The designing of a new, potentially disruptive, curricular program, is not without challenges; however, it can be rewarding for students, faculty, and employers and serve as a template for other academics to follow. To be effective, the new data analytics program should be driven by business input and academic leadership that incorporates innovation theory and practice concepts. Similar to many innovative projects, our journey began with a business problem, i.e., the explosion of data from a plethora of sources, the realization that data transformed into information and intelligence can generate business value, and the recognition that there are currently too few graduates with the necessary skillset to make this happen in the foreseeable future. The approach developed here may provide other universities with a path toward an information systems curriculum that is more in tune with the emerging big data world.