This post originally appeared on the U.S. News–Strictly Business MBA Admissions Blog

Once upon a time, graduate students from the schools of business, law, medicine, and engineering rarely crossed paths on campus except in the cafeteria or gym. That silo mentality has all but vanished as universities—and companies—embrace the idea that a successful innovation economy now requires cross-disciplinary thinking. To really get ahead, entrepreneurs need more than strong business acumen; they also must be able to understand, develop, and promote new technologies. To that end, numerous top business schools have introduced courses and established centers focusing on technology commercialization in an effort to help students identify and develop the “Next Big Thing.”

At the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, graduate students in a Technology Feasibility course taught in the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies must design and test a business model for a start-up and prepare an investor pitch—all in just three months. Recently, one student group worked on evaluating commercial applications for laser technologies that NASA originally developed at its Jet Propulsion Lab for its latest Mars mission. Another team created an online platform to build reputability ratings that could help weed out potential shady dealers lurking behind peer-to-peer transactions on sites such as Craigslist.

Unlike many courses on the subject, which place greater emphasis on learning how to identify and evaluate a good technology commercialization opportunity, the Marshall class gives students a chance to come up with real-world projects that they could launch as companies upon graduating. In this profile of the course, Kathleen Allen, who directs the Marshall Center for Technology Commercialization, says, “None of these were just class projects. We told the students, ‘We don’t want you to do an academic exercise. This has to be real.’”

Marshall also offers a Certificate in Technology Commercialization, a program geared toward those in the science, engineering, and business schools, but also open to nonmatriculated individuals with graduate degrees. According to the center’s website, students experience the entire spectrum of the commercialization process: invention, product development, technical and market feasibility analysis, intellectual property acquisition, business planning, and venture funding while potentially becoming stakeholders in a new technology venture.

Meanwhile, at Columbia Business School, second-year students with entrepreneurial spirit and a passion for technology commercialization can vie for a spot in the Entrepreneurial Greenhouse Program, a class offered each spring through the Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center. In the class, students readying their ventures for investment receive support and guidance, limited funding for approved start-up expenses, access to experts in key fields, and opportunities to present business concepts to professional investors.

To be considered, applicants must prepare a formal presentation to members of the greenhouse selection committee, which evaluates their proposal based on feasibility, profitability, competitiveness, risk management, and personal passion. The 25 greenhouse ventures selected this term span the technology, healthcare, and food and beverage industries. Clifford Schorer, an entrepreneur-in-residence at Columbia who developed the program nearly a decade ago, says, “It is always exciting to see how far these ventures develop over the semester. This class has amazing potential.”

In partnership with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s office, Schorer taught a project-driven master class last fall called NYC: Innovative and Entrepreneurial Solutions to the City’s Complex Challenges. As part of the course, student teams developed plans and recommended technologies designed to reduce costs and improve the lives of New Yorkers. One such project, profiled in the Wall Street Journal, tackled the inefficiencies of taxi cabs deployed at the city’s airports by tapping into the power of social media, among other solutions. At the end of the course, students presented the mayor’s office with a comprehensive plan for implementing the projects, and gave formal presentations at City Hall.

These are just two examples of business schools that are helping students hone their focus on all levels of innovation management. As they discover the process of moving ideas from the laboratory to the market, student entrepreneurs are becoming well-equipped for the challenges and rewards of the global economy.

Jennifer Chang, who helped develop a commercial application for the laser technology mentioned above, calls the tech feasibility course at Marshall one of the most valuable, and most intense, in the M.B.A. program. “It’s a lot like being in an incubator,” she says. “In addition to the support from Professor Allen, listening to a venture capitalist all semester, we really were able to get into the mind of a VC and understand what he’s looking for and where entrepreneurs make a lot of mistakes. How often do you get to do that?”

This post originally appeared on the U.S. News–Strictly Business blog.

If you think social media is primarily good for reconnecting with long-lost friends from high school or stalking celebrities to find out what they had for breakfast, think again.

Now more than ever, M.B.A. students and applicants live and breathe through social media, a new online survey reveals. And that level of social media use is a good thing, considering the growing demand in the business world for employees with honed social media skills.

After polling hundreds of both prospective and current b-school students, The MBA Tour found that 85 percent of potential students worldwide say they use social media sites to research their top school choices. This is higher than the 71 percent of students already enrolled who reported using social media for their school research, suggesting a massive upward trend is afoot.

Although most elite business schools use Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, and LinkedIn as part of their outreach strategy to potential applicants, it appears their efforts haven’t quite hit the mark. Approximately 14 percent of would-be students reported outright disappointment with their potential schools’ use of social media tools, or, while acknowledging that the schools had made an effort, 63 percent were left wanting more.

For current students or graduates, 55 percent felt the social media options and subsequent classes were either “not up to par with the growing industry” (17.7 percent) or simply weren’t provided (37.7 percent). Additionally, 99 percent of students researching business schools reported social media was either a “necessity in every field of study” (51.7 percent) or “somewhat important dependent on the field of study” (47.6 percent).

“The results are thought-provoking—especially as 85 percent of prospective students are researching the biggest choice of their life through social media,” says Peter von Loesecke, CEO and managing director of The MBA Tour. “We might want to ask whether schools are missing out on the right conversation with their students. What the survey suggests is schools might want to consider using social media not only for their recruitment programs, but also to more aggressively incorporate social media into their curriculum because there appears to be a growing demand both from students and businesses.”

Several schools have already noticed the demand, as readers may remember from my April post on Social Media in the M.B.A. Classroom, which highlighted courses on offer at Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and Columbia Business School. For its part, the marketing department at New York University’s Stern School of Business has added two new courses on the subject just this year.

Social Media for Brand Managers, taught by adjunct marketing professor Joel Rubinson, is intended to equip marketing students to contribute to and even run cross-functional social media teams in a marketing world that is moving from brands broadcasting a message to brands listening and then engaging with people. Rubinson commented on my prior post that the last class maxed out at registration, proving what a hot topic this is.

For tomorrow’s business leaders, social media skills are essential, says Christine Eberle, a United Kingdom-based senior executive for Accenture’s Talent and Organization Performance practice and contributor to The Social Media Management Handbook. Eberle says as corporate recruitment evolves to meet the changing dynamics of the marketplace, graduates without a social media skill set could find themselves passed over.

“Businesses must learn how to use social media to start a two way conversation with their customers and potential customers,” says Eberle. “Those companies will look for that leadership among business school graduates.”

As someone with a presence on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube, I use these tools daily and they have become a huge part of my company’s communication efforts. The social media revolution wasn’t even a speck on the horizon when I was doing my M.B.A. at Kellogg School of Management, so I’ve had to self-educate and wing it in a medium that’s constantly evolving.

Schools are also realizing the landscape is changing more quickly than it has in the past and all institutions—like any enterprise—must adapt and evolve. “The demographics of the student body are partly what’s driving change,” says The MBA Tour’s von Loesecke. “The students themselves see this trend instinctively because they are the Internet generation—they’ve grown up with the Web. They know of no other world.”