Lally School of Management and Technology

Return to: Schools & Departments

Dean:  Thomas M. Begley

Associate Dean for Academic Affairs: Jeffrey F. Durgee

Director, Undergraduate Programs: Frank X. Wright

Director, MBA/M.S. Programs: Vacant

Director, Career Resources: Thomas Whalen

Co-Directors, Ph.D. Program: Bill B. Francis and Iftekhar Hasan

Lally School Home Page: www.lallyschool.rpi.edu

Rensselaer’s Lally School is focused on developing aspiring business leaders who have a passion for technology with the ability to work across business functions. Our programs are built around the themes of innovation and technology entrepreneurship in the global economy.

Lally School students will:

• Develop the skills to integrate technology across business functions for commercial results.
• Acquire “real-world” experience through study that emphasizes hands-on projects and teamwork from day one.
• Leverage Rensselaer’s resources to network, learn, and prepare to capitalize on the business opportunities of tomorrow.

Tapping into Rensselaer’s interdisciplinary advantage, Lally students have access to the management school’s highly respected international faculty as well as to students and faculty from Architecture, Engineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Information Technology, Science, the Rensselaer Incubator, the Rensselaer Technology Park, and the Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship.

The Lally School offers five areas of educational specialization and research for students:

• Technological entrepreneurship
• Management of information systems
• Finance
• New product development
• Production and operations management

In conjunction with the Information Technology (IT) program, the Lally School provides three concentrations (MIS, Finance, and Technological Entrepreneurship) for IT majors. Dual-degrees are available with the Schools of Eengineering, Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and Science.

The Lally School is fully accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB International), the premier accrediting agency for bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in business.

The Lally School and its faculty are organized into two departments, with a residential program based in Troy, N.Y., and a primarily non-residential campus focused on executive cohort Master’s programs and education for working professionals in Hartford, Conn. 

Degrees Offered

Business in Management B.S.

Management M.S., MBA, Ph.D.

Technology Commercialization and Entrepreneurship M.S.

Financial Engineering and Risk Analytics M.S.

Research Innovations and Initiatives

Research at the Lally School is characterized by its cross-disciplinary, multiplatform, and international nature. Faculty at the Lally School conduct research in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While the issues investigated cut across functional areas in a business setting, are longitudinal in scope, and involve a variety of academic disciplines, the objective is to produce rigorously developed theories and empirical studies that are at the frontiers of new management knowledge and that pass the stringent tests of academic peer review.

Research conducted by the Lally School is often featured at conferences sponsored by the Academy of Management, INFORMS, PICMET, Academy of International Business, the IEEE, and ASSA. In addition, the Lally School regularly sponsors international conferences and seminars designed to bring together the best academics globally to focus on emerging areas of new research in order to establish intellectual leadership in a domain of broad interest to the academic community.

The Lally School has five intersecting research categories that are recognized for their leadership position in the academic community. They seek to create new frontiers of managerial thought in the area of technology and entrepreneurial management. The five Lally research categories are as follows:

Technological Entrepreneurship
At Rensselaer, technological entrepreneurship is the process of converting technical ideas into new businesses in startup ventures and established firms. This is the primary research focus for more than 15 faculty engaged in collaborative, multidisciplinary projects. These faculty members examine technological entrepreneurship from many perspectives, including psychology, economics, and sociology. They focus on such problems as opportunity identification, accelerating new-venture creation, intellectual property and governance in high-technology startups, and managing hyper-growth firms. The Severino Center for Technological Entrepreneurship is the focal point for scholarship in entrepreneurship and serves as a bridge to the Rensselaer Incubator and Rensselaer Technology Park.

Innovation Management and New Product Development
In this area, researchers concentrate on understanding the management processes leading to the development of successful new products, technologies, or services. Research topics include managing technological innovation, technology strategy, new product development, distributed innovation, strategic innovation alliances, innovation networks, management of radical innovation, and intellectual property management. Related research focuses on organizational strategies to successfully pursue product or service innovation, those that occur within the boundaries of the organization as well as those that involve other organizations. Given the emergence of global networks of innovation, issues related to inter-organizational alliances and collaboration form a primary focus of research at Lally.

Management Information Systems
This area focuses on the role and use of information technology in organizations and how it transforms the theories and practice of management. The research incorporates theories and concepts from such fields as computer science, economics, psychology, communications, and organization theory. Of particular interest are topics that relate to supply-chain management, business and consumer marketing, virtual collaboration, distributed innovation, and internal organizational capabilities. The Lally School adopts an interdisciplinary approach to researching new business models and the issues that present challenges and opportunities for managers in IT, entrepreneurship, finance, marketing, and innovation.

Financial Technology
This emerging field of scholarship and practice combines the traditionally distinct disciplines of finance, information technology, and modeling. Formed within this field are three relatively distinct applications. The first application is the impact of technology on the financial management of corporations, financial institutions and markets. This area specifically focuses on the interface between technological shifts and practices in the financial services industry and the overall functioning and productivity of these institutions in the capital markets. The second application pertains to the alternative financing and exit strategies of new technological ventures and business initiatives. This area focuses on the economics and governance of private equity, venture capital funds, traditional bank debts and going public process of individual companies along with the financial implications for regulatory, macroeconomic, and firm specific influences on respective industries and markets. The above two areas of research are further explicated by a third research specialty in computational accounting and finance involving emerging financial products and derivatives.

International Business and Global Management of Technology
Driven by the rapid onset of globalization, the processes of technological discovery, innovation, and commercialization have become transnational in nature. On-going research in this area at the Lally School focuses on two specific issues. First, it seeks to better understand how the emergence of new centers of technological capability outside of the United States, Europe, and Japan affects decisions regarding the location of R&D and high-value-added manufacturing processes by global managers. Secondly, this research seeks to learn more about the specific strategic and operational challenges associated with managing the creation and application of new knowledge in a multinational firm with critical facilities in several different regions around the world. By gaining a deeper appreciation of the impact of globalization on innovation and R&D, it is hoped that managers can develop an international perspective on where and how to access technical resources for enhancing their competitive advantage.

Return to: Schools & Departments