Andres Guillermo Fortino
Polytechnic Institute of NYU
75 Grist Mill Lane
Pleasant Valley, NY 12569
Phone: +1 914 323 2001
Email: agfortino@gmail.com
DVP term expires December 2012
Dr. Andres Fortino has been associate provost of Polytechnic Institute of New York University and dean of the University’s Long Island and Westchester campuses since 2006. In his role, Dr. Fortino leverages his expertise in engineering, technology and management to bring graduate education to greater New York area companies. He has created and managed over a dozen graduate programs in engineering and management.
Dr. Andres Fortino was previously Dean of the AACSB-accredited School of Management at Marist College in 2004-2006. From 1998-2004 he served as Associate Dean for Academic Development as well as director of the MBA and Technology Management programs at George Mason University.
He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from the City College of New York and received his PhD in electrical engineering from the City University of New York. Dr. Fortino has lectured extensively on technology worldwide and has led more than 180 high technology seminars for Learning Tree International over seventeen years with the company. He also worked for IBM Corporation in its Advanced Technology Division where he was awarded three patents and ten invention disclosures and received IBM’s First Invention Level Award for his work in semiconductor research.
Dr. Fortino is a Senior Member of IEEE, a member of the Society for Information Management, the Academy of Management, and the Technology Management Educational Association. He is a Visiting Professional Fellow at Cambridge Fitzwilliam College and a Fulbright Senior Technical Specialist. Dr. Fortino served as CIO for a mid-sized non-profit for twelve years. He serves on the New York State CIO Council.
The author of eight books, Dr. Fortino has practiced the application of information technology to solving business problems for the past 30 years. His scholarship has also focused on innovation management, information systems development, intellectual property management, data networks, CIO education and the diffusion of innovation and the greening of the IT function. He has published over forty papers and made over eighty technical presentations.
A Pattern Language for Innovation Management and Application to Technology Management Education
The work of architect Christopher Alexander in articulating the field of pattern languages for architecture has been extended to several other fields, notably object oriented software development, project management and technology management. Alexander calls for the identification of patterns in areas of creativity (e.g. architecture, programming) and human activity (e.g. project management) which when taken together form a comprehensive and interrelated set of entities comprising a language that defines best practices in that area. Alexander has a well defined process to identify patterns and criteria for selecting and creating patterns beneficial for action by the practitioner. Most often the discovery of patterns and development of a language for a field of practice is carried out by a community of practitioners. This paper presents the application of Alexander’s pattern language approach to the area of innovation management practice. Specifically we propose the development of a community of practice composed of technology managers, both practitioners and academics, engaged in discovery and publication of innovation patterns and ultimately creating a pattern language for the practice of innovation management. Examples of patterns in innovation management are presented as a starting point in the discussion. The teaching of the existence of these patterns and the discovery of additional patterns would add profitably to the portfolio of technology management education curricula.
A Technology Classification Process: Teaching Technology Managers Sucessful Technology Adoption
Technology managers responsible for adopting technology to help their organizations fulfill their mission and remain competitive need to develop skills in building appropriate technology portfolios for their organizations. Skills in determining when a certain technology is ready for organization-wide adoption or when it is past its optimum usefulness are at a premium for this class of knowledge worker. This paper presents a method for developing analysis skills in determining the maturity of a technology for adoption, building technology portfolios and minimizing risk. The technology manager is taught how to classify technology heuristically into “bleeding edge,” “leading edge” and “trailing edge” categories driven chiefly by its usefulness to business applications and maturity in the marketplace. Based on the classification the manager then analyses the gap between the technology in use and the desired technology solution to build a progressed portfolio. Emerging and mature technologies are classified using diffusion of innovation models developed by Rogers, as well awareness of the creative destruction process of innovations studied by Schumpeter and Christiansen. The technology manager is taught to use the knowledge of opinion leaders as a chief instrument of classification. The process then goes on to yields a gap analysis which results in an actionable portfolio management strategy. Although this information and technology classification is often available commercially, the reports can be expensive putting the information out of the reach SME technology managers. The portfolio management approach described here assists technology managers to perform the analysis themselves. Management educators in technology management programs may adopt this skills-building process in strategy, technology application or industry analysis courses of study.
The New CIO: From Technician to Business Strategist and The Implications for E-Commerce
The Chief Information Officer (CIO) role has evolved from keeper of the infrastructure under the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), to an executive managing the organization’s information base with a seat at the executive table and more recently to becoming the key strategic agent for the organizational use of technology. In the most advanced firms the CIO is the best indicated executive to move to CEO, especially in technology intensive firms. He has become the key Schumpeterian actor in the creative-destructive process mediated by technology. Today technology is the single greatest factor in strategic change in a firm. The CIO is the executive best positioned to manage the creative-destructive power of technology as outlined by Schumpeter and effect firm sustainability in the face of massive changes in markets. Thus the CIO is the best positioned to craft corporate strategy. As such he is best positioned to take advantage This paper outlines this new and evolving role as determined from interviews of industry, and public sector CIOs and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) and the study of CIO and CTO position advertisements. Nineteen CIOs and nine CTOs were interviewed for this research project. The emerging picture is that of a new dynamic role for the CIO with new competencies, roles and responsibilities, which vary by sector and organization type and size. This paper presents the new competencies, roles and responsibilities in light of the overwhelming importance of technology to firm sustainability. It also presents the implications for educators of CIOs as well as evolving succession strategies firms have developed to create new CIO talent successfully. Lastly the paper explores the resulting implications for e-commerce.
