Curriculum

Our Executive MBA program curriculum is designed to enable participants to master a broad range of functional and managerial skills. The program enables participants to practically apply newfound skills and ideas into their workplace.

The launch week is for you to kick off their EMBA journey, where you get to know your fellow participants and become immersed in the program.

Analytical Approach to Uncertainty
Introduces fundamental probabilistic concepts that enable managers to make critical business decisions in the face of uncertainty.

Leadership in Organizations
Focuses on the skills and ideas behind effective leadership: working well with teams, utilizing your personal and organizational resources, making difficult but critical decisions, and negotiating well, all with a broad, multifaceted outlook.

Through the five core modules, you build a foundation in the key topics that matter most to senior leaders, strengthening your skills and helping you lead an organization with confidence.

Frameworks for Strategic Analysis
Explores economic principles of business strategy and develops an analytic framework for identifying and evaluating alternative strategies.

Statistical Decision Analysis
Explores the use of sample data for purposes of estimating, predicting, forecasting, and decision-making.

Marketing Strategy
Examines topics of new product development, marketing resource allocation, and competitive strategy. Concepts are reinforced by playing MARKSTRT, a simulation game.

Managerial Finance I
Introduces the basic techniques of finance. Topics include discounting techniques and applications; evaluation of capital expenditures; and estimating bond and stock valuation.


Microeconomics
The course will focus on the economic forces that determine the extent to which businesses can capture the value that they create.

Accounting: Financial Reports, Control and Analysis
Introduces generally accepted accounting principles and concepts along with the preparation and analysis of financial statements.

Operations Management
Examines the basic principles and useful tools of managing the production of goods or services. Emphasizes tools and principles that are equally useful in service and manufacturing sectors.

Foundations for Strategy Formulation
Explores economic principles essential for the formulation and evaluation of strategy. Topics include industry analysis, strategic positioning and the boundaries of the firm.

Managing Emerging Technologies
This course provides a managerial overview of new technological innovations including Internet of Things, big data analytics, FinTech, blockchain, and cryptocurrencies. We will go through the technological foundation of these new developments and how they connect with each other to transform businesses. The course will conclude with practical advice on how to strategically utilize and manage these new technological innovations.

Managerial Finance II
Deals with firm valuation and the implication of financing decisions for shareholder value creation. Topics covered include sources of financing and the process of raising capital, capital structure, firm valuation, leverage and cost of capital, and cash distribution policy.

Law and Corporate Manager
Studies the legal environment in which business organizations operate. Topics include rights of shareholders, director’s and officer’s liability, mergers, acquisitions, takeovers and securities regulation.

Global network week is the cornerstone of the program. Over 9 days, you meet participants from our partner programs, gaining a broader global perspective and an understanding of what it means to be a global leader.

Negotiation Strategies 
Develops negotiation and dispute resolution skills through simulations set in dyads, groups, and multilateral contexts within and between organizations and across cultures.

Strategic Crisis Management
Explores crisis management from the point of view of managers and consultants. Understands the motivations and strategic capabilities of stakeholders, and the importance of value-based management in preventing and managing corporate crises.

Marketing Analytics 
Data is being generated in new forms, volumes and speeds and a clear framework for assessing and communicating its value is necessary. In this course, students will address analytics as a leadership problem and how to improve organizational performance with the right data.

Strategic Decisions in Operations 
This course builds on the core operations management class with an emphasis on strategic level decisions and their link to the financial performance of a firm. It emphasizes the long-term, “big” decisions firms face in structuring their operations. Topics covered range from evaluating flexible technologies to designing supply chains.

The advanced modules help you hone your management techniques and apply strategies to new challenges. They deepen your experience, and they are constantly updated to meet the evolving demands of the business world.

Macroeconomics
The purpose of this course is to provide a framework for addressing issues about the global economic environment. It will then apply the framework to understanding the global economy. It will introduce important insights in the labor, money and foreign exchange markets.

