• Executive education

Transforming Business with AI

Empowering senior leaders to move from AI curiosity to strategic command — identifying high-value opportunities, building AI-enabled business cases and mobilising networks to drive organisation-wide transformation.

Course key facts

  • Date

    5 - 9 October 2026

    16 - 20 November 2026

    22 - 26 March 2027

    28 Jun - 2 July 2027

  • Duration

    1 week

  • Credits

    Non credit bearing

  • Format

    In-person

  • Fee

    £6,950

  • Location

    On Campus (South Kensington)

Overview

This Executive Education offering is designed for senior decision-makers who need an applied understanding of AI Business and its implications for leadership. A 5-day immersive programme and ai course for business leaders navigating the age of intelligent systems, offered as an Executive Education experience. 


Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how organisations create value, deliver services, and compete, changing how data and decision processes work across the business. Generative AI and Agentic AI systems are redefining what businesses can automate, augment, and reimagine, including how machine learning models use data to support decision-making. Leaders now face an urgent question: how do we move beyond experimentation and translate intelligent technologies into meaningful, organisation-wide transformation while managing risks? 


Transforming Business with AI is a flagship programme and course designed for leaders who need to understand AI deeply enough to make confident strategic choices for AI Business. Explore the technological frontier, identify high-value opportunities, build viable AI-enabled business cases, and mobilise the organisational networks required to implement them for measurable impact. 


Grounded in Imperial’s research on intelligent systems and innovation management, the programme moves far beyond typical high-level introductions to AI, with practical learning for business leaders and professionals. You work hands-on with emerging technologies, apply frameworks for transformation under uncertainty, and build the strategic, technical, and behavioural skills required to lead in an AI-enabled world. Throughout the programme, you gain decision-ready insights you can apply immediately in your role and within your organisation. 

Learning journey

This AI course for business leaders combines leadership development with applied learning in AI Business, so participants can evaluate opportunities and risks with a clear AI strategy. Transforming Business with AI is a five-day immersive experience and course structured around faculty-led sessions, interactive workshops, simulations, and hands-on learning with intelligent technologies. 


Across the week, you progress through the Inspire → Integrate → Influence network framework, developing the strategic, technical, and behavioural capabilities required for leadership in AI-enabled transformation. 


The week begins with a strong foundation in Generative AI, Agentic AI, and intelligent systems, exploring how these technologies are reshaping business models, workflows, and organisational design in AI Business. A dedicated module introduces core concepts in machine learning and data fundamentals, so business leaders can evaluate what models can and cannot do and what technical constraints matter for implementation. You then learn how to identify opportunities for AI-enabled innovation through catalytic networks and vision advantage, and how to evaluate expected impact and key risks. As the week progresses, you apply scenario-based tools and practical learning to develop viable business cases for AI initiatives under different levels of technological and demand uncertainty, including implementation considerations. 


The programme then turns to the human dynamics of change—cross-functional collaboration, dual networking, and influence networks—and how these shape the success of innovation initiatives and leadership decision-making. You will also work through an AI strategy module focused on responsible and ethical decision-making, governance, and how to integrate AI Business into core processes without slowing innovation. You conclude the week by presenting your AI-enabled proposal, refined through expert feedback and informed by real-world industry insights and experience. 

The core themes of our programme include:

  • AI systems fundamentals: Generative AI, Agentic AI, and intelligent systems; model constraints, advanced prompting, RAG concepts, workflow automation
  • Network-based opportunity identification and catalytic innovation
  • Scenario-based approaches for designing AI-enabled business cases
  • Cross-functional collaboration and dual networking
  • Influence networks and leadership for AI-enabled transformation

AI Systems Fundamentals & Opportunity Identification module

This module is practical and built for AI Leaders who need a working understanding of Artificial Intelligence and the data, models, and technical trade-offs behind modern systems.

Acquire a foundational understanding of Generative AI, Agentic AI, and intelligent systems, including how large models reason, retrieve information, and operate within their constraints, and how data shapes outputs. Explore context windows, memory limits, and multi-agent workflows, and understand where these systems excel and where they fail, with practical guidance for non-technical leaders. You will then begin identifying areas of opportunity by mapping how intelligent systems could reshape your organisation’s processes, decision-making, and value creation, supported by data. You will use data to evaluate where automation will improve processes, where human judgement is needed, and how to manage risks to customers, employees, and the organisation. 

Sessions on day one will include:

  • Welcome and introduction
  • Fundamentals of Generative AI, Agentic AI, multi-agent systems
  • Hands-on workshops using LLM based tools (such as ChatGPT and Perplexity) and agent building
  • Exposure to architectural components (e.g., LLMs, RAG, agents) at a non-code level
  • Model constraints: context windows, memory boundaries, retrieval behaviour
  • Introduction to workflow automation and agentic orchestration
  • Divergent thinking for identifying areas of opportunity
  • Workshop: Defining your organisational challenge and evaluating risks
  • A further module covers implementation planning: how to work with technical professionals, set success metrics, and evaluate impact using data, while keeping responsible and ethical standards in view.

Video

Programme overview

"If you're ready to build all of the capabilities that your organisation will rely on for the next decade and you want to understand AI deeply enough to lead with it, not just talk about it, this programme and course are for you."

Course details

Course instructors

Bart Clarysse

Professor of Entrepreneurship

Bart holds the Chair in Entrepreneurship at ETH Zürich, where he is a full-time professor and visits Imperial College Business School to teach "corporate entrepreneurship and innovation" in its executive MBA and various open and customised executive programmes. Before ETH, he was a full Professor of Entrepreneurship at Imperial College. He is a founder of several high-tech start-ups in businesses such as digital cinema, mobile internet and venture incubation. Bart was an advisor in technology policy at the European Commission and he still consults on innovation and technology matters for various European governments and agencies. He has over 50 publications in the field of high tech start-ups and managing growth of these companies and has been an executive teacher for several corporates such as KLM, Belgacom, Panasonic, EDF, BP, BT, Finmechanicca and Leo Pharma in corporate venturing and innovative turnaround strategies.

Christopher Tucci

Professor of Digital Strategy & Innovation

Chris Tucci is Professor of Digital Strategy & Innovation and received the degrees of Ph.D. in Management from the Sloan School of Management, MIT; SM (Technology & Policy) from MIT; and BS (Mathematical Sciences), AB (Music), and MS (Computer Science) from Stanford University. He was an industrial computer scientist involved in developing Internet protocols and applying Artificial Intelligence tools. Professor Tucci’s primary area of interest is in how firms make transitions to new business models, technologies, and organisational forms, and how leaders evaluate the impact of these shifts.

Anne ter Wal

Professor of Technology and Innovation

Anne ter Wal is Professor of Technology and Innovation Management in the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship. His research, often in collaboration with leading multinational companies as well as start-ups, focuses on the role of networks in innovation and entrepreneurship. Specifically, Anne studies how individuals access new knowledge and ideas through networks within and between organizations and the challenges they face when seeking to apply these ideas to the creation of novel products and services, including how AI Business changes collaboration processes. He leads a large-scale EU-funded research project titled "Networking for Innovation", studying how networking enables entrepreneurs and innovators to build valuable networks that help them achieve business and innovation success. He also has an interest in the management of creativity, in particular in the role of bootlegging and other deviant forms of creativity in driving innovative outcomes.

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Asmik Magakian

Senior Partnerships Manager