Innovative Business Careers Worth Having

The world needs good businesspeople. With the world heading into some blender version of Star Wars and The Matrix thanks to the work of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and many others. More than ever, we need people who understand not only business and technology but most importantly, how to innovate within this field.

The best businesspeople must understand both sides of the coin: tech and business. Kind of like Musk starting PayPal but then saying, “I’ll work on EVs and help colonize Mars, too. Nbd.” Talk about diverse interests.

From that alone, it’s no stretch to understand why the world needs more Elon Musks – or, at least, more people who are not afraid to push the envelope; those with not only the ability but the drive to innovate. 

Forget the amount of money you could make or the recognition that comes with being a tech industry pioneer – think about all the good you can do for people, too. And blending business, technology and innovation is the foundation you need to make it happen. 

Are you ready to make that leap? Want to help write the future?

If so, here are some of the top business technology and innovation careers of the present and future. 

Careers in Business and Innovation—List and Overview

• Product Manager

• Program and Project Managers
• BI Engineer 
• Tech Startup Founder
• Strategy Manager
• Business Technology Consultant/Analyst 
• CIO/CTO/CEO

Product Manager

Ranked #10 on Glassdoor's 50 Best Jobs in America for 2022

This is one of our favorite new careers. Well, new-ish, anyway.

A product manager is assigned to a specific product or family of products. If they are assigned at the beginning of that product’s lifecycle, they follow it from opening idea all the way through release to market, working directly with the product developers. Once the product is out in the market, the product manager continues to follow it making sure it is still being well-received by the public. 

It’s a fascinating career. You would likely get to head up a team (sometimes small, sometimes not) that not just takes an idea, like say, a superhero movie, and brings it to market, but once it’s at market, your team gauges audience reactions, movie ticket sales, streaming downloads, internet comments, movie reviews, toy sales and all the other data involved to determine not just how successful the product is, but how to replicate it to continue not only to make everyone money but also to be able to keep making cool movies or bobbleheads or electric cars or fidgets or whatever. 

The product manager is vital. Vital to the company and vital to the customers. They gain an intimate knowledge of their product and can defend it, sell it, and improve better than anyone else in the organization. 

Learn more about Product Manager position, outlook, opportunities, requirements and more. 

Program and Project Managers

Ranked on Glassdoor's 50 Best Jobs in America for 2022

Program and Project Managers may have similar responsibilities to Product Managers, but for programs and projects. Program and Project Managers don’t manage products, they manage—you guessed it—programs and projects. For example, sometimes these programs take the shape of flight simulators for the United States government or managing the construction of multimillion-dollar properties. And the project managers would be managing the construction project portions. 

Of all the jobs listed in this article, both separately hold two of the highest number of current job openings. Coming in right behind them currently is also, Product Managers!

Being so related, it’s easy to see that they would all three would be in similar demand in the market. Not only that, of all those on this list, demand for these positions, in particular, is about double the rest.

The reality is that there are a lot of programs out there. But what is it like to be a program and project manager? Well, you’re the adult. Someone has to make sure everyone is in their place, doing the right thing, every detail is on budget, everything is happening on time, and when bad things happen, there’s already a plan in place to take care of it. If that’s how your mind works — you pay critical attention to detail and love coordinating efforts, these are the careers for you. And make no mistake, it is a career, not just a job.

Learn about the Program Manager and Project Manager roles, opportunities, outlook and more.

Business Intelligence Engineer

Looking for a career that will push you to think, create, and analyze? The business intelligence (BI) engineer position might be the perfect role to strive for. 

In this career, you’ll have to be well equipped and experienced in managing BI interfaces and interpreting dashboards, databases, and other platforms that help companies efficiently collect and evaluate BI data. You’ll be the person for saying, “Yeah, Elon, it’s cool that you want to go to Mars, and here’s how our data says we make that happen.”

It’s a research position, but you’ll also be a pilot (in a figurative sense). Between analyzing the data collected and making dashboards to collect, even more, your unofficial job description will be using the numbers to help inform your company of the direction it should steer – and having the data to support it!

