Executive MBA Program
The Executive MBA program offers an accelerated path to the degree for experienced managers. The program is organized around cross- functional themes focusing on contemporary business challenges. Tailored to meet the needs of Silicon Valley executives, all aspects of the curriculum center on issues of substantive and pragmatic concern. In particular, course work and assignments are constructed to integrate current work challenges students face. Highlights of the program include degree completion in 20 months, a Friday/Saturday biweekly schedule, and a rigorous curriculum that meets Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International (AACSB) requirements.
Students have the opportunity to connect with Silicon Valley companies that are globally renowned for being on the forefront of business practices. The design places great emphasis on innovation throughout the curriculum. A series of targeted co-curricular workshops and local, national, and international immersion experiences are key components of the program.
Entrance Requirements
To be admitted to the Executive MBA program, the applicant must have at least ten years of full-time work experience and a record of accomplishment leading people, projects, or programs. Strong applicants will be those who already hold the kind of leadership positions that many people attending conventional MBA programs hope to attain. Successful applicants also will show a high degree of academic aptitude as measured by prior coursework. Knowledge of basic statistics is a program prerequisite; however, no prior business education is necessary. Admission is in the fall term only.
Policies and Procedures
Executive MBA students must adhere to the policies and procedures described in this bulletin. Please refer to Chapter 3 in this bulletin for all GBP tuition and refund policies.
All student lodging, meals, and on-site transportation expenses for immersion and residency programs are included in the cost of tuition. Students are responsible for costs incurred for travel to immersion and residency programs, including flights, gas and/or mileage on personal vehicles, and incidental expenses.
Course Descriptions
The following is a detailed description of the Executive MBA curriculum. The total program requirement is 62 units, comprising 56 core units, including two residency weekends, 6 units of electives; 4 off-campus immersion trips; and 14 workshops.
Mini Term
Executive Communications Workshop
This interactive, improv-based workshop will teach critical business communication skills including spontaneity, thinking on your feet, collaboration, listening, executive presence, and storytelling. Although the workshop is based on improv techniques and skills, students will not be performing improv. Working mostly in small groups, participants will learn to increase their agility; grow their confidence in unpredictable situations; be more present and open to surprising ideas; tell engaging stories; and cultivate a mindset of curiosity to quickly connect with all types of stakeholders.
Innovation Training Workshop
In this workshop, students will learn the Competing Values Framework, one of the most powerful frameworks for creating value and innovating, and will identify their personal strengths as well as how to complement their strengths with those of others. Working in teams to tackle live innovation challenges, students will deepen and refine their skills in human-centered innovation, starting with the "fuzzy front-end" of innovation all the way through prototyping and user testing. The students will improve their ability to reduce the uncertainty and risk inherent in innovative opportunities.
Executive Decision Making Workshop
Students will learn to diagnose and address the human, organizational, political, and cultural factors and forces that make executive decision-making difficult. This full day workshop is highly interactive and will allow students to practice their decision making skills realtime.
Foundation of Analytics Workshop
This workshop will introduce students to the basic concepts and tools needed to convert data into meaningful information for business decisions. We will cover probabilistic thinking and the fundamentals of statistical analysis. Specific attention will be paid to the process of quantifying seemingly ambiguous managerial situations and working through those situations using a combination of algebraic and graphical visual analysis. Finally, the concept of optimization will be introduced as a basic operating principle of business, viewed through the lens of elementary calculus. Excel will be used as the primary tool for all hands-on work.
