• 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

    23 - 27 November 2026

    22 - 26 March 2027

    28 Jun - 2 July 2027

  • Duration

    5 days

  • Credits

    Non credit bearing

  • Format

    In-person

  • Fee

    £6,950

  • Location

    On Campus (South Kensington)

Overview

Artificial Intelligence is reshaping how organisations create value, deliver services and compete, transforming how decisions are made and how work is organised across the business. Generative AI and Agentic AI are expanding what organisations can automate, augment and reimagine, while creating new questions around human judgement, accountability and risk. Leaders now face an urgent question: how do we move beyond experimentation and translate these capabilities into meaningful, organisation-wide transformation?

 Designed for senior decision-makers, this five-day Transforming Business with AI programme provides an applied understanding of AI in business and its implications for leadership. Participants will build the knowledge and confidence to make informed strategic choices, identify high-value opportunities and develop practical AI-enabled initiatives that can be taken forward within their organisations.

Grounded in Imperial’s research on intelligent systems, innovation and organisational networks, this Executive Education programme moves beyond high-level introductions to AI. You will experiment hands-on with AI tools and agents, explore where AI can create value, and apply practical frameworks to develop a business case and plan how an initiative could be mobilised and implemented. Throughout the programme, you will build the strategic, technical and organisational insight needed to lead confidently 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

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 structured as an Executive Education programme around faculty-led sessions, interactive workshops, simulations and hands-on learning with intelligent technologies.

Across the week, you progress through inspire – implement - influence, 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. You explore the distinction between automation and Agentic AI, building an understanding of where different approaches can add value, before beginning to map potential AI opportunities within your organisational context.

You then explore AI tools and agents hands-on, developing a practical understanding of their capabilities and limitations. You use this experience to evaluate potential applications, select and frame an opportunity to take forward and begin designing an appropriate AI-enabled solution.

As the week progresses, you explore the leadership mindset and cross-functional relationships needed to progress AI initiatives, including how working across organisational silos can support implementation. You apply this thinking to your own initiative while developing its business case and measures of success.

The programme then turns to the human dynamics of change, organisational networks, influence and implementation, and how these shape the success of innovation initiatives and leadership decision-making. Through a network and influence simulation and applied implementation work, you explore how ideas gain organisational support and develop an MVP and practical implementation approach for your initiative.
 

You conclude the week by presenting your AI-enabled proposal, bringing together the opportunity, solution, business case and implementation approach, 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 automation and intelligent workflows
  • Hands-on exploration of AI tools and agents
  • AI opportunity exploration, evaluation and solution design
  • 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