Learn more about the Business Intelligence Engineer role, outlook, opportunities and more.

Tech Startup Founder

This is a position that varies so greatly in salary, job description, and career projections that it can’t be boiled down to an average annual salary and job satisfaction score on even as helpful of a resource as glassdoor or the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

In short, a tech startup founder is somebody with a big idea who’s willing to throw his or her time and resources at that idea to bring it to life. Sometimes there is a small team involved, and sometimes – when it works – there’s a large team involved.

Either way, it’s risky. Don’t ever think that it’s not. But every company you want to work for was started by somebody who did the “startup founder” route, and it’s also the best way to ensure you’re always the one writing the paychecks and not cashing them.

There were days when Tesla was going broke and Musk slept on his couch in Tesla HQ – if he slept at all. There were days when SpaceX failed and the situation looked grim. But the best startup founders are prepared for bad days and tough times, and they’re creatives who will keep trying every trick in the book until, eventually, they find success or run out of options.

There are two ways to approach the Tech Startup Founder route. You can go all-in and be prepared for Ramen noodles 10 times per week if your plan struggles to find traction at first, or (and recommended) you can be a 10% entrepreneur that uses your UAT degree to work a stable job while spending 10% of your time feeding your startup idea. This is a way to help mitigate risk, but at some point in every startup founder’s life, the point comes when a choice has to be made and he or she must dive head-first into the swelling sea of entrepreneurial life.

UAT’s Business Technology Degree

Imagine sitting down for a job interview and as the hiring manager across from you scans your resume, they stop at this one line that says, “Has name on Patent Number…” They look up at you, eyebrow cocked, and say, “Really?”

Or imagine finishing up your degree with a claim to innovation in hand. Not just a quick business plan for starting up a lawn care business, but a claim to innovation. The beginnings of a business that is truly innovative and creative. Then, actually starting that business and having the quality education you need to know what your strengths and weakness are, to know when to call for help, and when to plow through. 

Let’s face it, the world is changing. The business people of tomorrow need to understand technology. Having a firm grasp of business is awesome. Add in a firm grasp of technology and innovation to your skillset, and well, that’s Elon Musk-level awesome. After all, he majored in economics and physics. 

Forget the massive amount of money you could make or the recognition that comes with being a tech industry pioneer. In fact, the majority of the big tech inventors you know today did not focus on the money that would come, they focused on achieving something fantastic for others! For example, several years ago the market wondered whether Tesla could produce a certain number of cars per month, and at an affordable price.

Elon could have simply “inspired” folks to achieve these goals from his fancy office. But instead, he went to the production line and worked with his folks directly. Unbelievably, he worked day and night on the production line to overcome their technology challenges, actually sleeping on a cot nearby, never leaving until they achieved their goal! The markets were astounded. His exhausted response was something like: "I think we just became a real car company". That’s the intensity and passion required to produce tech-based products that people really want and love. Notice that his fame has only come after his amazing efforts. This is what YOU can do with an innovative technology career.

"You’ll have the opportunity to create something phenomenal and beneficial for others, and it will be a source of great pride for you, in addition to being a great enhancement to others’ lives" says UAT Business and Innovation Professor, Dr. Steven Cofrancesco. 

This is what you can learn to do with a business technology degree from UAT!

One of the best parts of getting your Business Technology Degree from UAT is the technology innovation part. Well, first, because it's truly innovative. UAT already incorporated the technology into the business. You won’t just graduate knowing a little bit about using Excel. You will be exposed to all aspects of the technology of tomorrow. And to graduate, one must have a claim to innovation through their Student Innovation Project. This can easily include a patent with your name on it or an innovative business you have already started during your time earning your degree. 

Either way, trust us, a business technology degree is worth it. And when you're done with that and you want to take it to the next level, you can continue on with your master’s degree to set yourself up for the potential of a higher-level or executive position.