Quarter 1
EMBA 900 Leadership in Dynamic Environments
The program begins with a three-day residential weekend taught by Dr. Barry Posner, an internationally renowned leadership expert. In this intensive weekend seminar students receive 360-degree feedback about themselves as leaders, learn about and develop skills related to the practices of exemplary leaders, and determine action plans for improving themselves as leaders back in their workplaces. The weekend also helps orient students to setting personal goals, working effectively in small groups, and expanding their learning processes. (3 units)
EMBA 901 Strategic Management
Strategy is inherently dynamic. This course focuses on the processes by which managers position their businesses to create and sustain an advantage relative to rivals in the face of uncertainty, rapid change, and competition. Strategy involves understanding the utility of different choices and tradeoffs -- choosing what not to do is as important as choosing what to do. As a result, the course will expose you to frameworks and concepts for analyzing a firm's environment and competitive position to inform the strategic decision making process. By uncovering the factors that make some strategic positions strong and viable, we shall develop the ability to evaluate the effects of changes in resources & capabilities, industry forces, macro-environmental forces, and technology on industry structure and firm behavior and, in turn, on a firm's opportunities for creating, capturing and sustaining superior profits relative to rivals. (4 units)
EMBA 902 Managing Organizations & Teams
Regardless of your particular industry, functional role, or technical expertise, as you advance in your career, your time will increasingly focus on managing, motivating, and communicating with individuals and teams in your workplace---and on designing jobs, reward systems, and entire organizations for accomplishing these tasks. Indeed, organizational leaders estimate that they can spend up to 30% of their time focusing on interpersonal issues. This course is concerned with understanding the behavior that takes place within organizations to help you become a more influential leader and to increase the effectiveness of both you and your organization. It focuses on helping you better understand the nature and dynamics of social behavior as they relate to performance in real-world business settings, and draws heavily on research from the fields of psychology, social psychology and sociology. Using a combination of case analyses, videos, exercises, and field projects, the course relates existing theory and research in the social sciences to organizations by reviewing basic concepts about interpersonal, team, and organizational behavior. (3 units)
EMBA 903 Analytics
A recent EMBA student noted, "Knowledge of analytics will be table stakes in just a few years." For this reason we have made Analytics one of the major pillars of our business curriculum. This course does not aspire to produce data scientists; more often our executive graduates will have responsibility for how much and what kind of data to use, analytics technology selection, interpretation of findings, and how to perform the human intervention that remains necessary until we are prepared to let machines directly call the shots. These tasks require balancing considerations such as accuracy of the algorithms, time and cost of computing, interpretability of outputs, and susceptibility to bias. But competence at making these tradeoffs is simply not attainable without at some point examining the math and accruing hands-on practice. To that end, we will study the technical details enough to develop an instinct about whether the outputs make sense, and we will use data and software in every session. Our specific technical content will be the foundations upon which every cutting-edge Machine Learning AI application is built: statistics and mathematical optimization. Students will learn to take a dataset (e.g., attributes of past customers) and explore it numerically and visually. They will use this to create models that predict something about the next customer (e.g., how much will this customer spend?). Students will then construct models that can recommend a course of action, accounting for constraints on the allowable actions (e.g., due to resource limitations) and the consequences of the actions (e.g., profit margins). (6 units)
Digital Transformation Workshop
In this workshop, students will learn how to identify opportunities and technologies to address specific problems within an organization and frame them in a way where a digital solution can be optimal. Students will learn how to develop the organizational transformation opportunity through data, solution experience, and stakeholder alignment. This workshop will also cover how to navigate the evolving landscape of privacy, data protection, and cyber security which must be considered in a digital initiative.
Quarter 2
EMBA 904 Macroeconomics in the Global Economy Theory, Empirics, and Policy
The macroeconomic and global economic environment in which businesses operate can profoundly influence firm performance. This course helps managers understand the determinants of national output, income, and expenditure, employment and unemployment, inflation, interest rates, financial crises, international movements of capital, exchange rates, and many other macroeconomic variables. Economic models are utilized to explain how these variables are interrelated and to predict how they change over time, enabling managers to make well-informed decisions important to the success of their businesses. The course has a strong empirical component and utilizes economic data extensively to examine recent and historical economic events to illustrate how the models work. Emphasis is placed on the role of government policy (fiscal, monetary, and regulatory) in promoting economic growth, reducing the output loss and unemployment associated with recessions, controlling inflation, preventing or mitigating the consequences of financial crises, and reducing inequality. The course stresses the importance of the global economy to U.S. businesses and covers the international linkages among countries in goods and financial markets, including the determinants of exchange rates, the current and capital account balances, and international debt. (3 units)
EMBA 905 Financial Accounting
Every day businesses and markets generate data that must be quickly and accurately captured and reported for use by decision makers. This course introduces the roles, concepts, legal requirements and impacts of financial reporting. We cover the basic financial statements and the analysis and recording of transactions, with a focus towards interpretations of reported results. By the end of this course, students should be able to demonstrate a specific working knowledge of the following course objectives: The impact on accounting of a changing regulatory environment, globalization and politics, including the role of the SEC and international standard setters; The accrual basis of accounting, including the double entry accounting system for recording business transactions and adjustments, as well as the key issues in the timing and recording of revenues and expenses; The application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), an introduction to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), and how GAAP is used to prepare, explain and analyze the primary financial statements; The ability to perform a financial analysis and make investment and lending decisions using a set of corporate financial statements. (3 units)
EMBA 906 Corporate Finance
This course covers valuation and how valuation is used to make corporate business decisions. It goes into the details of building financial models for decisions ranging from undertaking a new product to acquiring a company. It also covers the determination of funding needs, sources of funding, and general capital structure policy (4 units).
