C&F Names Stephen J. Andriole, Ph.D. as new Thomas G. Labrecque Professor of Decision and Information Technologies
Irene Burgo

Stephen J. Andriole, Ph.D. has been named the new Thomas G. Labrecque Endowed Professor of Decision and Information Technologies in Villanova University’s College of Commerce and Finance (C&F), effective this fall semester, announced Dr. Thomas G. Monahan, dean of the College of Commerce and Finance. An expert in the field of computing and information technologies, Andriole currently is teaching courses in the College of Commerce and Finance’s Executive MBA Program and MBA Program. He also will teach in the spring a new capstone course (“Dimensions of Business Technology”) for senior management information system majors, which he developed.

The Bryn Mawr resident is renowned as a leading technology visionary. Over the years he has developed methods and tools for tracking macro technology trends across hardware, software and services areas. The results of these trends analyses help keep courses current and help companies understand where–and how fast–they should adopt new technologies and technology-driven business models.

“I continually monitor technology and technology market trends,” said Andriole. “I also track technology adoption patterns as part of a long-standing interest in aligning business with technology. The business/technology alignment work provides insight into the buy-side drivers and trends, while the pervasive computing work examines how emerging new economy business models are enabled by continuous computing and ubiquitous connectivity.

Dr. Andriole has been a member of C&F’s Chief Information Officer Advisory Council for several years. He has also served as a consultant to a number of Fortune 100 companies and government agencies. He was previously the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and senior vice president of Safeguard Scientifics Inc. and the CTO and vice president for Technology Strategy at CIGNA Corp.

When he graduated from La Salle University with a degree in liberal arts, the field of  computing science was pretty much unheard of. Mainframe computers were the norm. With no firm career plans, Andriole, who had studied operations research, applied statistics and quantitative analysis, knew he “was interested in the quantitative side of things.”

As a graduate student, Andriole worked on his doctoral dissertation at the University of Maryland on a project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The agency funds cutting-edge research at universities and private and public companies. He began working with the application of computing and communications technology to national defense problems at ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency). His initial project was building a system with a database that focused on the interrelationships among countries from open source data in real time. “We built databases and did work in counter-terrorism for the DOD and the intelligence community,” Andriole noted. “We built algorithms. Then we converted the meaningfulness of what was happening in the open source data. The data was used to predict what countries were likely to go to war, what regions were stable or unstable.” Years later, output from that system he had designed, was put to use by the government, and entered into President Reagan’s daily briefing book.

Career-wise, his interest in the analytical and quantitative modeling steered him in the right direction. On a fortuitous path that he could not have foreseen at the time, Andriole worked for ARPA as director of cybernetics technology. There he began to develop foresight for anticipating trends in research. You needed skills akin to understanding how program managers work to decide what project was worthy of funding. Andriole says, “You also have to be pretty close to what the DOD is interested in and what ideas [not yet in tangible form] they would find interesting, you have to build constituents inside DOD for ideas that ultimately will be pursued by researchers in universities or corporations,” Andriole said. While at ARPA, he was responsible for making decisions to fund the distinguished MIT Media Lab.

Along the way, Andriole gained experience within the burgeoning computer industry.  From the monstrous UNIVAC 1108 system, to the first mini-computers from Digital Equipment Corp., to the first small IBM computers to laptops, he has  worked with mostly every kind of computing system. “I grew up with the industry,” Andriole said.

Andriole is “a high energy guy,” as well as enormous output. He is the author or co-author of over 20 books and hundreds of articles and reports. He’s also frequently asked to keynote professional conferences. He has a mission, grounded in the application of technology to complex business problems, and is pursuing that mission as part of the decision and information technologies department faculty.

At Villanova, Andriole has been asked to help C&F maximize the commercial possibilities of its technological research. He believes the campus will see a much more aggressive use of technology for educational content delivery within the next few years. His immediate focus, however is C&F. He plans to pursue funding for research that is practical and applied. “Applied research builds on theory, but we’d like to exploit theory to become known as a business school that develops best practices for the application of various theoretical concepts, whether in accounting, marketing, finance or management information systems.

“You can’t separate business from technology. New business models require unique use of technology, and business cannot pursue these new models without that technology,” explained Andriole. “My immediate plans will be to try to secure funding to enable some unique curriculum development, including some multidisciplinary curriculum development. Eventually, we’ll seek funding from specific industries such as pharmaceuticals or health care, financial services or insurance, to build some technology solutions for some of those industries. If the research is good enough, it will have commercializable potential. Once a prototype is developed and up and running, you can seek venture funding to further develop it,” Andriole said. Venture funding is also an area in which Andriole is well versed from prior experience.

“Steve’s experience and vast technological knowledge is really valuable for us because he has been exposed to so many areas of technology and the emerging trends, especially in his most recent position at Safeguard Scientific,” said Dr. Robert Nydick, chair of the Decision and Information Technologies Department. “C&F has done a fine job in understanding the academic issues and developing our curriculum and our students. Steve will complement some of our strengths, and that’s important. He has his finger on the pulse of the technology field, and that will help us to develop the practitioner side of things. Further, Steve is a pleasure to work with. We are excited to have him as part of our faculty and we look forward to his contributions.”

Nydick noted that Andriole also helped the department develop a new pro-active internship program for MIS majors which will be launched in January of 2002. The department is currently recruiting students for the internship program.