercialize ideas for reducing waste and developing renewable energy sources.
See the [top-ranked business schools for entrepreneurship.]
At the University of California–Davis Child Family Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the curriculum focuses on commercializing advances in science and engineering for social benefit. During the 2013-2014 school year, 14 commercial startups emerged, including one that is developing an irrigation-monitoring device and a biotech company working on fertility treatments.
Universities are also increasingly offering their degree programs in more flexible formats. Indiana University recently added an online master’s of science program in entrepreneurship and innovation, which allows students to stay in their jobs while gaining graduate-level experience in new venture development.
“If you look back to the 1990s, leadership was the big call from companies,” says Donald F. Kuratko, chair of entrepreneurship at IU’s Kelley School of Business. “Today innovation is the big call.”
For students who want to pursue their own ideas, the University of Texas–Dallas matches budding entrepreneurs with any of 90 mentors, some of whom are angel investors. In 2013, the school introduced the Startup Launch Track, which gives participating students the opportunity to create their businesses while completing their degrees. The program offers office space and seed funding of up to $25,000, no strings attached.
Corey Egan and Swapnil Bora are prime examples of how fruitful these sorts of environments can be. Just four years ago, Egan and Bora came out on top in UT–Dallas’ annual Business Idea Competition with their company, ilumi, which makes smart phone-controlled LED light bulbs. In 2014, Egan and Bora appeared on the reality TV program “Shark Tank,” catching the attention of co-host and billionaire investor Mark Cuban. He poured $350,000 into ilumi for a 25 percent stake in the company.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Graduate Schools 2016” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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