Programme overview
The business world is in a constant state of change. Digitisation is transforming the way businesses operate and reshaping the rules of work. With technology redefining industries from marketing to manufacturing, healthcare to human resources, consulting to consumer products, pharma to private equity, business leaders need to understand the change technology brings and have the agility, skills, and confidence to navigate through this ever-evolving environment.
This is where you come in.
Future you is the leader who will understand how to lead through change. Future you will be the leader who transforms how your business performs in a volatile and uncertain world. But you need to futureproof yourself with the skills, mindset, and ability to do this successfully.
This is where we come in.
Our MBA will challenge you to imagine, innovate, and inspire. It will allow you to develop the skills you need to find innovative solutions and create impact in business and society. Whether you’re looking to lead strategy for a Fortune 500 company or launch a microfinancing startup, you will be able to take advantage of an environment that lives and breathes innovation. Sitting at the cross-section of Imperial College London, with the academic rigour expected of a top STEM institution, and the management and leadership expertise of Imperial College Business School, you will be exposed to the latest thinking and experiences that will let you put your newly acquired expertise into practice - before venturing into the real world.
More than ever, the business world needs forward-looking leaders who understand how business can benefit the society it serves. The jobs of tomorrow require leaders who have vision and the ability to define, develop, and drive the strategies that will allow their businesses to excel through times of transformation.
You can be this leader. With Imperial College Business School’s Full-Time MBA, you will be.
Timetable
Your time on the Imperial MBA will be nothing short of inspiring, challenging, and eye-opening. Joining an intimate class of students, your experience is tailored to your own career objectives, combining your aspiration and vision with our unique learning experience. Our interdisciplinary approach allows us to offer a rounded, progressive experience, increasing your potential for social impact, and making you more attractive to employers.
Autumn term
Core modules will build rapidly on your previous experience, while introducing new and challenging disciplines. You will cover the general functions of management, explore essential business topics, and acquire the skills to be an effective and inspiring leader capable of navigating the changes technology brings business today, and in the future.
Spring term
As you complete your core coursework, you will apply your newly formed knowledge, skills, and innovative thinking to practical experiences. You will use key techniques to solve complex problems and create new, exciting business solutions.
Summer term
Through the elective portfolio, you will be in the driver’s seat of your academic journey. Your electives will allow you to develop expertise with your learning objectives in mind. Through our global experience opportunities, you will hone practical skills through immersion in new environments, giving you an understanding of how your skills can be applied across sectors, and across the globe.
Assessment
Exams enable you to demonstrate the extent to which you have attained and exceeded the intended learning outcomes. You must attain a pass mark, the minimum threshold standard required to pass a module, in order to progress through your programme and be awarded a degree. Exams are held at the end of Core 2 (covering 1 and 2 modules) and at the end of Core 4 (covering 3 and 4 modules)
Interested in how your time on the Full-Time MBA will be spent?
Programme content
Technology, innovation, and an entrepreneurial mindset underpin everything we do, and everything you learn. Our approach is simple – to give you the confidence, skills, and practical application you need to lead in a technology-driven world.
You will be taught by faculty who are helping to solve the challenges facing global organisations, and who will share this expertise with you.
You will learn how vital business thinking fuses with the latest insights into data and technology and develop the capabilities organisations need to deliver change in an everchanging business landscape.
You will be exposed to a cross-disciplinary understanding of business that mirrors the workplace and that will enable you to add value to your future company, and your career.
You will work with the minds who are creating the future across the fields of business, technology, science and medicine, and harness the power of interdisciplinary thinking.
You will collaborate with an intimate and diverse class, developing meaningful relationships. The small class size will provide you with a safe space to innovate, experiment, fail, and try again.
Pre-study modules
Your MBA learning journey begins before you even step foot on campus. These pre-study modules covering mathematics, accounting, and The Careers Primer, will be available to you from four months prior to the programme start. You will have the support of a Teaching Assistant who will provide guidance and monitor progress and performance to ensure you have the foundational knowledge and skills necessary to start your MBA.
