Welcome to MBA for Executives!
ESADE Business School and Aalto University Executive Education are excited to launch a new type of MBA program: the MBA for Executives. Our alliance is built on the shared foundation of both institutions: innovation, entrepreneurship, and design. Your studies in MBA for Executives will be focused on these same three pillars.
Our modules are delivered both in Europe and in Asia, allowing you to immerse yourself in the business environment on both continents. As a graduate of MBA for Executives, you will be able to think creatively, identifying new and innovative business opportunities for your organization. You will also be able to better interpret the surrounding business environment, and recognize how changes in the global economy will affect your organization. As a business leader, you will have enhanced self-awareness and the ability to lead global, multi-cultural teams.
The MBA for Executives team at ESADE and Aalto is at your disposal for any questions you may have – we look forward to hearing from you!
Best wishes,
Program Director
Aalto University Executive Education
Program Director
ESADE Executive Education
8 intensive weeks of face-to-face sessions with peers and expert faculty in strategic locations.
Financial accounting is the process of recording, summarizing and reporting business transactions. It provides an accurate depiction of a company’s financial position and performance. The primary objective is the preparation of financial statements, including the balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement. The module gives you a general but comprehensive understanding of the methods used in the preparation, interpretation, and analysis of financial reports.
You will learn to:
The 21st century began with remarkable global economic growth. It occurred in a context of increasing economic integration between advanced and emerging economies: globalization. This module takes a look at some of globalization’s conceptual and empirical details, and assesses the current economic situation. It will prepare you to understand the impact of macroeconomic changes on the business environment.
You will learn to:
An overview of the tools and concepts used most in marketing. You’ll also gain a comprehensive appreciation of the most important phenomena associated with marketing today. The module looks at marketing as a process, a set of skills, and a strategic issue.
You will learn to:
Discover basic concepts and frameworks in strategic decision-making and strategy management. Topics covered include industry analysis, sources of a firm’s competitive advantages, diversification, and international expansion. You’ll learn the tools and concepts to formulate and implement appropriate business policies and strategies. The focus is on general management, so you will explore how each action, decision or event affects the firm as a whole.
You will learn to:
The Leadership and Development programme (LEAD) helps you to identify your personal strengths and areas to develop. You’ll become more aware of your management style and formulate an action plan for leadership growth. LEAD combines an online toolkit and individual coaching sessions to improve your management effectiveness.
Design thinking gives you the ability to design new solutions that create value for both the customer and the business. Design thinking combined with business models provides effective tools for corporate innovation and transformation. It is a solution-focused mentality that starts with a goal of what is to be achieved instead of with a problem.
The ability to innovate is a key capability and source of competitive advantage. Even in large corporations, managers need to constantly identify and evaluate new ideas and business opportunities. This module will expose you to the process of creating and growing a startup or a new business within an existing organization. You’ll discover key tools and concepts including identifying and validating a business opportunity, planning and implementing strategy, and developing business models.
Forecasts of key financial statements are crucial when starting a new business or preparing the budget of a new project within an existing business. This module provides tools for building financial models to forecast financials and assessing the financing needs of projects. You’ll discover how to understand impact on profitability, returns to investors, and debt-to-equity ratios. You’ll also find out how to fund projects once financing needs have been identified.
You will learn to:
This module covers the fundamental tools and concepts of finance. Key themes include the allocation of resources among projects to maximize shareholder value, and the assessment of a company’s value, which is essential in all corporate transactions.
You will learn to:
Today’s global managers require an awareness of the business and innovation landscape in different regions of the world. This module provides exposure to current business trends and hot topics in the Asian region. These will help you to identify new business opportunities for your own organization. The module takes an interactive and hands-on approach through a series of workshops around the theme.
You will learn:
Successful leaders need the ability to effectively manage different kinds of teams within their organizations. This module approaches leadership from two angles: personal transformation as a business leader, and awareness of the function of human resources within a corporation. It addresses how corporations can and do manage human resources as a source of competitive advantage. You will explore the intersection between human-resource management, competitive strategy and management of multinational firms.
To drive change successfully, we need to understand it by looking at situations from multiple, integrated perspectives. Understanding the strategic context as well as the structures and processes that need to be changed is necessary but not enough. Formal plans may guide the change agenda but the real work takes place in the unofficial dynamics of an organization. These include an organization’s culture and informal networks, as well as internal politics and the emotions that change generates. Resistance to change exists every day at every organizational level. You will learn how to address it, mitigate it and eventually benefit from it as a business leader.
Digitalization is transforming traditional business models across industries. IT is no longer merely an internal corporate service; technology is becoming embedded into core products and services, and information is becoming a core element of business models. But realizing new digital opportunities requires new thinking. Understanding of the role digitalization and the possibilities it provides is essential to any business leadership role. This module helps you to identify and develop new capabilities to transform enterprises from traditional to digital.
