Why tech leaders need business skills—and how a Tech EMBA can deliver them

Not all promising scientific breakthroughs make it to market—not for lack of ingenuity, but because translating technical innovation into market success demands a different set of tools.

Those skills haven’t necessarily always come easily to tech professionals, who may have spent more time in a lab than in a boardroom.

However, that doesn’t have to be the case, according to Chahndra Dal Pont, program director of the Tech Executive MBA at GEM – Alpine Business School (GEM) in France.

This idea forms the basis for the newly launched program, which aims to equip tech professionals, scientists, and engineers with the business acumen they need to bring ideas to market.

“Of course, you have to be able to answer the [technical] questions of your client,” says Valentina Vertere, the MBA’s scientific director. “But you also have to convince them that you will be ready to prepare this product, that the production line will be ready in time, and you will be able to do it without delay.

“This is what we are going to teach."

Launching a specialist Tech Executive MBA  

As scientific director, Valentina is well-placed to assess just how necessary this type of program is.

Before taking on her current role as director of the GIANT Innovation Campus in Grenoble—a collaborative initiative led by the French research center CEA—she headed industry partnerships at CEA. It meant she worked across various sectors, gaining a panoramic view of each one. It was during this time that she noticed the lack of “360 degree” workers in the tech industry.

“I was recruiting a lot of business developers,” she explains. “It was very hard to find the right profile for this kind of work, because we were looking for people that should have a strong technical background, but we also needed people that have a strategic overview of their sector.”

As a response, Valentina approached GEM with the idea of creating a program that brought together technical expertise with business acumen.

Working together with Chahndra, she soon turned the concept into a fully-fledged degree—the GEM Tech Executive MBA. And though this isn’t the first Tech EMBA per se, it is the first one that focuses on specific industries. In this case, energy and microelectronics.

What students learn in the GEM Tech EMBA

The GEM Tech EMBA is unusual in the sense that only around 50% of the class focuses on the so-called “classic” components of an EMBA program—the typical business fundamental modules such as accounting, finance, and marketing.

In addition to the core courses, students choose a specialization in either energy or microelectronics. It culminates in a six-month executive capstone project, which allows participants to tackle real-world challenges in their chosen specialization. The Tech Executive MBA takes 21 months to complete plus a six-month capstone project, studied part-time with a mix of online and on-site modules.

The program is multi-faceted. Valentina says it will “teach them how to be a good manager,” but also “how to negotiate complex projects.” Students will learn how to develop a business strategy in their chosen field, giving them all the tools they need to bring a technical idea to market.

Perhaps this idea of blending together business and tech is best expressed in the fact that Tech EMBA students mix with participants from the traditional EMBA in more than 40% of their classes. Bringing tech professionals and executive MBAs into the same conversations aims to help Tech EMBA students understand problems from a business perspective and vice versa.

Ultimately, however, the program remains focused on solving that conundrum of how people with a technical background can bring an idea to market themselves. "You need a good technical idea,” says Valentina, “but you also need to be able to create a market and create business relationships. So, this is what we teach people."

Where do Tech EMBA students come from—and where do they go? 

As the GEM Tech EMBA is not a typical EMBA program, it attracts a different cohort of students to more generalist degrees.

Unlike most EMBA programs, business or managerial experience isn’t a prerequisite to apply. Instead, students must have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree in a science, tech, or engineering subject. PhD and Masters graduates are also welcome to apply. All applicants require a minimum of five years’ work experience.

As program director, Chahndra says GEM aims to attract “those working in the sciences who are maybe not used to taking a product that far from the beginning—to understand the whole picture and the whole process.”

Over the course of the program, students will go through the entirety of the product development cycle. They will connect with industry leaders and develop projects, with a view to ultimately advancing into senior management or executive roles in the microelectronics or energy transition industries.

Some of the jobs that graduates could seek out after completing the program include lab manager, product owner, business unit manager, department manager, innovation manager, business developer, and startup founder. All of which are centered on the energy and microelectronics industries.

With the first intake joining the program in October 2026, Valentina believes there’s nothing else like the GEM Tech EMBA in the industry.

“Most [companies] in the industry are looking for people that can be a manager and do business development,” she says. “So, this is a curriculum that is very, very rare.”