While mentioning what kind of business talents will be in great demand, Professor Ed Snape, Dean of HKBU School of Business highlighted the following points:
Firstly, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)’s latest AI Predictions survey, more than half of the responded companies “have accelerated their AI approach in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis”, where the top changes include new use cases for AI (40%) and increased AI investments (40%). The trend is undoubted: companies’ AI investments are ever-increasing.
Secondly, in most recent years there has been a high demand for business talents, and especially for those equipped with technology and data analytics skills in addition to business knowledge and understanding.
Particularly, in the years to come, survive the post-pandemic world are only those business talents who equipped with A.I & FinTech.
The world is more virtual than ever, yet connected
Since the pandemic, more activities from business conferences to personal shoppings, have been shifted to online for avoiding physical interactions. When enterprises nowadays cannot interact with users or customers physically nor read their facial expressions, how can they understand the users’ journey and experiences to adjust their products and strategies? They read data. With more data generated for increasing e-commerce activities, the more people who can interpret data and transform into business actions are needed.
Data-literacy can also help bridge the gaps among hard data and different business functions, for example, sales & marketing, and provide historic analyses for data-driven decision making. While the pandemic has undoubtedly made the world shattered, people are actually more connected – through devices – than ever. With the enhanced use of technologies, be it for communicating with friend and families, or for booking services and products, or for simply planning the commuting routes to avoid heavy traffic and maintain social distancing, all these data have actually accelerated the smart city developments around the world that will help build smarter and more sustainable cities for people to work and live. Professionals with effective data analytic skills are therefore required to make predictive analysis and provide solutions even before the problems arise.
Business talents who survive the post- pandemic world
With more AI investments, there comes the surging demands for relevant talents like data analysts and technologists with finance knowledge. All the IT-related words – AI, data, technology, FinTech etc. – may make one think that the talents are all in the computer science sector and miss one important essence: the reason they are needed is for growing businesses.
That is to say, talents nowadays cannot be solely specialized in one aspect. While data professionals should equip themselves with business knowledge to know how businesses are operated, business executives should enhance their data literacy to learn how and what can drive businesses, especially for surviving the COVID-19 and post-pandemic world, we would say only those business talents who equipped with A.I & FinTech could be survived.
HKBU offer industry-recognized programmes to make a start
In order to strike a good balance between business and technology, some business schools offer data-analytics or A.I.-related programmes, among them HKBU School of Business is the typical school, who is also one of the only 1% business schools worldwide with triple accreditations by the three leading accreditation bodies – AACSB, EQUIS & AMBA.
HKBU School of Business offers two highly sought-after postgraduate programmes, i.e. MScDABE & MScFIN, supported by world-renowned tech giants and finance gurus including Tencent, Deloitte and BNP Paribas etc.
The MScDABE’s career-oriented curriculum emphasizes on the values of economic principles in the current data science development and the necessary programming skills for solving real business problems. It enables the graduates to fill the talent gap created by the new challenges presented by the smart city development. Graduates can work as either data analysts or data strategists in the areas such as project management, product and website design, and risk management in any business corporations and public institutions.
The MScFIN is backed by a prestigious Industry Advisory Committee who evaluates and advises on programme curriculum and design. The committee is formed by some of the biggest and most prestigious companies from around the world, including Alipay, UBS, Ant Financial etc., to ensure the programme addresses the current and future FinTech industry demands. It covers financial computing, machine learning for financial data, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, cybersecurity and privacy, algorithmic trading and other topics.
Please connect with HKBU School of Business to acquire more information about studying business in HK.
