Meet Mark Pecen, PhD

Mark Pecen is a second-year EMTM student, attending the program full-time.

Background

Mark already holds a senior position in the management of advanced technology, global standardization, intellectual property and technology investment strategy. He currently has over 40 patents issued and pending worldwide, and is the inventor of several well-known Internet and wireless communication technologies. Mark was recently elected to Motorola's Science Advisory Board Associates, an executive advisory committee comprising the top 1% of Motorola engineers, scientists and technical leaders. Before joining Motorola in 1997, he worked for Bell Laboratories at AT&T and was an R&D management consultant in wireless systems in the U.S. and Europe. Previous education was in electrical engineering (BS) and computer science (PhD).

Why EMTM?

Mark was "looking for additional business training to help me extract value from technology and innovation for a leading firm like Motorola." While he had significant experience in technology leadership, he felt that he lacked the frameworks necessary to forge the alignment of technology with strategy, marketing and entrepreneurship. Being involved in early stage research, he "wanted to get some tools to better handle uncertainty, some ways to identify where the markets are going and how to make reasonable valuations on technology investments."

Mark knew that he was attracted to the quantitative aspects of business and wanted to enroll in a program that would both address his interests in cutting-edge technologies and provide a first-rate grounding in business. That is why he chose the University of Pennsylvania's EMTM program. He was already familiar with the research, innovation and overall reputation of many of the EMTM faculty from the School of Engineering and Applied Science (Penn Engineering) and he knew of Wharton's reputation as a leading business school.

Benefits to Motorola

Mark embarked on the EMTM program with the recommendation and full sponsorship of Motorola. Beyond the benefits of the core curriculum, he selected technology electives that would enable him to explore cutting-edge technologies, especially those outside his immediate areas. His courses included Microelectronics, Nanotechnology, Medicine and Biotechnology, and Advanced Telecommunications. On the management side, Mark has taken electives in Computational Finance, Real Options, Advanced Finance, Leadership, Negotiations, Technology Entrepreneurship and Models and Tools for Marketing Strategy. During the summer break, Mark used an independent study option to focus on "R&D Strategy." He was able to integrate his marketing and finance electives from the management side of the curriculum, particularly the content from real options. Mark believes that he has gained a set of strategic tools to aid in his overall decision-making.

Mark appreciates the option of going to school full time while continuing with his responsibilities at Motorola, and feels that Motorola has benefited from the real-time application of his studies to his work in R&D. He also points to insights gained in valuation and risk-neutral pricing as significant takeaways from EMTM. "The risk-neutral pricing concept allows us to place a reasonable value on a project, given fairly large amounts of future market uncertainty. At Motorola I have implemented several small investment decisions in R&D and standards activities based on this concept. Sort of a small-scale prototype of what I learned in EMTM real options studies. Some of these are returning value, exactly as predicted by the models."

An enthusiastic fan, Mark cites the following additional factors as increasing the total impact of the EMTM program:

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