Executive MBA Program Blog

Not Your Average International Trip

The Executive MBA international experience is more than an international trip. Traveling with all three cohorts, you are immersed in the culture of a new city, where traditions and general business practices may seem unusual or even exotic. That is one of the exact reasons we select the locations we do — to create a transformative experience for our EMBA students. In addition to company visits, tours, and presentations from senior management, your team will serve as a consultant to an international organization, applying your knowledge and expertise to a specific client project. This trip is like none you have experienced before. 

One of the most frequent questions we receive from Executive MBA (EMBA) prospects has to do with the required capstone project, a five-to-six-month client consulting project that teams complete in the final two semesters of the program.  The interest in the capstone lies mostly in its novelty.  While most EMBA students have strong functional expertise in one or two areas, few have had the opportunity to own and manage a major and messy project with multiple deliverables. 

The Choice:  Teams get to choose from among a wide variety of projects, recent examples of which include identifying the three best cities for a company expansion, analyzing the viability of a proposed market diversification initiative, an opportunity assessment for a specific technology, and a market entry recommendation for a foreign firm planning expansion into the U.S.  

Not Your Average International Trip

The Executive MBA international experience is more than an international trip. You are immersed in  the culture of a new city, where traditions and general business practices may seem unusual or even exotic. That is one of the exact reasons we select the locations we do — to create a transformative experience for our EMBA students. In addition to company visits, tours, and presentations from senior management, your team will serve as a consultant to an international organization, applying your knowledge and expertise to a specific client project. This trip is like none you have experienced before. 

“Anything is possible: today was the day a group of dedicated, everyday New Yorkers & their neighbors defeated Amazon’s corporate greed.”  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)

An article published in late 2016 by the IESE Business School forecast that by 2025 75% of the global workforce will be millennials. Academic researchers, consultants, and managers agree that millennials present a unique management challenge. For nearly a century management theory has been grounded in scientific management principles: hierarchical structure, management by objectives, accountability, metrics, and control processes. This 20th-century approach to managing will not work with millennials.

A few months ago, I blogged about Apple and its product commercialization efforts.  Apple’s market capitalization, which was approaching $1 trillion just before I wrote the blog, reflected investors’ expectations that CEO Tim Cook would continue to exploit Apple’s innovation capabilities and introduce a steady stream of “WOW” new products.  The hallmark of Apple’s strategy under Steve Jobs was the creation of new product categories such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad.  Just as important was Apple’s creation of a digital eco-system including iTunes, apps on iPhone and iPad, and iOS.