Demands for corporate social responsibility are increasing from both market and nonmarket actors. In this module you’ll explore the strategies developed by companies to meet the challenges of environmental and social sustainability. Special emphasis is placed on how organizations integrate these issues in their operations to avoid risks and use them as opportunities.
This module will give you the tools to respond quickly and flexibly to customer demands, and to grow a business without large investments in capital resources. The sessions will focus on the skill sets required to build and manage lean supply chains using sound operations-management principles.
Today’s corporations have access to vast amounts of data. But how can big data be harnessed to improve organizational decision-making? Business leaders need the ability to identify what type of inference and conclusions should be drawn from data as well as the understanding of how the results of various analyses can be translated into better decisions.
This module explores key communication skills and strategies that make you more effective within different organizational and cultural contexts. Current theories of communication strategy, decision-making frameworks and tools for effective message delivery are covered.
Today’s corporations compete in a global arena, and political and economic phenomena from all parts of the world affect all organizations. We explore international and regional institutions governing transnational economic activity, and some of the major social and technological changes that affect corporate strategy. You’ll gain frameworks to analyze the international environment and to understand how your own organization will be affected by global political and economic trends.
Managers today need to understand the business and innovation landscape in different regions of the world. This module provides exposure to business trends and hot topics in Europe, which can help you to identify new business opportunities for your own organization. The module takes an interactive and hands-on approach through a series of workshops around the theme.
The Business Project allows you to put into practice the main takeaways from the entire program. You’ll work on an innovative project for your current organisation, or an entrepreneurial new venture. As well as integrating the business lessons you’ve learned, the project gives you an opportunity to apply your new design-thinking tools and entrepreneurial mindset. The project is launched in the third week of the program, with several milestones to be reached on the way to completion. It culminates with a final presentation assessed by a panel comprised of, among others, investors who will evaluate the validity of your proposals.
This interactive experience integrates the most relevant concepts of business administration. It is delivered through one of the most popular software applications used by top-ranking business schools. The emphasis is not on simulating decisions in front of a computer screen, but on managing organizations in a competitive and changing environment. The goal is to have the most efficient team in terms of value generation. Internal team discussions and strategic decision-making processes form the core activities of the simulation. You will have the opportunity to manage a company for a period of time simulating one and a half years – long enough to show the effects of long-term strategic decisions. The most relevant company functions are included: finance and administration, sales and marketing, production and operations, alliances, negotiations, organization, relations with governments, etc. As part of a management team, you will present the results of your actions to the Board of Directors at the end of the simulation.
The program follows four main tracks:
Managers need a broad understanding of the key functional areas of a business in order to make or contribute to informed and effective decisions. All decisions must be financially sound, so the understanding of finance is emphasised in the program. This track also covers marketing and operations management.
Creativity and innovative ideas are essential for success in today’s competitive, global markets. In this track you’ll develop a design-thinking toolkit and entrepreneurial mindset. These skills will allow you to generate and identify new, successful business opportunities for your organization. The track also exposes you to innovation trends in different cultural landscapes, with focus on Asia and Europe.
The rapid changes of the global business environment create both threats and opportunities. A successful business leader needs to be able to analyse and anticipate international political and economic shifts, and their impact on his or her organization. The emergence of technology has provided vast data resources and has moved competition into the digital arena. The track addresses these themes as well as sustainability and corporate responsibility.
This track builds and enhances your personal leadership capabilities. It provides you with tools to become a better manager and leader of teams. You will emerge as a more effective communicator, better equipped to lead organizations through periods of change.
The ESADE-Aalto International MBA for Executives program incorporates different modes of learning to make the most of your study time.
The program is delivered by renowned faculty members from ESADE Business School and Aalto University, Executive Education.
Dean of the Aalto School of Business (Leading Successful Teams)
ESADE Department of Strategy and General Management (Innovation and the Entrepreneurial Mindset)
ESADE Department of Strategy and General Management (Strategic Business Simulation)
ESADE Department of Strategy and General Management (Innovation landscape in Europe)
Aalto School of Business Department of Marketing (Marketing Management)
ESADE Department of People Management and Organisation (Cross-cultural communications)
Aalto School of Science Department of Industrial Engineering and Management (Corporate Strategy)
ESADE Department of Operations, Innovation and Data Sciences (Design Thinking)
Group Managing Director of Aalto University Executive Education (Leading Change)
ESADE Department of Strategy and General Management (Innovation landscape in Europe)
ESADE Department of Strategy and General Management (Project Management)
ESADE Department of People Management and Organisation (LEAD Program)
ESADE Department of Strategy and General Management (Geopolitics)
Aalto School of Business Department of Finance (Corporate Finance)
