While the most obvious educational path to a role in a company's C-suite leadership used to involve an MBA degree, many companies are seeing their chief executive hold a different type of degree: engineering.
The shift in discipline can be attributed to big data, BU Today reports. The publication cited an annual survey conducted by the Harvard Business Review that found that 34 of the top 100 global CEOs have engineering degrees, compared to the 32 who have MBAs.
"An engineering background imbues people with the capacity to compete and innovate in today's business landscape, one where technology is advancing at an unprecedented pace and where almost every product or service requires the integration of multiple disciplines," Kenneth R. Lutchen, PhD, dean of the College of Engineering at Boston University, told BU Today.
George Savage, MD, co-founder and CMO of Proteus Digital Health, said his undergraduate education in biomedical engineering helped prepare him for his leadership roles at Proteus.
"Creating and executing a multiyear strategy to secure global regulatory approvals, first for the technology and secondly for the integrated medicine, is one example of applying an engineering approach to solving big, complex problems," he told the publication.
To access the full report, click here.