The TI:GER Program (Technology Innovation: Generating Economic Results) at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business merges classroom instruction, technology innovation projects, and practical, real-world experiences. It brings together MBA and Ph.D. students who collaborate in teams to develop their entrepreneurial ideas into impactful technology innovation projects.
Meet Jamila Moses, Evening MBA and senior solution engineer at Salesforce.
What’s your concentration?
My concentration is Strategy and Innovation, and of course, TI:GER!
What initially interested you about the TI:GER program?
I was interested in TI:GER because it offered something my regular MBA coursework didn’t: The chance to take a real emerging technology and build a commercialization strategy around it from scratch. As a solutions engineer at Salesforce, I spend a lot of time positioning existing products for customers, but I wanted to learn the structured process behind evaluating whether a technology should go to market in the first place and how to get it there.
What were you hoping to gain from the program when you enrolled?
I wanted a disciplined framework for customer discovery and market analysis that I could carry beyond the classroom. I've always had an entrepreneurial mindset, and my experience at Salesforce gave me strong instincts for understanding what customers need, but I wanted to move beyond intuition and learn to validate ideas through real research before deciding on a direction. I was looking for a process I could apply, whether I'm evaluating a startup concept or driving a new initiative in a corporate environment.
Was there a specific moment or conversation that helped you decide TI:GER was the right fit for you?
I first noticed TI:GER while researching business schools. As someone who has always dabbled in side hustles and has a real interest in building and leading a business, the program immediately caught my attention. I'm also drawn to competitive intelligence and corporate and technology strategy, so the idea of learning a structured approach to commercializing emerging technology felt like it sat right at the intersection of all my interests.
What really sealed it was attending a Women in Business MBA panel at Scheller, where one of the panelists talked about her experience in TI:GER. Hearing her describe the hands-on, interdisciplinary nature of the program made it feel like exactly what I was looking for.
What skills did you develop or strengthen most through your TI:GER experience?
Customer discovery methodology changed how I approach problems. Before TI:GER, I would have started with assumptions about a market and built from there. Now I lead with structured interviews and let the data shape the strategy.
I also strengthened my ability to translate across disciplines. Working with Jonathan Rhone, our team's Ph.D. student, forced me to learn how to extract commercially relevant insights from deeply technical conversations and frame them for business stakeholders.
How did the program challenge you in ways you didn’t expect?
I underestimated how hard it would be to let go of my own assumptions. Coming from enterprise tech sales, I thought I already understood how to identify customer needs. But the Disciplined Entrepreneurship process revealed that many of my early hypotheses about the hydroponic market were based on surface-level observations.
Our customer interviews showed me that the real pain points for small commercial growers were things I hadn't anticipated, like operational fragility, capital constraints, and a protective culture around proprietary knowledge that limits peer learning across the industry.
What was it like collaborating with students from other disciplines?
It was one of the most valuable parts of the experience. Jonathan brought deep chemical engineering expertise that shaped our understanding of nutrient management and environmental monitoring in ways I never would have reached on my own. Lauren Hensler's marketing perspective pushed us to think about positioning and messaging earlier than I naturally would have. We had to learn each other's vocabulary and frameworks, which mirrors the cross-functional work I do professionally, but felt higher-stakes because we were building something from scratch rather than selling an existing product.
How did the program help connect classroom learning to real-world impact?
TI:GER is structured so that everything you learn gets applied to a real project. We conducted primary research with actual hydroponic operators, developed a real business model, and worked through strategic choices that had genuine trade-offs. The insights we gathered from our customer interviews directly shaped how we positioned our project — CHRiS, an intelligent growing optimization system for commercial hydroponic greenhouses — and informed our go-to-market approach, so the learning never felt abstract.
How has your TI:GER experience shaped your goals after graduation?
TI:GER confirmed that I want to stay at the intersection of technology and business strategy, and it gave me sharper tools for doing so. I'm building toward senior leadership in business development, corporate strategy, or competitive intelligence at enterprise technology companies. The frameworks I developed through TI:GER, particularly around market assessment, competitive positioning, and strategic choice, translate directly to evaluating partnership opportunities and building market entry strategies at scale.
If you could describe the program in one sentence to a prospective student, what would you say?
TI:GER gives you the rare opportunity to take real emerging technology from the lab to a go-to-market strategy, and you leave with frameworks you'll use for the rest of your career.