Developing future engineers with broad views and deep skills - the emergence of a new T2-capability profile

Companies are increasingly stressing their need for recruits and employees who can understand the company strategy and operations on a wider scale and with an integrative mindset, as opposed to siloed departments, jobs, and people possessing those jobs. With new digital technologies, new organizational forms such as team-based organizations and virtual teams as well as Human Resource Management practices like job rotations, there are increasing opportunities for cooperation and integration of people with different backgrounds and skillsets, as the interplay between marketing (business function) and R&D (engineering function). However, having the company practices and infrastructure "right" for holistic and cross-disciplinary work does not suffice. The professional preparedness of the practitioners has to support this new paradigm as well. The solution has been proposed to be T-shaped capabilities, where the vertical line represents the deep expertise in one area, and the horizontal line overview expertise to better understand processes outside one´s domain. This is an improvement to I-shaped capabilities, where the connecting horizontal integration is missing. The paper propagates for a prospective upgrade to the T-shaped capability model, the T2 capability profile. The core idea - derived from interviews with industry managers - is that two horizontal lines differ in scope. The societal/business megatrends demand a set of non-contextual understanding of issues such as sustainability, quality as well as basic technical and financial literacy, and the other horizontal line is made of company-and industry-specific processes. To conclude, the opportunities to foster T2-capabilities in (engineering) education get discussed.