Leading with Improv Workshop
Oak and Reeds’ team collaboration workshops teach specific techniques designed to improve collaboration in in-person, virtual or hybrid settings. In this workshop, we'll work on gaining confidence “thinking on your feet” and sharing ideas with minimal preparation time. We'll practice mental techniques for “turning down the censor” in order to embrace the unexpected, deter snap judgments and let creative ideas flourish. We'll also learn techniques for listening to and building on ideas to move a conversation forward towards your goal. Use these “Yes, and skills” to practice generating new ideas in groups.
Quarter 3
EMBA 908 Marketing Strategy
Marketing has a rich and multifaceted role in the modern organization. It is charged with focusing on the customer, providing value and recapturing value for the firm. Strategic marketing management involves determining which customers an organization should serve by analyzing customer needs, segmenting the market by selecting a target segment and then determining the 4-P's (Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place) for the chosen segment. Product managers, channel leaders, sales leaders and CMOs are some of the stakeholders involved in this process. Today's marketers have an increasing amount of data available to them and the modern practice of marketing involves effectively using this data to inform decision making. This course provides information necessary for an experienced executive to develop a working knowledge of marketing. Going beyond the fundamental 4P's of marketing the course also introduces the rigorous lens of the three C's---the customer, competitors and the company. The course also emphasizes data driven marketing and the idea the customers are heterogeneous in their needs. (4 units)
EMBA 909 Managerial Ethics
This course is an introduction to business ethics that focuses specifically on the kinds of ethical issues that managers typically encounter. Course topics include the psychological factors that influence moral decision-making, normative approaches for dealing with ethical issues in management, and application of these concepts to cases describing real life ethical dilemmas managers have faced in a variety of organizational and environmental settings. (2 units)
Marketing Workshop
This workshop is a marketing strategy simulation to reinforce brand strategy concepts taught in EMBA 908, the Executive MBA core marketing course. With a clear focus on targeting and positioning, participants oversee the marketing strategy of two products brands over the course of five simulated years. The workshop is integral to the students’ success on their final projects because it demonstrates potential outcomes and consequences of specific strategic marketing.
Emerging Technologies Workshop
Introducing Emerging Technology such as artificial intelligence, internet of things, robotics, drones, VR/AR, blockchain, cloud and quantum computing, and messenger RNA. Students will get a high level understanding of the technologies and their applications. Students will work in teams to identify business opportunities where the technologies can be monetized, learn about storytelling, and present their findings to the group.
Regional Immersion Trip
Students will participate in a short visit to California's wine country for a regional immersion experience. The goals of this trip include understanding the importance of sustainability, learning how business activities can lead to exhaustion of natural resources, and considering how business leaders' decisions can meet today's business needs without endangering the environment and business ecosystem of tomorrow.
Electives
Students are required to complete 6 units worth of electives during quarters 3-5. Electives must be approved by the faculty director and programs office prior to enrollment.
Quarter 4
EMBA 910 Managing Operations, Technologies & Supply Chains
The objective of this course is to consider the operations of a supply chain from a managerial perspective. It focuses on improving the performance of the firm and its supply chain through coordination among multiple sites, functions, and economic factors (customers and suppliers). Students learn to design and implement both cross-functionally, within the firm, and across an industry value chain among interacting firms. These strategies include optimizing supply chain facilities, coordinating information and material flows, managing supplier relations, and managing customer order fulfillment processes. (6 units)
Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
The Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Workshop features an experienced tech startup CEO and a VC giving first-hand perspectives on how Silicon Valley works, including what it takes to be a startup founder and an inside look at venture capital. You'll get some practical guidance on how to grow and fund a startup, and learn about venture accelerators. You will also have the opportunity to engage in interactive discussions and activities about entrepreneurship and role play as founders and venture capitalists.
How to Run Board Meetings
What a heartbeat is to a human body's health monitoring; is a well-established board meeting for assessing the health of a company. Board Meetings are the cynosure for the company as this is where the merits of the executive team, the metrics of the business and the mechanics of execution are measured by the Board. In this 4 hour workshop the executive MBA students will gather deeper understanding of the board strategies and tactics, the roles and responsibilities of the board members and the best practices and guard rails to be put in place when preparing for board meetings.