Primer modules are delivered through The Hub, the Business School’s online learning platform that offers a high-quality, rigorous learning experience. The Hub will also give you access to early Careers support. Before your arrival, you will gain access to The Careers Primer which tasks you to write your CV in the Imperial College Business School template so that you can receive feedback on impact, presentation, and competencies before those all-important early graduate application deadlines.
Induction
Kicking-off your studies is induction, which will help ease you back into student life, as well as introduce you to the teams and faculty who will be your support network during the programme.
During induction, you will attend a leadership and team building day where you will start to form relationships with your MBA family. Bonding through a challenging and exhilarating set of tasks at a high ropes course, you will quickly build trust, unity, and friendships amongst your cohort.
Induction is also when you will meet your syndicate group. Group work through the syndicate team system is an integral part of the teaching, learning and assessment strategy for the MBA, and reflects the real business world where you must often work in groups to collaborate in decision-making.
Core 1 modules
The core modules are the backbone of the programme and begin from when you join us in September. These give you a solid base in practical knowledge and are designed to prepare you to face the business challenges of the future. Through these key modules you will learn how to approach business problems in a structured and efficient way, and how the theories of these fundamental building blocks are applicable in today’s business world.
Core 1 modules subject areas include:
• Business Economics
• Accounting
• Organisational Behaviour
• Strategic Problem Solving
Careers Week
Applying for jobs and preparing for interviews alongside your full-time studies can be demanding, this we know. That’s why we offer you a dedicated week to concentrate on your career planning. Careers Week will enable you to fully focus to your career plans and help you to accelerate progress towards your aims. The week includes a two-day Development Centre, which simulates an Assessment Centre where you will receive individualised feedback on your performance. The week also offers sector specific support, career workshops, and an Entrepreneurship Day.
Core 2 modules
Core 2 modules, running November and December, allow you to continue your exploration of general management principles, including understanding the impact of a corporation’s financial decisions, planning and evaluating marketing strategies, and how to achieve strategic priorities. You will also learn the disciplined process behind Design Thinking and the methodologies, innovation tools, and cognitive frameworks for the problem-solving approach.
- Corporate Finance
- Marketing
- Strategy
- Design Thinking and Innovative Problem Solving
Core 3 and 4 modules
From January to March, you will round out your core education by studying five compulsory modules that will further your macro and micro understanding of business. Along with a deep-dive into these foundational business functions, you will build your entrepreneurial thinking and develop a framework to understand how ideas are turned into profitable products and services.
• Decision Analytics
• Macroeconomics
• Innovation and Entrepreneurship
• Investments and Risk Management
• Operations
Imperial Innovation Challenge and European Insights Trip
This intensive, one-week learning laboratory focuses on how business insight and imagination transform society. During the Imperial Innovation Challenge, you will be tasked to consider how, as socially conscious and responsible business practitioners, you can design innovative solutions that create social impact.
Before you begin work on your project, you will join the European Insights Trip. The destination, chosen to complement your year’s Innovation Challenge theme, will allow you to explore and experience the topic in real-life.
The goal of the challenge is to:
• Encourage you to apply innovative thinking to complex international issues such as energy and sustainability, climate change, health, and demographic trends including ageing populations
• Apply integrated business thinking to societal challenges and generate solutions
• Give you a snapshot into the diversity of the College and an idea of the different ways that you can interact with other faculties.
Electives
Electives are your opportunity to truly shape the programme to your own ambitions, whether you want to specialise in a particular area or expand your breadth of business knowledge.
Key information:
• You will choose six electives from a range of on-campus and online options
- Developing your cross-disciplinary learning, you will have the opportunity to learn alongside students from the suite of MBA programmes as well as MSc students on select electives
• Careers, your Programme team, and Faculty are available to advise and help guide your choice
• On-campus electives usually run over four days during the Spring or Summer terms and are offered over weekdays or weekends
• There is a wide range of elective options, from which approximately 20+ are run each year depending on student interest.
