Engineering Doctorate Business & IT (BIT)

In today’s networked and individualised world, businesses, consumers, citizens and governments interact in complex networks that span the globe and at the same time have a huge local impact. Information technology (IT) is the means to make these innovations and their impact possible. IT allows organizations, people and devices to connect, to make these connections mobile, and to analyse the huge amounts of data generated by these connections. This in turn makes intelligent services possible, by which business and non-profit organizations can offer innovative products and services. However, careful analysis of IT-based mechanisms of value generation in business networks and IT-based design of new organizational configurations are needed to make these innovations successful.

EngD Business & IT

The Engineering Doctorate in Business and IT (EngD BIT) aims to raise the level of competence of professionals in IT to deal with the opportunities and challenges that IT-based innovations pose. The complexity of today’s IT-enabled world implies that IT professionals cannot restrict themselves to one discipline, such as Computer Science or Management Science. They need competencies ranging from requirements engineering to system architecture, from design thinking to business analytics, and from e-business innovation to modernisation of legacy systems.

Technology is changing fast, and professionals need to keep themselves up-to-date. At the same time, some of the problems of business-IT misalignment, legacy software, and global cooperation are persistent. Modern IT professionals need to work in multidisciplinary teams to manage these problems. The mission of the BIT EngD programme is to deliver professionals who can understand and design robust and economically sustainable IT-enabled networks, such as social networks, online markets, business networks, and public service networks, which balance economic opportunities and online IT risks to attain business goals.

Post-Master programme

BIT Master graduates do have the knowledge and skills to assess and redesign business-IT alignment, but do not have sufficient knowledge or experience to integrate IT networks, coordination processes, and business architecture into an integrated whole that balances economic sustainability with an acceptable level of IT-related vulnerabilities, such as vulnerability to online fraud or attacks by threat agents. This requires familiarity and experience with the business itself, as well as a deep knowledge of business networks, business analytics, techniques for fraud assessment and IT security risk assessment. The multidisciplinary of these problems in practice is greater than what Master students have been trained to handle.

The EngD BIT organizes the curriculum in a three-step design cycle, in which the designer learns how to investigate existing networks of people and organizations, and designs and validates IT-enabled improvements of these networks.

 

Courses

The EngD programme in Business & IT is a two-year post-master programme that consists of three blocks: a block of professional development, a block with in-depth and broadening courses and the technological design project. These blocks with a total of 120 EC can run parallel to each other.

The block with in-depth and broadening courses can partly be tailored to the technological design project. Gained skills in professional development and gained knowledge from in-depth and broadening courses employed in the design project. During the design project, you transfer results into technological innovation in industry or society.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The professional development courses are intended to improve professional skills and advance career opportunities. Therefore, the courses in Professional Effectiveness and the TGS Introductory Workshop (including Scientific Integrity) are compulsory. Other courses are elective and can be chosen in consultation with your supervisors. The total study load of the professional development courses is 6-10 EC. 
See www.utwente.nl/ctd for an overview of professional development courses.

IN-DEPTH AND BROADENING COURSES

This education block carries a total study load of at least 45 EC and comprises a compulsory block and an elective block.

Compulsory Core courses

 The compulsory block includes four courses:

Some compulsory courses are Master courses that need to be accompanied by assignments, specific to the EngD trainee. The compulsory courses will always be at a post-master level.

Elective Courses

The elective block of at least 12 EC allows you to extend your competencies in a specific track as further preparation for the design project and future career. For the composition of this elective block, you can take courses in the fields of e-business architectures, e-business processes and coordination, security and data analytics. Elective courses can either be master courses or post-master courses at the University of Twente, national research schools, Capita Selecta courses, conference visits (incl. paper and/or poster), summer schools or in-company courses.

DESIGN PROJECT

The design project (≥60 EC) will be defined in close consultation with the organisation or institution which you will be working for. The project can arise from a design question from the organisation/institution or from the valorisation of PhD research into which the industry/government has an inquiry to. The programme ensures that the design project is innovative and complex, contains sufficient design aspects and is sufficiently multidisciplinary. The design project is individual in the sense that you have your project. Because of the complex and multidisciplinary character of the project, in most projects, you will work together with colleagues. The University of Twente ensures that there is a clear part of the design, for which you are responsible and for which you will be judged.

Profile of an EngD BIT trainee

As an EngD BIT trainee, you...

Selection criteria

Candidates will be tested based on these selection criteria:

Candidates with a non-Dutch qualification and who have not had secondary and tertiary education in English can only be admitted with an IELTS test showing a total band score of at least 6.5, internet TOEFL test (TOEFL-iBT) showing a score of at least 90, or a Cambridge CAE-C (CPE).

The selection will be done by the EngD selection committee.

Interested?

If you are interested in this EngD to track Business & IT, check our vacancy website.

Contact

If you have any further questions about the EngD programme BIT, please contact: