The BITE Mission
"To create new degrees and short courses as close as possible to local and regional economic needs in the Information and Technology led Business subject space"
BITE achieves this by joining academic disciplines that combine in these sorts of business and builds a continuum from Engineering of the technology through its deployment for value by coupling management with Technology and developing strong business acumen. BITE takes as its lead the university’s corporate objectives of widening participation and providing students with employability skills through the delivery of, and support for, high-quality learning opportunities. If you think you might like to be part of it please contact our admissions tutor.
Background
As economies move from the industrial age into the information age, existing educational structures cannot always meet the challenges faced by business and wider economic and social organisations. The silo-based approach of the traditional university is seriously challenged by the demands of the new economy, where competitive advantage is gained by combinations of skills as well as depth of knowledge. Knowing What (knowledge of facts) remains important, but the new economy demands additional sorts of knowing. These include:
- Knowing Why (knowledge of why things are the way they are);
- Knowing Who (leveraging the power of the network);
- Knowing When (understanding temporal aspects);
- Knowing Where (understanding of place or location both real and virtual) and
- Knowing How (capabilities and skills to create value in systems, products and services).
Economic progress has always involved knowledge. What makes the 21st-century different, however, is that never before have so many well-trained minds and such powerful technologies come together. Information age, knowledge based, companies are those that successfully combine the two and transform the result into economic value.
BITE builds on this link between enterprising, innovation oriented minds and technology to develop the intellectual and practical skills in students who can then become effective players in today’s economy. It is clear that the traditional economic boundaries between engineering, science, manufacturing and services are breaking down such that today the concept of a knowledge economy applies equally in all and most often requires combinations of them all. The new economy is characterised by a sophisticated industrial structures, where making things and providing services are interdependent aspects of economic activity. Both depend on producing innovative, creative goods and services with high value-added content. The key attributes of successful people in the knowledge economy are:
- creative capability;
- a drive to innovate;
- excellent business acumen;
- strong management style;
- engineering empathy with communications and IT;
- interpersonal skills;
- leadership.
These attributes form the teaching, learning and research philosophy of BITE.
We are committed to building learning experiences that allow students to develop these attributes in a the variety of disciplines, across our programmes of study , allowing them to be effective in their future activities in the knowledge economy.