KitchenTown
KitchenTown is a food startup incubator and global innovation platform that helps develop, commercialize, and launch impact-driven food products. The 20,000 square foot facility is designed to serve every need of a food startup business: a commercial kitchen space and scale-up facility, a food innovation lab, access to a network of investors and corporates, and, more recently, a curbside pickup program. Their makers span across the startup lifecycle and work on everything from artisan breads to lily seed snacks to plant-based ice cream. Students will learn how food businesses grow and adapt to market challenges and environmental changes. Participants will engage with real food entrepreneurs, providing insight and recommendations to help them navigate firm-specific challenges.
Media Training
This workshop will prepare executives to represent themselves and their companies when speaking with journalists. Topics will include fundamentals for presenting in interviews, strategies for speaking in digestible soundbites, and dealing with controversial subjects. The workshop will also provide time for executives to practice their interview skills with feedback from trained public relations professionals.
National Immersion
Program participants will travel to Washington, DC for a national immersion experience. This is to expose students to current issues in governance, the legal and regulatory environment, and business-government relations. Meeting with regulators, government agencies, local academics and the local business community, participants will learn about how national policy and regulation impacts the business world and the innovation ecosystem. Students will also have local cultural immersion opportunities.
Electives
Students are required to complete 6 units worth of electives during quarters 3-5. Electives must be approved by the faculty director and programs office prior to enrollment.
Quarter 5
EMBA 912 Product Management - Concept to Execution
The development, management and marketing of new and innovative products and services (or offerings) are critically important for the success of organizations, whether they are startups or large organizations. However, this endeavor is fraught with risk and uncertainty due to which many new offerings fail in the marketplace, despite a huge expenditure in money, time and resources by firms. Hence, managers need to develop a comprehensive understanding of the design, development, management and marketing of new and existing offerings in various contexts such as high tech, B2B, B2C, services, SaaS, electronics, hardware etc. In this course, we focus on state of the art quantitative and qualitative tools and techniques which are utilized by innovative companies in managing products and services. It is especially tailored for professional managers who are interested in new product development & innovation, product management & marketing as well as product strategy consulting. It is also designed to help current and aspiring entrepreneurs make better strategic and tactical decisions for their offerings. (4 units)
EMBA 913 Negotiating Strategies
We negotiate every day: with potential employers, coworkers, roommates, landlords, parents, bosses, merchants, service providers, spouses, and even our children. What price we want to pay, how much we want to be paid, who will do the dishes, all of these are negotiations. Yet, although people negotiate all the time, most know very little about the strategy and psychology of effective negotiations. Why do we sometimes get our way whereas other times we walk away feeling frustrated by our inability to achieve the agreement we desire? Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more interdependent parties. It is a craft that must hold cooperation and competition in creative tension. The purpose of this course is to understand the theory and processes of negotiation as it is practiced in a variety of settings. Largely experiential, the course will provide you with the opportunity to develop your skills by participating in negotiations and integrating your experiences with the principles presented in the assigned readings and course discussions. (2 units)
Legal Fundamentals for Business Workshop
This workshop will introduce students to the state and federal legal frameworks that apply to businesses. We will cover employment laws, intellectual property, privacy, corporate governance, and contracts. Most importantly, the workshop will be focused on identifying practical solutions to legal risks posed by these laws. Students will learn how to spot legal issues in common business scenarios, prioritize those issues, and employ techniques to manage company legal risk.
Electives
Students are required to complete 6 units worth of electives during quarters 3-5. Electives must be approved by the faculty director and programs office prior to enrollment.
