Timeline & courses

In detail: The Executive MBA curriculum

• Build a solid foundation

  Modules 1 to 4: from October to May

  The EMBA program begins with a deep immersion in business fundamentals, management functions and strategy. Designed to help you make sound business decisions based on equally sound analysis and judgment, the EMBA will teach you to identify key drivers and integrate them into a larger vision for your company and industry.

  Course highlights:

  Business Fundamentals: Economic Thinking, Data Analysis and Forecasting, Organizational Behavior

  Management Functions: Performance Management, Financial Management and Corporate Finance, Operations, Marketing Management, Managerial Analysis and Decision Making

  Leading through Strategy: Business Strategy, Corporate Strategy, Strategic Practice through Business Simulation

• Global Network for Advanced Management

  Module 5: June

  ESMT is part of the Global Network for Advanced Management, a partnership between 31 business schools worldwide. During the EMBA, students attend one-week short exchange studies at another network university from up to 20 schools offering exchanges at the same time as ESMT. Students choose from other schools in the network.

  When? June 12–16, 2023
  Where? Besides ESMT Berlin, other schools offering exchange courses:

  Asian Institute of Management (Manila, Philippines)
  EGADE Business School (Santa Fe, Mexico)
  FGV Business School (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
  Fudan University (Shanghai, China)
  Haas School of Business Univ. of California Berkeley, (San Francisco, California)
  Hitotsubashi University Business School (Tokyo, Japan)
  IE Business School (Madrid, Spain)
  Indian Institute of Management (Bangalore India)
  Lagos Business School (Lagos, Nigeria)
  Moscow School of Management Skolkovo (Moscow, Russia)
  Seoul National University (Seoul, South Korea)
  Strathmore Business School (Nairobi, Kenya)
  UBC Sauder School of Business (Vancouver, Canada)
  University of Cape Town (Cape Town, South Africa)
  University of Oxford (Oxford,United Kingdom)
  UCD Smurfit (Dublin, Ireland)
  University of Ghana (Accra, Ghana)
  University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia)
  World Business Council for Sustainable Development (Geneva, Switzerland)
  Yale SOM  (New Haven, Connecticut, USA)

  For more info on the Network Week, such as a complete list of participating schools and sample exchange curricula, please follow this link.

  Short exchanges through the network are available at no additional tuition cost. Students should budget enough for travel and housing during the exchange. Please note that places at certain exchange partners are limited.

• Evidence-based Management

  Module 6: August

  Learning from experts in real-time is naturally one of the best ways to understand and incorporate the latest trends and best-practices into your work. This module allows ESMT EMBA students to do just that. You will go to the heart of expertise by attending the Academy of Management annual meeting in North America. Whether your interests lie in entreprenueurship, sustainability, strategic leadership, or any number of topics, your time at the conference will be spent learning from and networking with experts in all fields of business, roughly ten thousand attendees each year. The evidence-based management knowledge acquired from your time there will be directly applicable to the Applied Learning Project of the EMBA program as well as your future career.

• Develop your distinctive edge

  Modules 7 and 8: from September to November

  The second EMBA phase prepares you to make a difference by developing your strategic leadership capabilities. The ESMT EMBA will challenge you to shift your focus from the short term to the long term – from the fundamental business toolbox to a broader understanding of your company’s sustainability and impact on society. ESMT EMBA participants find the program’s strong international focus to be as relevant as it is rewarding. You’ll return to your company with a much clearer vision for successfully leading international teams.

  You will have the opportunity to sharpen your edge in one of the program’s focus areas: innovation and technology management, international management or business integrity. Committed to the idea that business can do well by doing good, the ESMT EMBA is structured so that students gain knowledge to develop, deploy, and manage technology in the pursuit of sustainability.

  Course highlights (core):

  Innovation and technology: Innovation and New Product Development, Organizing for Innovation, Strategic Leadership: Innovation and Execution

  Lead for strategic resilience: Sustainable Business, Entrepreneurship, Managing and Developing People, Business at the Base of the Pyramid

  Some past electives include:

  • International Financial Markets
  • Managing International Teams
  • Bringing Technology to Market
  • Marketing of Global Brands
  • IT for Leaders
  • Transformation of the Energy Sector
  • Anti-fraud Management and Compliance

• Applied strategic international management

  Module 9: February

  Global in focus, your ESMT EMBA will also expose you to leadership challenges in diverse countries and cultures. The International Field Seminar (IFS) will challenge you and your fellow participants to experience leading international projects inside the offices of global companies on other continents. Recent seminars took EMBA classes to China, Brazil, Vietnam, Malaysia, Hong Kong, South Africa and Argentina.

  The most recent IFS destination was South Africa in spring 2018. The theme of this trip was: Emerging Africa: institutional developments, business prospects, managerial practices. Company visits included multinationals such as EY, Mercedes Benz South Africa, Bosch, DHL, Siemens and ThyssenKrupp. It also included NGOs such as OASIS and institutions such as AIMS, Africa’s first network of centers of excellence in mathematical sciences, with which ESMT has a long-standing relationship through different projects.

• Ethics and Sustainability

  Module 10: April

  The final module of the ESMT EMBA is dedicated to courses that combine the themes of ethics and sustainability. Creating a Better World (CBW) and Fraud and Corruption courses go hand in hand to build on learning outcomes from sustainable business and corporate responsibility topics addressed during previous courses and the International Field Study in a developing country. You learn how to identify discrimination and ethical situations in business and to avoid them, while at the same time implementing sustainable solutions.

• Applied learning - Integrated Project

  Integrated project from Modules 6 to Module 8

  During the final part of your EMBA journey, you will apply your newly gained skills and insights to help solve your organization’s ongoing challenges in a project that builds on ESMT’s unique approach to bridging the academic and the applied.

  In consultation with their companies and with ESMT faculty, EMBA participants develop a project that addresses a business or management issue of broader relevance. The project draws on empirical fieldwork and academic theories to develop real and immediate value to their organization as a direct result of the EMBA even before graduation. Students present their projects to faculty and sponsors at their company, and submit a final report based on the project to ESMT.

  EMBA students can use this opportunity to forge new networks in their organization, display their new skills to internal stakeholders, initiate change within their organization, and gain personal visibility at broader and higher levels.

  ESMT alumni have recently completed projects like:

  • Evaluating make/buy strategies for radical innovations in a complex manufacturing industry
  • Identifying barriers to and incentives for adopting energy efficient technologies in the European steel industry
  • Attracting and retaining highly skilled workforce in emerging markets
  • Increasing market share with multi-channel marketing: an approach to design and review distribution channels
  • Comparing active vs. passive portfolio management in the bond market