Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, technology has had a profound and ever increasing effect on the products businesses offer, and the processes by which they are produced. More recently, however, technology has begun to effect the manner in which business is conducted. Information Age technology is driving new business concepts including e-commerce, virtual enterprises, and mass customization. Technological growth continues at an explosive rate, and, as it does, commerce and technology become ever more intertwined. A fundamental understanding of business, technology, and how they fit together, will be a prerequisite for success in the future global economy. Lehigh University's Integrated Business and Engineering Honors Program (IBE) is designed to provide students with this essential perspective.

The IBE Honors Program directly addresses the constantly changing realities of the new industrial and professional marketplace: rapid technological innovation; diffusion and obsolescence; emergence of new standards; short product life-cycles and decaying margins due to increased global competition; and outcome-focused development and delivery of new products and services. Organizations now seek new forms of competition based on cooperation, often pooling physical and intellectual resources to speed up the profitable design, development, manufacturing and delivery of products and services. These changes in the marketplace demand new capabilities, which can only come with the combination of technology and commerce.

The hallmark of this integrated program will be graduates with a unique set of skills and competencies. In addition to the mastery of the concepts and procedures taught in individual courses in each college, the IBE program develops competencies that require an integrated knowledge from both engineering and business such as:

• the ability to understand the changing nature of domestic and global competition, and the expanding role technology plays in this arena;
• the ability to make decisions related to technology, product and process development, in a way that combines technical, financial, marketing and strategic dimensions;
• the ability to make design decisions based on target costs and forecasted rate of return on capital;
• the ability to perform economic analyses for new products, technologies and processes;
• the ability to prepare detailed business plans that include financial as well as operational details related to the production cycle;
• the value chain and the use of acquisitions, alliances and joint ventures necessary for competitive advantage.