In a labor market that demands soft skills, project management and team leadership, MBAs emerge as an opportunity for these professionals to launch startups or assume management positions effectively.
"Think outside the box". It's a catchy phrase, common in conferences and speeches by motivational coaches . It is not simple rhetoric: professionals from different subjects apply it when specializing in skills outside their usual fields of work. In this sense, MBAs are a clear example: they offer postgraduate programs in business management and, therefore, their traditional students have been business and marketing administrators.
However, today's world is demanding and privileges entrepreneurial thinking. It is not surprising then that MBAs are now part of the professional plans of engineers and health professionals. Many of them want to run startups or take on management positions in companies and medical centers.
For Daniel Serrot, MBA director at the University of San Andrés (Argentina), an MBA implies a professional and personal transformation in individuals' careers. In the case of engineers, Serrot maintains that these professionals usually have great technical capacity for solving problems of any kind and business master's degrees are opportunities to give this skill a new twist.
“What happens is that when an engineer works in companies, particularly in the business world, he finds that although he has technical tools, he lacks business tools. In addition, they may also lack knowledge about finances and soft skills, which have to do with leading teams and solving unstructured problems. That is when an MBA ends up helping to complement the training that the basic engineer brings and provides enormous tools for the business world,” declared Serrot for AméricaEconomía .
In a similar vein, Marcelo Pancotto, professor in Operations and Technology Management at the IAE Business School of the Universidad Austral (Argentina), considers that “multidisciplinary” work has incalculable value today.
“Studying an MBA is imperative for an engineer if he is considering growing in the hierarchy of a company. In our study programs, the focus is on our graduates being able to meet various profiles, not only CEOs, but also finance, marketing or human resources managers. Because everyone sits at a table with the manager and needs not only to know about their functional area, but also to understand, dialogue and be creative in that multidisciplinary team,” said Pancotto.
On the other hand, the professor has identified in recent years that MBAs not only enhance the analytical skills of engineers, but also enrich areas of personal development and organizational understanding.
“Many engineers, due to their technical training, are unaware of crucial aspects of management and leadership that the MBA directly addresses. This “unknown ignorance” could cause them to underestimate the true potential value of an MBA. But fortunately, more and more engineers recognize that an MBA, especially one that emphasizes the practical application of their technical skills, opens new doors and allows them to reach their full potential,” says Pancotto.
Meanwhile in Chile, Juan Pablo Torres, vice dean of Postgraduate Studies at the Business School of the Adolfo Ibáñez University (UAI), shares the slogan that engineers who study an MBA complement the structured thinking of their careers with leadership and management skills. of the postgraduate course. Likewise, Torres maintains that the contributions of an engineer are highly valued in the labor market. To such an extent that in Chile, 61% of the positions of directors of companies in the Selective Stock Price Index (IPSA) are held by engineers.
“Although in the world of engineering there are different specializations, MBA programs in Chile manage to capture specializations in Civil and Industrial Engineering in early stages, mainly. However, it is common that after a period of time engineers from other specializations also embark on an MBA,” Torres clarified to AméricaEconomía .
Specifically, the UAI offers four options for engineers interested in pursuing an MBA program. Thus, civil and industrial engineers with more than five years of experience can study the Executive MBA. On the other hand, those engineers who want to internationalize their career in Latin America can apply for the Executive MBA Latam.
This is a program taught in six countries in the region, which allows the student to begin their studies in Santiago de Chile and then attend modules in Bogotá, Panama City, Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Buenos Aires and Miami.
Finally, engineers with careers of more than 15 years can opt for two proposals from the Business School, which include the Advanced MBA, taught in Chile, as well as the Multinational MBA. The latter spans 18 months and contains modules on three continents: Mexico City, Silicon Valley, Santiago, Madrid, Tel Aviv-Jerusalem, London and Shanghai.
When evaluating the added value of engineers in business management, Torres points to project management as one of the key assets. “Engineers are well equipped to execute and manage large and complex projects. This complements very well the soft skills that are developed in MBA programs,” says the vice dean.
Regarding the engineering specialties that best suit MBAs, Torres affirms that although all of them can benefit, there are three that have the greatest opportunities: Industrial, Software and Electronics. The first, because it focuses on the optimization of processes and systems, which is highly relevant for operations management and continuous improvement in companies.
“Regarding Software Engineering, we must recognize that with the rise of technology, artificial intelligence and digitalization, its professionals who have business skills are in high demand to lead software and technology development projects,” adds Torres. Finally, electronic engineers can provide crucial knowledge in areas such as telecommunications infrastructure management and electronic product development.
WHAT ABOUT HEALTH PROFESSIONALS?
Likewise, in the field of medicine, a similar complement scenario occurs. For Daniel Serrot, a health professional can be very specialized in their domain, but if they work in companies or run businesses, they often ignore the vocabulary or language of the business world. Given this situation, Universidad San Andrés (UdeSA) offers Executive MBAs, generally aimed at professionals in senior management or management roles.
At the same time, the MBA Health is also offered, a program aimed at a comprehensive business vision for doctors and enhancing the management of health organizations. “Through MBAs, they take advantage of this specific knowledge to improve decision-making or, ideally, launch ventures,” explains Serrot.
One of the most striking attributes of the UDeSA MBA is the New Business Launchpad: a final project in which all students decide what problem they must solve through a business project that applies all the knowledge of the study program.
Among the medical students, the case of Ingrid Briggiler, a gynecologist by profession, stands out, who devised two projects: Calling the Doctor, an online medical appointments company with regional reach and New Method (Nume), a platform that brings together virtual gynecologists who advise patients. “Perhaps these projects were not presented here, but they were conceived or designed when she was studying. She is an example of a gynecologist who, although she did not study the Health MBA, but rather the Executive MBA, was able to translate her ideas into successful startups ,” explains Serrot.
For Marcelo Pancotto, it was only in the last 20 years that the health sector began to be concerned with management theory . This still underdeveloped interest led many doctors to work in multidisciplinary teams, but without understanding the functioning of a hospital as an organization.
“There is a fear of linking health with business. But in reality it does not depend on taking money from those in need, but on the contrary, on ensuring that the hospital can provide the best quality at the lowest cost and that unnecessary errors are not made in critical situations such as the COVID pandemic. It is good to take into account that if in a hospital, the number one is a doctor, it would be important for him to understand what it means to maintain an organization in a sustainable way, whether for profit or non-profit,” says the professor at the Austral University.