Mergers and Acquisition
Applied Mergers and Acquisitions is designed to prepare executives to succeed as members of an M&A project team. It takes the perspective of a company involved in M&A, not investment bankers or private equity.

Private Equity in Asia
Provides an overview of private equity, underwriting methods and various details in structuring. Focus will be put on the Asian market. The course is taught by the head of an Asian private equity platform.

New Venture Discovery
The course focuses on the ‘customer discovery’ process, often referred to as “Phase Zero” in the innovation process. This is perhaps the most important moment in the life of a business. This is designed to help participants identify opportunities and then improve the quality of their ideas, whether they want to pursue an entrepreneurial path or innovate inside an existing firm.

Understanding Consumers Psychology
This course will give participants an appreciation of how getting inside the mind of the consumer enables the marketing manager to design better effective marketing strategies, with a particular emphasis on effective communication tactics. This course provides both a micro and macro perspective on the factors influencing a customer.

Value Investing
This course will systematically present the fundamental tenets of value investing: search; valuation; and the construction of a portfolio. It will also introduce the styles of famous value investors and discuss the basic similarities and differences between them. The course is intended for ‘active’ investors who are willing and able to devote significant amount of time to continually research, select and monitor stocks.

Deal Making in China and Asia
The Kellogg Global Electives at HKUST offers this unique elective course specifically focused on formulating and applying practical, deal-making strategies to real-world transactions in the Asia Pacific region, based upon the professor’s 30+ years’ experience living and working in Asia. This is a highly participatory and interactive course, not lecture-style. The participant is asked to play the role of deal maker — which role may be as a lead negotiator, investor, investment banker, salesman, consultant, or investment advisor — in pioneering transactions such as:  (1) transferring $30 million in advanced technology to China while protecting the intellectual property; (2) persuading a reluctant European Board of Directors to approve the concept of building a 5-star resort hotel on an unknown island, potentially the “next Bali,” in Indonesia; (3) role playing one of two finalists competing for the first IPO by a Chinese company in the Hong Kong markets, a US$115 million IPO; (4) financing a $1 billion gas pipeline from Myanmar (Burma) to Thailand, the most important (and controversial) energy project in Southeast Asia in the last 30 years; (5) selling $45 million worth of hydroelectric equipment in Sarawak, Malaysia (you represent the mid-size South American challenger competing against the better-known Germans, Canadians, French and Japanese); (6) evaluating an investment opportunity build a TV studio and operate a Hindi-language TV channel in India and (7) playing the venture capitalist, listening to the “pitch” by the young Chinese entrepreneur, and  deciding whether or not to invest up to $30 million in a fast-growing pan-Asian internet services provider, making an estimated 6 times your investment in less than 2 years, with an exit strategy of going public in the U.S.  Participants will make 12-15 minute Group Presentations on the cases, and then the class through active discussion will develop its own ideas on the cases. The class will vote on decisions; the actual decisions and outcomes will be shared.

Sustainability Leadership
Sustainability, and the prospect of irreversible climate change, is an imperative transforming economies, industries, financial markets and communities. Sustainable transformation is not simply about “greening” and adding sustainability attributes to existing operations, but about understanding the new landscape where regulations, supply chains, consumer demands, and the cost of capital are changing in response to new priorities around sustainability.
This module will equip participants with the basic tools for understanding and navigating the change in all its core dimensions, and identifying emerging opportunities as industries, cities, and even economies are being reimagined for the future.

Digital Marketing
The objectives of this course are to 1) provide participants with an understanding of the impact of digital and social networks on customer behavior and marketing strategies 2) share conceptual frameworks and analytical tools for formulating and implementing marketing strategies 3) help participants understand best practices in digital marketing through cases, exercises and examples.

Leadership and Decision Making
This course provides an introduction to global leadership and a logical thinking framework for managerial decision making. Successful organizations excel by the quality of their offerings in the marketplace. Internally, global leaders and managers distinguish themselves by the quality of their decisions. Leaders can be inconsequential until they make decisions. And, all decisions will be consequential. Quality decision making is a competence that can be acquired and a discipline that must be practiced. This course offers an overview of global leadership concepts and practice, and a proven framework for effective decision making.