Group Consulting Project and Entrepreneurial Journey
To put your classroom learning into real-life practice, you will participate in one of two projects: the Group Consulting Project or the Entrepreneurial Journey. Regardless of the path you choose, these projects will push your personal development. Intense work on these projects will often require you to work out of your comfort zone, but you can be assured of the rewarding learning outcome.
Group Consulting Project
The Group Consulting Project is designed to develop your managerial and consulting potential by applying your knowledge and problem-solving skills to a real-world consulting project for an external organisation such as P&G, Unilever, or BT.
During the project, you will:
• Take on the role of a team of consultants
• Manage the project from initial problem-framing through to completion
• Be supported by several workshops, run by experienced consultants
• Present your work to faculty and company client
• Receive detailed feedback on your progress.
Entrepreneurial Journey
The Entrepreneurial Journey is a team-based venture startup programme. During this six-month live project, you will take an idea for a new product or service, develop a value proposition, carry out customer discovery research, validate the product or service, and create a plan for how to realise the business proposition.
During the project, you will:
• Generate an idea for a new product or service
• Develop a value proposition
• Carry out customer discovery research
• Validate the product or service
• Create a fully-fledged business proposition
• Pitch to a panel of investors and compete for seed funding to further develop your venture.
Internships and projects
Perspectives on Practice is an individual, self-directed work and the final project of your MBA. As part of this programme, which lasts two to three months, you are required to choose between undertaking an individual project or an internship (see details below).
Individual Project
The individual project allows you to develop your ideas on a topic of interest, most likely relevant to your own post-graduation goals. There are three routes you can follow:
- Complete an individual consulting project, which entails you approaching and building your network with organisations of interest
- Undertake a consulting report covering a sector or market, and one or more organisations
- Develop your own business plan.
Internship
The internship enables you to showcase skills and experience to employers and build up expertise in new industry or role. If you choose to undertake an internship, you are encouraged to employ your networking skills and organise one with a company that you are interested in. At the end of your internship you will submit a project based on your work.
Additional modules
What does ethics mean to you? Do you feel your sense of values is strong enough to guide you through difficult business situations? In the Autumn term you will also take Personal Ethics & Core Values. Through studying real-life scenarios and class discussion, you will better understand your inherent integrity as a business leader. You will develop awareness of how failures of responsibility tend to occur and help strengthen your set of tools for dealing with morally challenging situations.
Whether you’re located in a different country or work with an international client base, a global career may require knowledge of foreign languages. To support this highly coveted skill, languages are also offered throughout the year and MBA students have access to language app Busuu. The programme will also support access to evening language classes.
Global Experience Week
A programme highlight for many, the Global Experience Week is a unique hands-on learning experience. With your cohort, you will travel to another country for an intensive trip to explore a new culture and business in an international context. Previous locations have included Zambia, Chile, and Vietnam.
Personal Leadership Journey
Do you understand your leadership style? Do you know the value of your brand? Do you need support in discovering the right career path? Running the duration of your MBA, the Personal Leadership Journey will help you formulate your post-programme career strategy and equip you with the skills and knowledge required to effectively market yourself for whatever opportunities you pursue
Study Abroad opportunities (optional)
Our optional Study Abroad programme allows you to increase your international exposure by completing electives at one of our partner schools.
With opportunities to study in locations such as Paris, Shanghai, or Switzerland, the MBA exchange programme is a great opportunity to develop your global perspective.
Capstone
At the end of your studies, we give you the time to reflect – to reflect on your achievements, your learnings, and the relationships you’ve developed. During Capstone, you will celebrate your accomplishments and reconnect with your cohort. Through this two-day intense programme, you will also enhance your managerial knowledge and communication competencies.
During the 2019 Capstone event Leading Through Ambiguous Times: Defining and Maintaining our Values, students heard from CEOs of companies working in the spaces of fair trade, workplace well-being, and change management. They engaged with these leaders along with faculty to discuss key themes dissected throughout the programme, including social impact, personal values, and corporate integrity.
Timetables and course outlines are subject to change. Imperial College Business School reserves the right to alter the timetable when required.
Embarking on an MBA is a decision to be the best in business that you can be, and I am delighted to introduce you to our intensive programme for ambitious business professionals.
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