Munir Mandviwalla

PRO Platform receives Patent

“System and Method for Quantifying Professional Development” – U.S. Patent No. 11989679 was issued May 21, 2024 listing the IBIT and DIF team of Munir Mandviwalla, Manoj Chacko, and Laurel Miller as inventors.

The patent is on how the PRO platform structures, motivates, and measures student and employee development in universities and corporations. PRO develops students, a goal that all universities have but few have found a way to motivate and systemize beyond course work and GPA. See: “A System to Structure, Measure, and Improve Student Development,” IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies.

PRO is housed in IBIT’s Digital Innovation Foundry (DIF), which applies Design Science Research. PRO was the first DIF project, serves as DIF’s anchor tenant, and led to the DIF endowment.

PRO Community, LLC is a 2020 spin-off co-founded by the patent inventors and Niraj Patel with support from Steve Nappi and Niraj Muni in Temple’s Office of Technology Commercialization and Business Development.

San Jose State University’s School of Information Systems and Technology, is the first licensee with more than 2000 student users since 2018. Temple’s Kornberg School of Dentistry, led by Dean Amid Ismail signed on in 2022. University of Scranton’s Kania School of Management led by Dean Mark Higgins and Associate Dean Murli Rajan just signed on.

Earlier versions prior to PRO evolving into a complete product were licensed by Scholastic Corporation, Georgia State University, Loyola University Maryland, and KIPP Philadelphia Schools.

PRO started in Temple University’s Management Information Systems (MIS) department in 2008. Temple MIS is the living lab for the platform, which has impacted more than 4,000 MIS graduates.

Digital leaders Hamilton, Wink, and Geatens honored at 22nd Annual IT Awards

Temple University’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT) honored three accomplished digital leaders at its 22nd Annual Information Technology Awards.

The awards event, held Wednesday, May 1, 2024, in Philadelphia, brought together an elite group of tech leaders, innovators and disruptors for an engaging evening of celebration amongst the IBIT community. Dean Chip Hunter started the program by welcoming the participants. The rest of the evening spotlighted the honorees who shared their expertise and vision.

Jeff Hamilton, Chief Information Officer, Teva Pharmaceuticals received the 2024 Information Technology Leader Award. Hamilton is responsible for technology systems and infrastructure in 60 countries and 50 plants at Teva. Previously, Hamilton was Senior Vice President, Pfizer Digital with responsibility for manufacturing, supply chain and finance systems. He directed Pfizer’s digital efforts to rapidly scale COVID-19 vaccine production and distribution of billions of doses to more than 170 countries.

Chris Wink, cofounder and CEO of Technical.ly, received the 2024 Information Technology Innovator Award. Wink, a journalist and entrepreneur, co-founded Technical.ly, a news and community resource for technologists and entrepreneurs. Wink is the lead organizer of Philly Tech Week and in 2022, he was named one of Pennsylvania’s most influential impact leaders, and in 2017 Folio magazine named him one of the 100 most innovative media leaders in the country.

Fran Geatens, Vice President, Technology Infrastructure, Operations, and Experience, Merck received the 2024 Information Technology Award for Distinguished Alumni. Geatens is responsible for managing Merck’s worldwide technology infrastructure and business applications. He led Merck’s accelerated cloud transformation that is enabling new ways of working. Geatens is a graduate of Temple University’s Fox School of Business.

This year’s group of honorees are truly exceptional and we are proud to recognize them as digital innovation leaders.
Munir Mandviwalla, Executive Director

A sub-committee of the IBIT advisory board including George Llado (committee chair), Sondra Barbour, Michael Bradshaw, Andrea Stewart, and Bruce Fadem (board chair) identified nominees for the 2024 awards from a list of 62 candidates. These nominations were submitted to and approved by the entire board. Fadem, Barbour, and Llado also introduced each award recipient at the event.

The impact of the 2024 awards was rated highly on IBIT’s new Impact Model with an average score of 5.94 on a scale from 1 to 7 with 7 being the highest rating. The highest rating of 6.43 was for the value of participating in the activity, while the lowest rating of 4.92 was for contributing to the success of the activity. The following is a sample of comments included in the above responses.

It was even better than the last year. I loved it.
Student Participant

Great to see the strides the program has made and industry connections to strengthen IBIT’s place in the market.
Industry Participant

The event was the best so far. Excellent choice of venue, everything was very professionally run.
Industry Participant

For more about the IT awards and honorees, visit https://ibit.temple.edu/itawards/. To see the event pictures, click here.
For more details about the impact assessment, visit: https://ibit.temple.edu/impact

Dinesh Desai grew Emtec into a high performing mid-market IT services firm

Dinesh Desai and colleagues grew Emtec into a high performing mid-market IT services firm, by creating a unique culture, acquiring firms, and digital co-innovation.

In the newly published case titled Emtec: Culture, Acquisitions, and Co-innovation as the Upstream Future for Midmarket Firms, Munir Mandviwalla, Larry Dignan, Laurel Miller, and Bertrand Guillotin tell the story of a how a start-up grew through acquisitions and an entrepreneurial cooperative culture in the cut-throat trillion-dollar IT services market. The case also shows how co-innovation enables digital transformation.

The case is dedicated to Dinesh Desai, Fox’78, founder, CEO, and Chairman of Emtec. He received the 2015 Fox IT Award for Distinguished Alumni and served on the IBIT board. Dinesh passed away on March 27, 2024.

Note: Colleagues of Dinesh interested in reading the case, please contact ibit@temple.edu

IS Job Index 2024 Coming Fall 2024!

The AIS Temple University IS Job Index is a key resource on the placement, demographics, jobs, and knowledge of the entry-level Information Technology (IT) workforce.

Led by Temple’s Institute for Business and Information Technology (IBIT), the 2022 report featured more than 1400 job market entrants from 36 universities across the United States.

In 2024, the Association for Information Systems (AIS) will become IBIT’s lead partner, particularly in publishing and disseminating the result. The opportunity for universities to participate in the 2024 IS Job Index is now open at https://isjobindex.com/call-for-participation-2024/.

We are very pleased to expand our long-standing partnership with Temple’s IBIT in producing this important resource for current and prospective students, faculty, deans, and industry.
Matt Nelson, AIS Associate Executive Director

IBIT has been a leader at Fox for more than 20 years in engaging with industry and research on the IT workforce. We are very proud of IBIT’s expanded partnership with AIS, which will further strengthen the impact of this valuable resource.
Sunil Wattal, Associate Dean for Research, Fox School of Business, Temple University

Launched in 2013 and published every 2 years at isjobindex.com, each report analyzes several thousand job market entrants from more than 30 universities across the United States. The report profiles IS job market demographics, popular job types, current salaries, factors leading to offers, reasons for job acceptance and rejection, regional and industry trends, and knowledge levels and preparedness.

The 2024 report will be co-led by Munir Mandviwalla, IBIT Executive Director and Professor; Michael Dinger, Associate Professor at Baylor University; and Laurel Miller, IBIT Director and Associate Professor.

Cencora presents Generative AI workshop for students

Amrut Patil and Parijat Naik, both architects at Cencora, led a workshop on Implementing Generative AI Applications on February 23, 2024.

The 22 workshop attendees consisted of graduate and undergraduate students from three different schools at Temple and faculty members.

The participants learned about the mechanics of Generative AI, understanding its ability to employ algorithms and machine learning techniques to create original content.

Munir Mandviwalla

DIF Workshop Series

Institute for Business and Information Technology