Behavioral Finance
Many careful observational studies of actual behavior – and at least three recent Nobel Prizes – suggest that the standard economic paradigm of rational investors in an efficient market does not adequately describe behavior in financial markets. Behavioral finance combines the latest findings of behavioral and cognitive psychological theory with the basic logic of conventional economics and finance to provide alternative explanations of financial market behavior. This course is designed to examine how psychology of decision making under conditions of risk and uncertainty affects the traditional paradigm, while paying attention to practical applications for portfolio and investment management.

Leading a Global Company
The focus of this class is to provide a thorough understanding of what is involved in leading a global company. Through a combination of lectures, cases and readings, the class will discuss and debate the key ingredients required to establish and manage a global company.

Capstone
This course is intended as a capstone for students’ Executive MBA experience. Students will develop an integrated understanding of business planning and strategy and test strategies in a competitive environment.

As part of the world’s largest and most immersive EMBA network, our program offers over 40 elective options taught by professors with extensive research background and field work experience. They will help expand your skills and worldview as you head into the closing lap.

The New Era of Marketing in China
China is a rapidly growing consumer market with more companies throughout the world looking for ways to develop their marketing, branding and communication that is relevant to Chinese consumers. The aim of this course is to equip students with the right knowledge about China market and provide insightful analysis. Therefore, this course focuses on China market and seeks to build knowledge, understanding, and skills in the analysis of marketing problems and the development and implementation of marketing strategies in China.

The course utilizes a mixture of lectures and cases. The lectures will discuss established marketing concepts, frameworks, and decision-analytic tools. The lectures on a given topic will be followed by case discussions, and analytical exercises. The cases simulate real-world marketing problems and as such, they are often characterized by uncertainty and incomplete information. The cases will provide you with a forum for developing, presenting and defending your recommendations when a range of solutions are feasible.  

Political Economy
This course is intended to offer an informed perspective into China’s political economy which is critical for our understanding of the Chinese economy and doing business in China. We will start with an analytical framework to understand China’s government system and its interaction with economic transition and development in China. We will pay special attention to the role of local governments and the incentives and behavior of Chinese local leaders in regional economic development. Then we will discuss in details about the intriguing interaction between politics and markets at the regional level and explore how the personal characteristics of Chinese local leaders affect the workings of the local economy. We will also investigate government-business relations in China’s context. The unique features of China’s SOEs and their evolution in recent years will be covered in the last part of the course, viewed from a perspective of “state capitalism, Chinese style”.

FinTech Strategy: Innovations in Financial Services
Financial Technology (FinTech) firms are changing the type, frequency, and the way we use financial services. FinTech innovations have a great capacity to transform the financial system because many of these innovations are at a deeper level than traditional financial innovation. Blockchain, for example, can speed up clearing while keeping it secure, as opposed to an introduction of a new type of security which only changes small features of an existing product. While FinTech companies attract a lot of VC money, many of these initiatives will likely turn out to be not sustainable. In this course we will use economic frameworks that both new entrants and conventional financial institutions can use to differentiate the potential gold from the glitter. In addition, we will assess the viability of partnerships and other win-win strategies conventional financial institutions and new non-financial institutions can employ.

Human and Machine Intelligence
Human and Machine Intelligence covers cutting edge research on machine-learning and artificial intelligence and its applications for business leaders. Machines help solve complex problems, lessen decision bias, scale human effort, and spot hidden patterns in big data. However, they lack the creativity and insight that top executives possess. Together, executives and machines have the potential to make powerful “thought partnerships.” Using hands-on cases and applications — including IBM’s Deep Blue and Google’s AlphaGo that beat Chess and Go Grand Masters — this course shows how to use a critical set of machine learning decision tools, such as natural language processing, sentiment analysis, and pattern recognition to discover new competitive strategies, turn raw numbers into convincing stories, and make less biased judgments. The overarching goal is to enable you to confidently lead data science and design teams, know the expansiveness and limits of machine-learning complex decision support tools, and be capable of applying human+machine thought partnerships to grow businesses or disrupt Grand Masters in any field.

