It would be difficult to overstate the impact of technology, and particularly AI, on the business world in recent years. With not only tech companies but all major industries scrambling to adapt to rapid technological change, how can universities—and in particular, MBA programs—keep up?
The Cornell Tech graduate campus and research center makes for an interesting case study in how one of the leading Ivy League universities is seeking to stay ahead of the curve with unique interdisciplinary programs.
We spoke with Manoj Thomas, Associate Dean of NYC Initiatives for SC Johnson College of Business and Senior Director of the Johnson School’s NYC programs, about the Cornell Tech campus’s role in training a new generation of versatile business innovators for a rapidly changing AI landscape.
A glance at the companies that account for most of the US’s GDP today tells the story clearly enough: They are not the same companies that were there 20–30 years ago; and they’re almost exclusively tech companies.
“These companies were started in garages by young people with, at best, undergraduate degrees. None of them had MBAs. So people thought these tech companies just didn’t need MBAs. But that was only when they were startups. Look at the CEOs of all the big tech companies now; they all hold MBAs from top programs.”
That’s a sign that these companies do need MBAs—but, Manoj emphasizes, “a different kind of MBA.” In an economy driven by rapid technological development, business professionals in any context are inevitably dealing with products and services strongly influenced by tech, and specifically by AI, and cannot afford to be ignorant of the latest developments.
“We need to produce MBAs who can talk to engineers, understand their language, and most importantly know how to productize technology to create competitive advantage in the marketplace.”
Startups that fail are often hampered by what Manoj calls “strategic incoherence”: a failure to effectively integrate different areas of expertise to create a sound business model. There are brilliant tech people who don’t understand market dynamics, consumer demand, pricing, or branding; and there are businesspeople who understand all these things perfectly—“but they don’t understand technology.”
Productization means bringing together these two sets of skills. Effective businesspeople not only need to know something about both sides of the coin, they need to understand how to leverage one another’s strengths, ensuring strategy is informed by a marriage of technical and commercial expertise. This is where Cornell Tech comes in.
MBA programs, of course, have been trying in various ways to adapt themselves to a landscape of accelerating AI innovation. “At Cornell,” says Manoj, “we’ve been quite fortunate to have a lead in this transformation.” That’s thanks in large part to the Cornell Tech campus.
The campus came about due to a 2008 initiative of the then Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, who launched a competition to build an applied sciences campus in the city to spur innovation and entrepreneurship.
In a tight competition in which Stanford also participated, Cornell University launched a joint bid for Roosevelt Island with the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology, emerging as the winner at the end of 2011.
After an initial phase operating out of Google’s NYC offices while construction proceeded on Roosevelt Island, the Cornell Tech campus proper has been in use since 2017. Its unique interdisciplinary mission puts Cornell ahead of the curve when it comes to integrating technical expertise with business acumen.
The campus houses a wide range of graduate degrees, including MEng, LLM, MS, MBA, and PhD programs, each with a variety of formats and specializations. The list includes the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Dual MS program, graduates of which are awarded degrees by both Cornell and Technion.
Across all its degrees, the campus strongly emphasizes collaboration, with students of different programs working together in teams—engineers, MBAs, designers, law graduates, and information scientists collaborating on projects with real-world impact.
While Cornell Johnson, the university’s business school, is located upstate in Ithaca, the Johnson Cornell Tech MBA is a special one-year program taught on the Cornell Tech campus in NYC.
A key part of the program is the Studio curriculum, which consists of the core Product Studio in the fall, followed by a choice of Startup Studio, BigCo Studio (big companies), or PiTech Studio (public interest tech) in the spring. Studios are where the campus’s interdisciplinary, collaborative ethos comes into play.
In Product Studio, students from across all Cornell Tech master’s programs are teamed up and assigned to a specific industry based on their interests. With the help of an industry advisor from a partner company, teams research and develop a product idea to meet a real-world challenge.
In the spring, depending on their choice of Studio, students form new teams to apply their product management skills in a more specific context—in a startup, big company, or public interest tech environment.
Although the skills developed in the Studio curriculum lend themselves well to the kinds of tech product management roles graduates of the program have often gone on to, Manoj emphasizes that they have far more wide-ranging relevance than is widely understood:
“It would be a mistake to assume that this program is only for product managers. Technology pervades everything: health, finance, consulting.
“Five years from now, many investment banks will be hiring at tech MBA campuses, because they need these skills to understand the drivers of market valuation. And the biggest consulting firms these days are constantly advising on AI transformation.
“The old notion that tech MBAs just lead to jobs at Microsoft or Google is a myth. Investment banks and consulting companies also will be hiring tech MBAs.”
Additionally, the Startup Studio and NYC’s status as a growing startup hub indicate why the program is so attractive for budding entrepreneurs (Poets&Quants ranks the program 4th in the world for entrepreneurship!).
In particular, Cornell Tech’s annual Startup Awards represents an incredible opportunity for teams participating in Startup Studio. Each year, four winning teams are selected and awarded $100k in funding, in addition to studio space and ongoing mentorship to develop their ideas into full-fledged businesses.
This is part of Cornell Tech’s commitment to incubating new ventures, which has resulted in the launch of 120+ companies to date.
| Useful Links | Program Homepage Application Requirements Studio Overview Career Outcomes Campus Overview |
| Class Size* | 88 |
| Post-MBA Functions* | Product (Marketing) Management: 34% Analytics: 17% Consulting: 13% Business Operations: 11% Program/Project Management: 9% |
| Post-MBA Locations* | NYC: 63% USA (outside NYC): 20% International: 17% |
| Median Base Salary* | $152,000 |
The Johnson Cornell Tech MBA is a one-year program, involving no summer internship and separate from the two-year Cornell Johnson MBA in Ithaca.
But recognizing the universal importance of technology in the modern business world, and not content to silo its traditional and tech programs, the school launched a new two-year Johnson Cornell Tech Dual-Campus Track in 2022.
Intended to offer the “best of both worlds,” the program involves one year as part of the traditional residential program in Ithaca, followed by a tech-focused summer internship and then a second year as a member of the Johnson Cornell Tech MBA program.
Manoj gives the example of a typical student path through this unique program:
“They come to Johnson, with its strong reputation for placing students into investment banking or consulting; they do their internship in the tech vertical at Citibank or McKinsey; they come to Cornell Tech for a combination of business and technology classes in an interdisciplinary environment; finally, they graduate and return to their firm exceptionally well equipped to deal with tech-focused engagements.”
Here as elsewhere, Cornell’s “any person, any study” motto informs its uniquely personalized program offerings. In another article, we talk to Manoj about how this ethos shines through in Cornell Johnson’s online and executive MBA offerings.
Mike Mascarenhas
Sr. MBA Admissions Consultant
Education: BS, MBA
With over 2,000 hours of experience coaching MBA prospectives and students, Mike knows everything about how to get into MBA programs—and how to land the best jobs coming out of them. Mike built the recruiting process at IESE Business School and subsequently handled MBA recruiting at BCG. He’s a passionate, energetic coach with a deep understanding of the consulting industry and substantial experience with nontraditional candidates.
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