Consider a Master's in Technology Leadership

Careers with Manager, Director, and other distinguished titles may require a master's degree and/or equivalent experience in a similar role, but one thing is for sure; an educational head-start has the potential to strengthen your career opportunities and shorten your timeline for achieving them. A Master of Science in Technology Leadership exposes you to a multitude of technology areas and focuses on "innovation as an outcome". While studying, you'll earn immediately applicable skills you can utilize in your profession, and build on your qualifications for the following roles and more: 

Strategy Manager

#5 on Glassdoor's 50 Best Jobs in America for 2022

Strategy managers do exactly what it sounds like; they look at the bigger vision of the company and its place in the market. Think of a coach calling plays for his team.

Essentially, they are equipped through education and experience in a given sector to understand their organization’s strengths and weaknesses. They understand and find ways to improve operational effectiveness (which is just a Latinate way to say how good a company does what it says it does and if it does it all.) 

They also keep an eye on the long-term. Part of any successful business strategy is also likely sustainability. Some business ventures are only designed to last a short. Others, like light bulbs and the Star Wars franchise, have a long-reaching hold on civilization and will likely be around for hundreds if not thousands of years. The strategy manager makes sure that a business is well-paced and equipped to handle the business world of today and tomorrow.

Learn more about the Strategy Manager role, outlook, opportunities, estimated salary and more.

Business Technology Consultant/Analyst

Ranked #36 on Glassdoor's 50 Best Jobs in America for 2022

A business technology consultant and analyst have the same job description: in both positions, you help your company leverage technology to find solutions to problems or implement better systems that help elevate the ceiling of what the company can do. You’re making calls about upgrades and finding the best technology that aligns with the company’s goals and then communicating this to stakeholders. On top of that, you’ll be receiving feedback on what’s working well and what… isn’t.

The difference between doing this as a consultant versus an analyst is simply who you identify as your employer. If you’re a Business Technology Analyst, you work for a company. It’s an internal job, so a company is providing you with benefits, helping you manage retirement, and (presumably) expecting you to work regular business hours in an office but some organizations may offer remote or hybrid positions. 

If you are a consultant, you’re working for yourself and consulting in a freelance capacity. You’re the boss of yourself, and you’re the one juggling your retirement, finding your insurance, and having the ability to work and live just about anywhere. Most business technology consultants don’t work for the same company for 40+ hours a week, but rather several (most likely smaller) companies for fewer hours. Maybe you consult with four companies for 10 hours/week, instead.

Both have benefits – it’s up to you to figure out which makes more sense for what you want to do. The best part is that there are options in this futuristic world of business technology. 

Learn more about the Business Analyst role, outlook, opportunities, estimated salary and more. 

C-Suite Business Executive like CIO, COO, CTO, or CEO.

This is the big time. If you’re really looking to get everything out of your career, a Master of Science in Technology Leadership from UAT is designed to empower business technology professionals' paths and put top credentials within reach. 

So what do these positions do? In short, a lot. They’re all C-Suite positions that are managerial and take a breadth of knowledge about technology and best practices… in addition to experience!

Here’s the nutshell job descriptions…

A CIO generally oversees the company’s technology policies, programs, and infrastructure.

A COO generally manages day-to-day operations and provides oversight for administration, facility, budgeting, and HR decision-making.

A CTO generally manages an organization’s technology systems, research, and development.

And well, you probably already know what a CEO's general responsibilities are. 

Which should you pursue? We can’t tell you that. That’s up to the person most affected by the situation (spoiler alert: that’s you). You know your skills, interests, and passions better than anybody else, so if you’re thinking grad school is in the cards and you're striving for a C-Suite position in your future, decide which is the most appealing to you, study the position, and then begin taking the steps to get there.

Sounds ambitious? Absolutely! But don't worry, UAT is here to help. 

UAT Professor, Dapzury Valenzuela teaches Student Innovation Projects, Business and Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Branding, and Art and Design courses. 

Business and Technology Are Better Together

Some of these careers may land you in the real world of making business deals with O-ring suppliers and hardware fasteners for your company. Some of these careers may find you working on the next phase of the MCU. But one thing is for certain; business and technology are married together now and will be forever in the future.

Thankfully, here at UAT, we can prepare you for both at the same time. So set your plans for UAT and set yourself up for success.

Request more information or if you're ready to find out if you have what it takes, apply today!