Leading High Impact Teams
This course examines the design, management, and leadership of teams in organizational settings. The focus is on the interpersonal processes and structural characteristics that influence the effectiveness of teams, the dynamics of intra-team relationships, and sharing knowledge and information in teams. The purpose of this course is to understand the theory and processes of group and team behavior so that leaders can successfully work with teams. Students who take advantage of everything this course has to offer will become comfortable and adept in leading and managing groups and teams.

This course is designed to complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in the other courses at Kellogg. A basic premise is that the manager needs analytic skills as well as interpersonal skills to effectively manage groups. The course will provide students with the opportunity to develop these skills experientially and to understand team behavior in useful analytical frameworks.

1.Experiential Learning: During each class, students will engage in an experiential team challenge pertaining to a key aspect of building, maintaining, and designing teams.
2.Feedback & Self-Examination: During each class, the instructor will lead a debrief that involves analyzing students’ performance. And, on several occasions, students will receive personalized feedback on various dimensions of teamwork styles and approaches.
3.Applied Learning: Each week, the professor will introduce a theory or model and students will be encouraged to apply the model to: (1) the analysis of their own team’s performance in class; (2) their own work teams in real organizational settings.

Entrepreneurial Selling
Selling is a life skill.  Revenue is a daily pursuit. Do you currently have what it takes to succeed in selling and revenue-generation? Are you willing to embrace the role as “Owner of Your Business” no matter what that means in your current context?

This course is designed as an adventure of discovery. You will be pushed out of your comfort zone as we move through a series of discussions and practice that will leave no room for guessing regarding your potential for impact. Whether or not you are directly tied in to the sales function of your business, you will be taught the daily expert moves that lead to magnetic sales interactions and will leave the course with a path forward for mastering these moves and bringing them to your company.

Whether you manage a multi-national company or are venturing out on your own, you can’t afford to waste time guessing at foundational habits. Starting at the individual level, you will begin activating high-performance habits that allow for immediate implementation and impact. The transformation will continue as you learn what it takes to widen the scope, and shift your mindset, to embed new practices within every client and team-member interaction – driving to objectively positive results.

The work we do in Entrepreneurial Selling: Own Your Business will serve you, your clients, and your team. The faculty has built this course specifically with you in mind and they can’t wait to get started and see what you do once you take it beyond the classroom.

Business Strategy, Behavioral Biases & Deep Uncertainty
This course focuses on high-stakes, real-world situations when statistical tools are inapplicable or of limited value. This arises whenever you make a one-of-a-kind strategic decision that is impacted by forces, like viral social media, herd mentality, and network effects, that are difficult to measure or quantify. In these environments of deep uncertainty, the usual tools of data analysis are inapplicable since little or no data exists.

No use of formal statistical methods is made in this course. Instead, the course relies on tools from behavioral economics, social psychology, virality in social networks, among others, to provide a practical map for developing better decisions in these environments. We identify forces that lead to frequent and predictable forecast failures, then introduce tools to help individuals and groups to anticipate and avoid these failures.

The course concepts are developed using real-world cases and examples illustrating consolidation strategies, herd behavior in investment decisions and in financial crises, virality in marketing strategies, pricing in network-driven markets, developing a risk-culture in high-volatility industries, and monitoring the risk of rare disasters.

Winning with Networks
Leaders face new levels of connectivity, complexity, and unpredictability. This course prepares leaders to use the powerful tools of computational thinking and network science to better anticipate, understand, and respond to these challenges. The content involves in-depth training within vis-a-vis diverse use cases, including network effects, managing personal and professional networks, innovation adoption, influentials, social contagion, crowdsourcing, hot streaks, and prediction markets. Content delivery is lecture-based with in-class experiential exercises. Students leave the course with a practical toolkit for leadership vision enhancement, value creation and capture, and the contagious adoption of your ideas and innovations.

