Management of Technology Minor | Technological Leadership Institute

Gain the Skills to Be a Tech Leader

Broaden Your Perspective

Gain greater insight into business, leadership and technology with a Management of Technology (MOT) graduate minor. This program is designed to equip graduate students with the management knowledge and skills needed to take on future leadership roles.

Career Success Skills

Business basics are needed to understand how decisions are made, how to influence them, and ultimately how to make them yourself. The key differentiators of career success are the communications, teamwork and project management skills obtained in our MOT minor program. Having the MOT minor on a resume, along with a technical major, says you are ready to lead in a technological enterprise.

6 Credits for Master's Minor
12 Credits for Doctoral Minor
2 Required Courses

Applied Learning

MOT minor courses help students develop an understanding of business principles, complementary to a science or engineering graduate major. The two courses are in the menu below are required for the minor, and may also be taken by students who do not plan to complete a full minor.

MOT Minor Curriculum

MOT 5001 Technology Business Fundamentals (2 credits)
Gain the operations, strategy, and decision-making knowledge for technology-driven businesses, with topics including marketing opportunity assessment, finance and financial decision-making, and organizational roles (such as R&D, marketing, finance, manufacturing, supply chain, and executive management).

MOT 5002 Creating Technological Innovation (2 credits)
Acquire the techniques to create new ideas and lead an organization successfully to market, with topics including effective practices to generate ideas, processes to move them to market, and intellectual property.

In addition to the required courses, there are numerous approved elective courses to complete the minor. The menu below lists the MOT minor courses offered by the Technological Leadership Institute.

Elective Courses

MOT 5003 Technological Business Planning Workshop (1 credit)
Apply lessons learned in MOT 5001 and MOT 5002 as you are guided through the aspects of a strategic technology plan or a business plan, culminating in a presentation of your plan to the class and guests from the University Office of Technology Commercialization.

MOT 5005 Building Innovative Organizations (2 credits)
Discover global strategies and organizations that will help you create a new business or play a management role in an existing business, with topics including contrasting the challenges and opportunities in large global organizations with entrepreneurial start-ups, hiring and managing people, organizational effectiveness, and aligning an organization with business strategies.

Other courses that have been approved as electives include:

HSCI 5401 Ethics in Science and Technology (3 credits)
HSCI 5421 Engineering Ethics (3 credits)
IE 5111 Systems Engineering I (2 credits)
IE 5441 Financial Decision Making (4 credits)
IE 5541 Project Management (4 credits)
ME 8221 New Product Design & Business Development I (4 credits)

Electives are selected in consultation with the director of the MOT minor. Other courses may be counted toward the MOT minor with prior approval.

Prerequisites

MOT Minor Introduction

Whether you’re taking one MOT minor course or pursuing the MOT master’s or doctoral minor, a bachelor’s degree in engineering, science or another technology-related field from an accredited program is required. Watch the video to learn more about the program from the director of the MOT minor, Steven Webster.

Enrollment Information

To pursue the Management of Technology graduate minor students must be enrolled in a University of Minnesota master’s degree program. Contact our admissions team at
tli-info@umn.edu with questions.

Rozaane Johnson, MOT graduate
2016 Cohort