Business to Business and Technology - Nurturing Smart Higher Education in Underdeveloped Countries for Social and Economic Transformation in the Industry 4.0 Age

IoT, big data, system integration, cybersecurity, cloud computing, augmented and virtual reality, robotics, artificial intelligence, and much more are some of the big hi-tech Industry 4.0 components that are and will keep, revolutionizing industry and modern business. Unfortunately, the higher education industry in developing countries is not ready for the change that requires decision-makers to think out of the box. The existing way of business education that focuses on areas such as human resource management, finance, administration, management, marketing, and accounting, is not going to help underdeveloped economies produce business graduates who are ready for business in the Industry 4.0 era and beyond. An unconventional, innovative, forward-looking change management process is a dire need for higher educational institutes if they want to develop a workforce that would enable the workforce and prepare them for modern-day economics. This paper emphasizes and focuses on the transformation of business education to business and technology education. Through discussion of a case from an underdeveloped country and with the help of international benchmarking, the focus of this paper to is enable academic decision-makers in underdeveloped countries to think of smart education for producing quality business graduates that can contribute to the social and economic transformation of any underdeveloped country.