Management, Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Lynda Aiman-Smith
“We work with the company’s internal training staff on the highest competency development needs, and translate their needs into educational designs that get delivered by a variety of faculty.“
Lynda Aiman-Smith Assistant Director, Services and Product Innovation Management Initiative
For the past six months I have been working as the faculty lead on a program presented collaboratively by the college’s Services and Product Management Initiative and Executive Programs.
We are delivering short executive distance education modules to a major technology and services corporation’s global services professionals, using a competency model developed internal to the firm.
The professionals engage with their managers to identify strengths and weaknesses, evaluate current and future skill needs, and formulate plans for their competency development. We work with the company’s internal training staff on the highest competency development needs, and translate their needs into educational designs that get delivered by a variety of faculty. For me, this has been a fabulous partnership as it is in line with my particular research interests in what has been called the “T-shaped professional.”
This term refers to people who have a broad range of competencies, from technical to organizational to relational, and perfectly describes the types of competencies that this company unit aims to develop in its human talent. So I get to combine my research interests with helping to provide high value to one of our corporate partners.