Quarter 6
EMBA 911 New Business Ventures
The objectives of this course are to provide an opportunity for a person to evaluate his or her own abilities and goals in regard to new business ventures and develop an analytical framework for evaluating new business opportunities. A person can engage in this activity by buying an existing enterprise, starting a new firm, or participating in such activities in a larger, parent company. In these cases, it is necessary to make an analysis of existing and potential markets, competition, and the marketing strategies which may be employed. An analysis of people and facilities requirements also is essential, and ultimately all of the plans for the enterprise must be converted into a detailed financial plan. Another objective of this course is to understand the challenge of developing viable revenue projections based on a coherent market logic. This market logic usually involves the need to combine several market opportunities into a "sensible but compelling" profit and loss projection. review some of the special operating problems of new enterprises including the problems of survival in the early years, maintaining growth in an orderly fashion, and maintaining momentum as the market in which the entity competes approaches maturity. Class time will be devoted about equally to a discussion of cases and concepts and presentations by guest lecturers who have had experience in business venture creation. Speakers will include entrepreneurs, risk capital investors, venture capitalists and selected Leavey School faculty. (4 units)
EMBA 915. Strategy and Business Model Innovation
Strategic leaders of the twenty-first century must continually redefine industries, recreate offerings and strategy, and rejigger operations to remain relevant. This course provides students with the tools for navigating dynamic competitive environments with strategic innovation for both young firms and established firms. The emphasis is on how to develop and implement a robust innovation strategy and how to align the innovation strategy with business and corporate level strategies. Experiential exercises such as case discussions, simulations, and role-playing help prepare students to lead an innovation revolution in their organization. (4 units)
EMBA 916 Sustaining Impact as a Leader
The intent of the final seminar is to reflect upon your personal experiences of leadership, what it means to be leaders, and what inner issues leaders have to deal with in the course of leading (regardless of the content or context). The seminar is also an opportunity to look ahead, and develop leadership strategies for dealing with complex interpersonal, group and organizational issues. Since this seminar culminates the EMBA program and students' experiences with one another, we\'ll take advantage of the special relationships and esprit de corps formed to provide a reflective and contemplative environment. This final seminar, more than possibly any other in the EMBA program, focuses on opening students up to some of life\'s most perplexing and ongoing questions. As Socrates remarked, "The unexamined life is not worth living." (3 units)
Personal Branding Workshop
This practical and interactive workshop aims to express why a personal brand is essential in this contemporary and uncertain world we live in today. Students will learn how to uncover and articulate their own brand, and where and when to extend it.
Mergers & Acquisitions
The objective of this workshop is not to teach you how to work in Corporate Development, but rather to strategically identify and execute on M&A opportunities as a business leader. Many business leaders have never performed an acquisition. By its very nature, M&A is demanding, dynamic, and complex. It can be an effective tool in a company’s growth strategy – use it properly and you can achieve amazing results that are hard to do otherwise; use it poorly and it can be a recipe for disaster. We will cover the M&A lifecycle from strategy to execution with an emphasis on the responsibilities as a business leader in the process.
International Immersion Trip
Students will cap off their EMBA experience with an international immersion experience. The goal of this program is to increase students' understanding of global markets and global business issues while developing an appreciation for different cultures and perspectives. Program sessions will address how to navigate international politics and challenges and will prepare students for diverse business opportunities in product development, innovation, and entrepreneurship growth.
EMBA 917 The EMBA Experience
Part of what distinguishes the Santa Clara EMBA from other programs is the opportunity for students to immerse themselves in different areas of the business world, both within and outside Silicon Valley. These deep dives take two forms, immersion trips – one- to five-day study trips to study local, national, and international ecosystems – and workshops – four- to twelve-hour practitioner-led sessions that give students exposure to complex business practices not fully covered in the classroom and opportunities for self-development through practical skills training.
The purpose of this course is to formalize the learning derived from the co-curricular activities. EMBA students will be asked to reflect on each of their workshops and immersion trips, both to make sense of what they learned and to summarize their overall EMBA experience. (1 unit)
NOTE: Some EMBA courses may "span" two different SCU quarters. When this occurs, a course will be broken down into parts A and B (ex., 906A and 906B). When this occurs, Part A of the course will be given a grade of "N" for "Continuing". The "N" grade carries no weight in the GPA calculation. A final letter grade for a "spanned" course will be given in Part B of the course and will be calculated into the student's GPA at that time.
Executive MBA Alumni Extended Edition Program
Upon completion of their Executive MBA program, EMBA alumni are able to audit MBA elective courses at no cost. EMBA alumni may audit one class per quarter for free for up to two years after graduation. There are no unit count restrictions as long as only one class is audited per quarter. However, any course materials required, including readings, textbooks, software, etc., are the responsibility of the alumnus. Please note that auditing does not constitute enrollment as a student through the Registrar's Office. As a full participant in the class, alumni are expected to complete and pass all assignments, class projects, and exams, and should verify any additional requirements with the professor. Alumni of the Executive MBA program are eligible to audit only on-ground MBA courses. Undergraduate level courses, previous or new Executive MBA program courses, and online courses are not eligible for auditing. Auditing is also not available for courses, schools, degrees, or programs outside of the business school.