The Emba Curriculum
The EMBA curriculum is designed to meet the unique demands—and tap the specific talents—of seasoned executives from diverse fields. It provides a high-impact learning environment that engages participants through strategic workouts, teaming, visioning exercises, simulations, role-playing, and other interactive learning techniques.
The curriculum is organized around four modules, which are in turn bracketed by four residential weeks. The fourth residential week takes place at an international location determined by faculty and program participants, and is tightly integrated with the global capstone project.
Highly Integrated. Accelerated. Team-Learning Oriented.
Modules
The EMBA curriculum is organized around four modules. Each one lasts about four months. During each module, participants and faculty meet every other week on Friday and Saturday.
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Residential Weeks
Bracketing the four modules are four residential weeks. The first three are on-site at the Executive Leadership Center. You will spend residential weeks, as well as Friday nights during weekend sessions, at a hotel less than five minutes from campus.
The fourth residential week takes place at an international location determined by faculty and program participants. We intentionally choose a different location each year to diversify each EMBA experience. And we design the EMBA program curriculum to match the area of the world where the international seminar takes place. In past years, participants have traveled to sites of borh developing and advanced economies in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America.
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Curriculum in Detail
Residential Week 1: Business as a System and Team Learning
Introduces two of the program’s major themes:
- Management as a System, addressing the need to think systematically about business, and to integrate and leverage the functional components of a complex global organization
- Team Learning, providing an intensive business simulation where you explore firsthand the value of team building and problem solving as they apply to learning and business
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Module 1: Value Creation & Performance Measurement
Builds an understanding of how organizations create and measure value, primarily through the interrelation of functional areas and the successful interaction of internal teams.
In this module you will:
- Analyze the effectiveness of companies’ marketing strategies
- Assess your own organization’s financial and operating performance
- Gain a clearer understanding of the links among disciplines and quantitative decision-making processes
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Residential Week 2: The Manager and Organizational Change
Focuses on managing organizational change. You will gain insights and skills that will help you influence and effectively manage change in a highly competitive environment. Uses live case studies, and leaders from chosen organizations are invited to attend to discuss issues and the class’s recommendations.
Topics covered:
- Managing in the middle
- Organization diagnosis
- Team dynamics
- Workforce diversity
- Negotiations
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Module 2: The Competitive Environment
Addresses the need for developing, implementing, and evaluating focused corporate objectives within a competitive business environment.
In this module you will learn about:
- Project and enterprise valuation
- Industry and competitive analysis
- The strategic role of information technology
- Financial analysis and decision-making
- Risk assessment
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Module 3: Operating and Economic Decision-Making
Develops economic and managerial decision-making tools appropriate for application across the functional areas of the organization.
In this module you will explore :
- Process operations
- Decision-making in marketing, finance, strategy, and operations
- Macroeconomic market structures such as competition, monopoly, and oligopoly
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Residential Week 3: Perspectives on Leadership
Focuses on you as a manager, and helps you develop a plan to grow as a leader. The session includes an in-depth discussion on leadership by CEOs from a number of organizations. You will:
- Explore a variety of effective leadership styles
- Use a range of self-assessment instruments and structured feedback exercises to elicit valuable input from coworkers and team members on your own management performance
- Be challenged to examine personal and professional leadership plan
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Module 4: New Venture Creation in a Global Economy
Integrates the program’s learning through a Capstone Project. At the same time it expands the scope of analysis to include:
- Formulation and implementation of a global strategy
- Corporate ethics
- Business law
- Emerging markets
Through the Capstone Project, participants develop a viable business plan for an international venture that addresses all aspects of the enterprise, including market opportunity and competitive analysis, product design and service, and organizational structure, as well as cultural, legal, and regulatory issues. The completed team-based business plan serves as the focus for the international field trip.
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Residential Week 4: The Global Environment—International Seminar
The international seminar and global capstone project—major features of EMBA's edge—takes place at a foreign location determined by program participants and faculty. Seminars will:
- Provide an educational experience that focuses on the strategic and operational issues of conducting business abroad and competing in global industries
- Give your team the chance to gauge the viability and effectiveness of its Capstone Project by meeting with a number of industry leaders and governmental officials
The EMBA Program intentionally travels to a different international location each year to diversify the experience for each EMBA class. We typically select destinations where the economy is emerging and business opportunity is abundant.
The EMBA Program curriculum and teams’ business plans are specifically designed to match the area of the world where the international seminar takes place. During the past seventeen years, the EMBA Program’s international seminar has included locations in Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America. Recent EMBA International Seminars include:
- 2008: Tokyo, Japan and Shanghai, China
- 2007: Bangkok, Thailand and Singapore
- 2006: Shanghai, China and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
- 2005: Warsaw, Poland and Stockholm, Sweden
- 2004: Santiago, Chile, and São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- 2003: Munich, Germany and Prague, Czech Republic
- 2002: Santiago, Chile
- 2001: Madrid and Barcelona, Spain
- 2000: Ireland
- 1999: Budapest, Hungary and Prague, Czech Republic
- 1998: Hong Kong and Shanghai, China
- 1997: Buenos Aires, Argentina
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Pictures from Past International Seminars
EMBA 20 in front of Sanyo's Solar Ark in Gifu Prefecture, Japan
EMBA 19 in Singapore
EMBA 18 in front of Hwa Seung, Shanghai, China
EMBA 16 at Agricola Valle Arriba, Pelequen, Chile
EMBA 15 in front of Na Homolce Hospital, Prague, Czech Republic
EMBA 15 in front of the Pilsner Gate, Prague, Czech Republic
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The course content in each module is designed to be complementary and synergistic, with team projects that reinforce the concepts taught in the classroom. I am able to directly apply the lessons learned through case study instruction, team building exercises, and practical workshops when I am back in the office. 
