By Dilsher Singh, Current M.S. in Information & Knowledge Strategy (IKNS) Student, Columbia University School of Professional Studies
When I first told people I was pursuing a Master of Science in Information & Knowledge Strategy, the responses were remarkably consistent: “So … information systems?” “Like IT management?” I usually smiled and replied, “Not exactly.”
The truth is that IKNS – the acronym our entire community of students and alums uses to refer to the program – is one of those rare degrees that is almost impossible to explain in a single sentence because it refuses to belong to a single discipline. Over the past year, I have studied business anthropology, organizational behavior, collaboration, analytics, artificial intelligence, knowledge management, and digital transformation — subjects that, on paper, appear unrelated. Yet somewhere between conducting ethnographic fieldwork, building predictive models, mapping knowledge assets, and debating AI governance, a clear pattern began to emerge.
What emerged is that IKNS is not only about information. It is about understanding how organizations learn, how people collaborate, and how knowledge becomes action. This realization explains why IKNS students can apply the same principles toward remarkably different outcomes. One professional may improve knowledge flows within an AI consultancy. Another may redesign a digital workplace. Someone else may build better customer experiences in aerospace, finance, or leisure. Other alums may transform healthcare organizations, technology companies, media agencies, or government institutions. The destination changes, yet the intellectual foundation remains similar. That foundation begins with the common core. Rather than teaching students what to think about a particular industry, the IKNS core curriculum teaches us how to understand organizations.
The course Foundations for the Knowledge-Driven Organization taught me to see organizations as living systems where knowledge is continuously created, shared, and transformed into action. It provided a framework for understanding how people with different expertise can combine what they know to solve complex problems. The other core courses and the many electives build on that foundation from different perspectives: Business Anthropology taught me to consider culture, identity, and human behavior before attempting to optimize, while Business Analytics showed me how data and predictive modeling can strengthen human intuition and decision-making. Leading Collaboration demonstrated that knowledge only creates value when organizations can effectively mobilize it across teams and silos.
These lessons became particularly relevant as I explored the general tool of AI in the course Digital Workplace and Digital Transformation. Rather than focusing only on what AI can do, I began thinking more critically about how organizations should implement it responsibly. Technology can improve efficiency and accelerate decision-making, but transformation can falter when technology moves faster than people can understand, contextualize, and govern it. My coursework reinforced that successful digital transformation requires not only technological innovation, but also trust, judgment, and meaningful human involvement.
IKNS helped me recognize that the future of work therefore cannot simply be a race toward automation. It must remain a human project.
Organizations need governance without suffocating experimentation, analytics without abandoning intuition, and AI systems that augment rather than indiscriminately replace human expertise. Readiness matters. Trust matters. Ethical leadership matters. Most importantly, humans must remain meaningfully in the loop when decisions require context, accountability, and judgment. My instructors taught me the importance of assessing human impact before technological transformation and asking not simply “how fast?” but “why?” and “for whom?”
As an immediate and tangible impact of my studies, my own business has become the laboratory in which I hope to apply these ideas.
I lead a family-owned advertising agency in India, an industry facing disruption as digital media offers increasingly sophisticated targeting, measurement, and optimization. Yet out-of-home advertising possesses something technology cannot simply manufacture overnight: decades of tacit knowledge about cities, audiences, creative execution, relationships, and physical environments.
IKNS changed how I think about the future of my business, Greenline Media Services. Rather than asking how technology might replace traditional ways of working, I now ask how Greenline can preserve decades of institutional knowledge while using technology to expand what the organization is capable of doing.
At Greenline, that means codifying valuable institutional knowledge, breaking down silos, strengthening collaboration, and combining the intuition of experienced media professionals with analytics, programmatic advertising, audience measurement, and AI. Our existing work integrating data science and audience-measurement technology into campaign planning represents an early step in that direction.
Looking back, I no longer think of IKNS as a degree focused on information. I think of it as an education in organizational intelligence: learning to recognize valuable knowledge, connect people who hold different pieces of it, and translate collective intelligence into meaningful action.
The six common required courses provide the architecture. But it is the electives that allow each student to decide what to build with it.
In an age increasingly defined by AI, perhaps the most important thing IKNS taught me is how to build smarter organizations without losing the human knowledge that made them intelligent in the first place.
Views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Columbia University School of Professional Studies or Columbia University.
About Columbia's IKNS Degree
Columbia University’s M.S. in Information & Knowledge Strategy (IKNS) degree integrates data, people, and strategy skills for the AI age. The flexible and interdisciplinary curriculum trains leaders across the entire value chain of data-driven management: Getting the data and analytics right (e.g., AI adoption, business analytics), creating a high performing, people-centric culture (collaboration, team/project management, organizational psychology), and finally the right change management to turn your strategy into reality.
IKNS is available full-time or part-time, online or in-person on Columbia’s landmarked campus right here in New York City. To maximize opportunities for networking and community building, our online students join our New York-based students on Columbia’s campus for three in-person Residencies during their studies. The STEM-designated Master of Science degree offers International Students (F-1/J-1 visa) an opportunity for Curricular Practical Training during their studies (CPT) and 3 years of work authorization in the US upon completing their studies (OPT).
Students train under world-class faculty, including former and current executives from Google, IBM, NASA, and Oliver Wyman, and join a powerful global alumni network in coveted positions, including at Alphabet, Goldman Sachs, Nike, Pfizer, and the World Bank.
For more IKNS insights, news, and events, please go to our website, connect with us on LinkedIn, or attend one of our online info sessions. Visit the School of Professional Studies website to learn more about the SPS Student Experience.