Global Corporate Restructuring
This course covers ventures, family businesses, closely held firms and corporate restructuring transactions in an international context. Students analyze different corporate restructuring strategies including mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, spin-offs and leveraged buyouts. The course integrates corporate governance and agency dimensions, financial and strategic management aspects, and legal and accounting considerations into a unified framework for investigating issues in unlocking hidden values for all stakeholders involved. In addition, the course explores issues involved in negotiating deals and in formulating deal structures that enhance value.

Leading High Impact Teams
This course examines the design, management, and leadership of teams in organizational settings. The focus is on the interpersonal processes and structural characteristics that influence the effectiveness of teams, the dynamics of intra-team relationships, and sharing knowledge and information in teams. The purpose of this course is to understand the theory and processes of group and team behavior so that leaders can successfully work with teams. Students who take advantage of everything this course has to offer will become comfortable and adept in leading and managing groups and teams.

This course is designed to complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in the other courses at Kellogg. A basic premise is that the manager needs analytic skills as well as interpersonal skills to effectively manage groups. The course will provide students with the opportunity to develop these skills experientially and to understand team behavior in useful analytical frameworks.

1.Experiential Learning: During each class, students will engage in an experiential team challenge pertaining to a key aspect of building, maintaining, and designing teams.
2.Feedback & Self-Examination: During each class, the instructor will lead a debrief that involves analyzing students’ performance. And, on several occasions, students will receive personalized feedback on various dimensions of teamwork styles and approaches.
3.Applied Learning: Each week, the professor will introduce a theory or model and students will be encouraged to apply the model to: (1) the analysis of their own team’s performance in class; (2) their own work teams in real organizational settings.

Leading Organizational Transformation
This course takes the perspective of chief executives who operate at “height and scale.” It explores what management and leadership look and feel like when you oversee 1,000 to 100,000 people and $500M to billions in revenue. How do you lead when you are only one person and you can’t “do” the work of the organization yourself, you can only steer the course of those who do?

To make this perspective concrete, we will start by identifying five growth archetypes commonly found in large organizations.

With this orienting framework in hand, we will study the four key levers that leaders have available to them for shaping and strengthening the large, complex organizations they lead and how these change across the archetypes. These include:

• Building your senior leadership team
• Setting an organizational growth agenda
• Building out strategic communications capabilities
• Understanding and leveraging your own social capital

Leader Development Models and Practices
This course concentrates on how we as leaders in organizations can develop team members to realize their potential. Growing others’ talents helps managers to accomplish the mission and improve their organizations. The course integrates theories and frameworks associated with constructs related to organizations, leadership, and adult development in order to provide you a more complete understanding of how leaders are nurtured. By the end of the course, you will be able to more cogently analyze and address team members’ developmental needs and situations.

Creating and Managing Strategic Alliances
In a world characterized by global competition, increased technological change, and intensified resource constraints, firms are increasingly using cooperative relationships with other organizations as an essential tool for achieving their overall strategic objectives. However, both large and small corporations are finding that successful “strategic alliances” are often difficult to achieve. Creating and Managing Strategic Alliances (CMSA) examines the theory and practice of creating and managing different types of strategic alliances, such as joint ventures, licensing agreements, buyer-supplier partnerships, and consortia.

This course will enable the student to better understand the costs and benefits of strategic alliances (and why such alliances may be preferred over other strategies such as internal development or mergers and acquisitions). In addition, the course covers how to design alliances, and how to avoid the many potential problems and complications in managing these relationships. The course also provides a framework for managing the complex but increasingly common situation in which organizations are involved in multiple alliances. CMSA should prove useful for students interested in understanding the role of strategic alliances in contemporary strategic management.

Family Enterprises: Success and Continuity
This course is intended for those from business-owning families, whether they work in the family business or not. Topics range from values driven culture, to succession and family vision and dynamics, to continuity planning, leadership and strategic performance and family constitutions and business governance. The course is also appropriate for those who have family foundations, family investment companies and/or family office.

