T Summit Conferences 2014-2016

Bringing hundreds of people together every year to discuss the T-Shaped Professionals was done at by IBM and Michigan State University (MSU) in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Since 2017, The T-Summits have been smaller workshop at MSU – See http://tsummit.org

Previously (2008), IBM and Cambridge University called for creation of T-shaped Professionals in a report:

Cambridge-IBM SSME Report (Cambridge University, UK):

https://www.ifm.eng.cam.ac.uk/uploads/Resources/Reports/080428cambridge_ssme_whitepaper.pdf

“4.3 Where are the opportunities to address the skill gap? Developing T-shaped professionals: Discipline-based education remains a vital role of modern universities. In order to close the skill gap, however, universities should also offer students the opportunity to gain qualifications in the interdisciplinary requirements of SSME. Such qualifications would equip graduates with the concepts and vocabulary to discuss the design and improvement of service systems with peers from other disciplines. Industry refers to these people as T-shaped professionals, who are deep problem solvers in their home discipline but also capable of interacting with and understanding specialists from a wide range of disciplines and functional areas. Widely recognised SSME programmes would help ensure the availability of a large population of T-shaped professionals (from many home disciplines) with the ability to collaborate to create service innovations. SSME qualifications would indicate that these graduates could communicate with scientists, engineers, managers, designers, and many others involved in service systems. Graduates with SSME qualifications would be well prepared to ‘hit the ground running’, able to become immediately productive and make significant contributions when joining a service innovation project.”

“5.1 Recommendations for education: Enable graduates from various disciplines to become T-shaped professionals, who are adaptive innovators with a service mindset and can make early contributions to the service-driven economy. All students and employees, who wish to, should have the opportunity to learn about Service Science and develop themselves into T-shaped professionals. This can be achieved by adding SSME qualifications to an existing deep home discipline of study. As adaptive innovators, they will have a good background in the fundamentals of service innovation. With a service mindset, they can work effectively in project teams across discipline and functional silos. As research creates a truly integrated theory of service systems, students of Service Science will become system thinkers prepared to succeed in a 21st century service-driven globally integrated economy.”

IfM and IBM. (2008). Succeeding through service innovation: A service perspective for education, research, business and government. Cambridge, United Kingdom: University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing. ISBN: 978-1-902546-65-0.

IDEO had called for creation of T-Shaped Professionals earlier as well.

IDEO CEO Tim Brown: T-Shaped Stars: The Backbone of IDEO’s Collaborative Culture

McKinsey & Company had also called for creation of T-Shaped Professionals even earlier.

See: “T-shaped consultants” in “McKinsey & Company: Managing Knowledge and Learning,” by Christo-

pher A. Bartlett, Harvard Business School Case 9-396-357 (1996).

The thinking about T-Shaped Professionals continues to evolve, and the case for educating T-Shaped Professionals continues to gather evidence in its favor.