Investment Banks, Hedge Funds and Private Equity
This course focuses on private equity (LBO funds) and hedge funds, their influence on corporate decision-making, and measures taken to counter threats and exploit opportunities represented by these investors. Competition and cooperation between investment banks, LBO funds and hedge funds will also be analyzed. Finally, post-financial crisis changes in regulations governing these institutions will be considered. The course uses six Kellogg cases to facilitate discussion regarding hedge fund and LBO fund investment strategies, and corporate initiatives to either keep these investors at bay or utilize them to enhance shareholder value.

Strategic Marketing Decisions
Business simulations are one of the best ways to learn; simulations are challenging, engaging and fun. In the Strategic Marketing Decisions course, you will participate in one of the most famous marketing simulations, Markstrat. Working with your global team, you will manage a company, launch brands, work with P&Ls and study competitors. During the simulation you will also develop and implement marketing plans. You will build your skills in developing strategy, influencing a team and creating powerful plans. This is not an easy course but it is certainly memorable; many students say it is a highlight of the MBA program.

Selling Yourself and Your Ideas
We spend much more time selling ourselves and our ideas than we think we do. And we have an increasing number of communications methods at our disposal. Being a powerful communicator means developing the agility to adjust your message, content, approach and style based on the method of communication you are using. It also means having a keen understanding your audience, their expectations, and what success looks like. The overarching goal of our Selling Yourself & Your Ideas course will be to have an immediate positive impact on your outcomes by equipping you with a set of critical communications insights, skills, disciplines and tools to help you become a great communicator, in any setting. The course will address six main methods of communication; conversation, written communication, meetings, networking, presentations and social media. We will explore the distinctions between these various methods and explore what research has suggested about what high performance looks like in each. Finally, we will drill down into the requisite skills and disciplines in each of these situations by discussing how to ask “impact” questions, handle objections and conflict, give (and receive) feedback, tell the right story at the right time for the right reasons, and other elements of powerful, crisp communications. Throughout the course, you will build a personal Communications Toolkit through iterative practice and feedback. An initial assessment, case studies, one-on-one and group assignments, and real world examples are raised to confront students with scenarios for practice and peer collaboration.

Strategy Beyond Markets
All economic systems are defined by “rules of the game:” laws, regulations, and implicit norms of behavior that structure market competition. Examples include: antitrust legislation; regulatory compliance requirements; privacy regulation and norms; intellectual property rules; product liability rules; barriers to exports; etc.

Successful companies excel at reacting to, and influencing, these rules. Disney, for example, successfully lobbied to extend the duration of copyright protection, thus prolonging its exclusive ownership of the Mickey Mouse character. In another example, Monsanto has long been seeking to overcome European Union regulatory barriers to genetically modified crops. Often, success in these “non-market” endeavors is critical for sustaining market competitiveness of a single firm or of a whole industry.

In this class you will learn how to think strategically about the rules of the game, and how to make the rules of the game work for your company.

Incentives, Strategy, and Organization
People respond to incentives and they do so in predictable ways. Starting with this simple premise, this course then asks how managers can design incentives to get employees to do what they want them to do. The goal of the course is to offer a micro-economic approach to both the internal organization of firms and its relationship with the firms’ overall strategies.

Topics include the design of pay for performance contracts, which have increased labor productivity by almost 50% in some firms, but also caused significant problems in others. Another major topic is decentralization and the tools that can be used to manage the problems that often arise in decentralized firms. For instance, transfer prices can facilitate decentralization if designed appropriately, but also exacerbate problems if not. The course is structured around an equal number of lectures and case discussions. Case discussions may include classic cases such as Lincoln Electric and Arthur Andersen, and more recent cases such as Timken.

World Economy
The world economy is undergoing a period of very rapid change. Understanding this change is essential to make sound investment decisions that position companies for future profitability. In this course we study the most important business regions in the world, including the U.S., Europe, Japan, China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Africa. The goal of this course is to provide students with a working knowledge of the economic drivers, challenges and opportunities that are present in these regions. The course also discusses the performance of equity and bond markets in different countries and the economic forces underlying oil and other commodity markets.

Designing Brand Experiences
Today’s business leaders aspire to design brand experiences that provide a competitive edge in the marketplace. Achieving this ambition requires brand owners to focus on five pillars for success: (i) a deep understanding of the basic dimensions on which competition takes place in their industry; (ii) the right goals and metrics that lead to coherent experiences for customers; (iii) the primacy of building customer penetration over customer loyalty; (iv) the crucial importance of increasing brand salience and reducing customer friction over time; and (v) the Incorporation of design elements in brand experiences that make them distinctive and set them apart from the competition. This course introduces conceptual frameworks and practical tools for designing winning brand experiences that will lead to a competitive edge for your brand and success in the marketplace.

Future Proofing Brands
Brands that have thrived over an extended period of time – think Apple, Disney, and Ford – have one important commonality: They are agile adapters to changes in customer preferences, competitor actions, and technological trends. This course will enable you to develop “future proof” brands, that is, brands that are proactive in their responsiveness toward changes in their business environment. It will introduce conceptual frameworks and workbench tools that are directed toward the systematic development of a program of innovations at different levels of the brand including the market offering, the target customer segment, the business model, and the underlying technology. As part of the course, you will work on a group assignment that will require you.

Digital Strategy: Individual and Organizational Transformation for a Digital Age
Many leaders today find it challenging to cope with the increasing pace and unpredictability of change. For a large number of companies, the root cause of this change is disruption fuelled by digitization of products, processes, and business models. In this course, we will seek to define the skills, competencies, and behaviours that leaders require to succeed in environments characterized by digital disruption. Then, we will link leadership with strategy and organizational transformation. As a digital leader, you must lead the organizational transformation required to take advantage of digital opportunities and neutralize digital threats. We will introduce a set of frameworks to guide your transformation journey, and challenge you to apply your digital leadership skills to drive successful implementation in your organization.

Mergers and Acquisitions Strategy
Business headlines are dominated by exciting announcements of the next mega-acquisition and about the size, scope and dominance of financial investors like private equity firms and pension funds.  However, when the dust settles, we also hear about the difficulties managers have in realizing the benefits from these deals and how complex a successful integration program can be.  This course focuses on the three strategic steps in the M&A process: developing an M&A strategy, assessing the target, and negotiating a deal, and developing and implementing the merger integration plan.  We will examine these topics using business cases, lectures, role-plays and classroom discussion of deals currently in the news, all with the goal of helping students to develop their own perspectives on how to tilt the odds in their favor when they are involved in an M&A transaction.

Leveraging Collaboration for Innovation
Academics, policy makers and innovation gurus all agree that companies need to engage in collaboration with external actors to generate new growth opportunities and to survive in increasingly volatile environments. In this course, we provide participants a rich set of concepts, frameworks and tools to improve their ability to build, manage and profit from different modes of inter-organizational collaboration. We will focus on three particular manifestations of collaboration, which have become increasingly important: (i) alliances between start-ups and established organizations, (ii) innovation ecosystems and (iii) digital platforms. We will discuss crucial questions such as: (i) what is the importance of trust and contracts in managing inter-organizational relationships, (ii) what is the optimal ownership structure for governing alliances, (iii) how should companies orchestrate innovation ecosystems, (iv) how can companies monetize digital platforms? In the sessions, participants will get advanced and state-of-the-art knowledge on these issues. Moreover, participants will be challenged to apply these insights by engaging in real-life cases from different industries.

Managing People for Competitive Advantage
People clearly are an organization’s most critical resource. Their knowledge and skills along with their commitment, creativity, and effort are the basis for competitive advantage. It is people that have creative ideas for new products or for process improvements that devise marketing strategy or take technologies to the next level. This course focuses on the people side of business from a general management perspective. In taking this generalist approach, we integrate concepts from organizational behavior, human resource management, strategy, and organizational design.

Business Tax Strategy
Business goes global, but taxes stay local. This provides opportunities as well as challenges for firms. For example, firms can avoid taxes by exploiting differences in tax rates around the world and shifting profits and business to low tax countries. At the same time, firms have to deal with potential double taxation on cross-border investments. In addition, many countries implement complex regulations to fight tax avoidance.

This course is designed to sharpen the understanding of how taxes affect business decisions and how recent trends in tax regulation change challenges and opportunities firms face in the globalized world. The focus is on tax planning, tax strategy, and the effect of taxes on location decisions, investment decisions, and corporate structure. Importantly, the course does not require any prior tax knowledge. The course provides the participants with the necessary concepts that can be applied around the world.

Entrepreneurial Finance
We are living the golden age of entrepreneurship. Thousands of new ventures are started every month around the world. And never before are so many people enamored with the idea of launching their own business as they are nowadays. Yet, about three-quarter of start-ups do not return investors’ capital, and a good portion of survivors limp along without access to more capital. While these failures can stem from dramatic shifts in markets and technology, poor financial management of the venture is no less responsible for them. In this course, we focus on financial economic foundations of a new venture. We examine a new venture’s financing options, appropriate capital and governance structures, and risk management tools at each stage of its lifetime, from idea to exit. These choices are complex in nature, create path dependency (i.e. have long-term repercussions for future financial decisions), and substantially influence the magnitude of economic value created and captured by the start-up, and how this value is distributed among its shareholders. 

International Finance
Managing an international business or one exposed to global competition requires an understanding of international financial instruments, markets and institutions. This course seeks to provide you with a working knowledge of these issues. The topics we cover include: the nature of foreign exchange risk, the determination of exchange rates and interest rates, the management of foreign exchange risk with forwards and options, exchange rate forecasting, the evaluation of international investments, currency speculation, the impact of monetary policy on exchange rates, and current developments in the international financial system.

Strategic Brand Management
The course aims to help you understand the role of branding and brand management, sharpen your skills in identifying and solving brand-related problems, and facilitate your ability to develop actionable brand management strategies. The course builds on the knowledge gained from the marketing management and marketing strategy courses to focus on developing successful strategies for building strong brands.

Strategies for Growth: London

This course is about effectively scaling a business. Because growth is an imperative for many organizations, it is crucial to understand the strategic fundamentals underpinning profitable growth. This course connects frameworks from economics and strategy to the experiences of firms attempting growth initiatives to illustrate why some businesses can scale successfully while others struggle.

Strategies for Growth: Singapore

This course is about effectively scaling a business. Because growth is an imperative for many organizations, it is crucial to understand the strategic fundamentals underpinning profitable growth. This course connects frameworks from economics and strategy to the experiences of firms attempting growth initiatives to illustrate why some businesses can scale successfully while others struggle.

The Business of Social Change
How do business, philanthropic and investment practices yield real social results and progress? This course is designed to provide students with the skills and knowledge to influence and lead social impact in business and impact contexts. By the conclusion of this course, each student should have a strong foundation in social impact and social change, including approaches to funding impact, scaling programs and interventions, public-private partnerships, corporate engagement, impact investment decision-making, blended capital, and approaches to intentional impact. This course will serve students well in future experiences in corporate leadership, consulting, board and pro bono service, social impact leadership, social entrepreneurship and beyond.

Leading Product Organizations
Products are the lifeblood of growth and innovation, for large companies as well as for technology startups. There is a growing realization that enterprises need to create a product culture and an effective product organization. There is a growing demand for product leaders with the strategic, analytical and communication skills needed to drive product vision and product success. This course is designed to prepare senior executives for product leadership roles. You will learn how to craft product-led strategies that align with the mission and core values of your organization. You will understand how to use analytics to improve product portfolio performance and drive growth strategies while fostering a customer-centric culture in your organization. You will also learn how to manage relationships and communicate effectively as a product leader.  The course has been designed to enhance your leadership, analytical, and customer empathy skills as you prepare to lead product organizations.