Discover IMD Business School's Executive MBA (EMBA). Master management skills in highly diversified business, social and political environments. Join a class of over 40 nationalities and experience impactful learning with a truly diverse group of global peers.
Read the video transcript below:
"I'm Stefan Michel, program director of IMD's EMBA program. Our EMBA program is the most inspiring, most demanding, and most rewarding EMBA program in the world.
It is designed for mid-career executives with significant responsibilities. Many of them already hold a degree: a master's degree or a doctorate degree in engineering, science, or the law.
Why do they pursue an EMBA at IMD? To achieve more, to fulfill their potential, and most importantly, to never stop learning. Our EMBA program consists of two phases: the first is called the foundational stage, which leads into the second one, which is the mastery stage.
The foundation stage starts with one of IMD's mid-career programs such as the Foundations for Business Leadership (FBL), which is an innovative 20-day program here on campus in Lausanne.
Then you enter the distance learning mode with four subjects: strategy, leadership, finance, and marketing. Each of the four subjects close with an exam. Instead of a GMAT score, we will use your results of these exams as one assessment criteria for the mastery stage.
The mastery stage consists of three main pillars. The first pillar is about company assignments. Here you will work in-depth within your company on topics such as customers, finance, strategy, HR, leadership, and execution.
The second pillar is about leadership. You will learn more about yourself, about your role as a leader, as a team manager, and as a coach of your employees.
The third pillar is about globalization: the world around us. We have trips planned to India, China, and to Silicon Valley. In each of these trips you will work with local companies and with local organizations. For example, in India, you work in groups on projects for Indian companies, helping them on one specific business challenges. In China, you will assess the feasibility of a project for a Chinese company. In the Silicon Valley, you will help an entrepreneur to prepare and actually give a presentation to venture capitalists.
During your journey you will expand your network due to many interactions with your classmates, who are from different industries, different countries, and with different backgrounds. But what you have in common is the motivation and dedication to become global leaders. I'm constantly impressed by our EMBAs, a dedicated group of women and men who never stop learning. I invite you to learn more and I welcome your application. "
Read the transcript to uncover Anda's international business management experience with IMD Business School's Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA).
"My name is Anda Cristescu. I'm Romanian and Dutch. I live in Geneva in Switzerland. I work for Cargill in the ocean transportation business unit, heading operations.
The Executive MBA with its three stages, FBL, AMC and the Executive MBA, has really changed completely my perspective on things.
I think I've learned a lot of the breadth of different industries, different businesses. Small, large, private, public. How the economics work, how customers and markets work, which I have never been able to do through simple career ascension. And I look now at the possibilities that are out there for myself professionally and for my personal fulfillment in a much broader way. And it's really about choices now, which I really didn't feel I had before.
I was on a track, an ascending track but it was unilateral, whereas now there's a world there's a world of opportunities in front of me. "
Discover how IMD Business School's Executive MBA helped Sascha Zahnd become more global to take on international business management.
"I am Sascha Zahnd. I am Swiss. I lived for three months in the Silicon Valley working for Tesla as VP Global Supply Chain.
This program helped me to learn the job in terms of being prepared globally, being inspired, taking a chance, taking some risks, and actually feeling that I can take on the next step and accept the challenge. At Tesla, I can apply the learnings in briefings, in quarterly planning, in strategic decisions, in talking to people, so in many ways.
The program helped me feel confident that, even with the smart 25-year-old Stanford graduates, I can keep up with the pace and I'm up-to-date how we should act as executives. "
Discover the IMD Silicon Valley startup competition international business management visit.
"Jim Pulcrano: We decided a long time ago that entrepreneurship and innovation and having that entrepreneurial mindset, that that was a key theme of our executive MBA program. And what better place to see it and feel it and touch it than Silicon Valley? This place is iconic. It happens here. Every place you turn, you go around the corner, you see something, you get clues. So that's why we're here in Silicon Valley.
I want them to understand the mindset of the entrepreneur, 'cause one day they will be negotiating with an entrepreneur, acquiring a startup, licensing technology from them, and they need to understand that person across the table that they're dealing with. But even more importantly, there may be a group in their midst that's different from all the other teams that they've got, and different because they're entrepreneurial. And I want them to recognize that, and not crush that team who's probably generating more ideas and more profit than any other team.
The executive MBAs and small teams, large teams, will meet with up to different 50 different companies, venture capitalists, HR professionals, et cetera. Why do these people want to meet with IMD's executive MBA class? It's because we come in with good questions. Our participants are here, they have diverse backgrounds. They're experienced people, 40 years of age. A lot of experience and different ideas. And the questions they ask are the questions that Silicon Valley people don't often get asked. They value that different perspective that we bring when we visit Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: One of the rules about prototyping is ... prototype to answer a question. Is this the final version, right, bobbles down here, which is fantastic if you're a five-year-old girl.
Anda Cristescu: What I learned this week about entrepreneurship and innovation is that there's really literally no limits to what we can do, and it's a matter of figuring out for yourself, what is it that you're passionate about, and then pursuing that goal, and to not let yourself be stopped by too many obstacles along the way. Have a good plan, think well about it, and then shoot.
Jim Pulcrano: Every year, we come to Silicon Valley with five Swiss startups that have come through the IMD Startup Competition that we've been running for almost 20 years. A competition where we try to select up to 25 different startups to work with IMD's MBAs and executive MBAs. And the five that we bring here every year, they're sort of the raw material for the class, leading up to the VC pitch exercise that we do on the Friday morning.
So this expedition has since already started months ago, when our EMBA students started working with their Swiss high tech startups in small teams to try and understand them, to try and understand their business model.
Lucy Han: We visited to several VC days, and we also had some VCs come to us to introduce how this whole thing works. After this, we have a group discussion and try to figure out, to try to finalize our presentation, how we can support our startup company to create such an evaluation.
Jim Pulcrano: Now, what does a venture capitalist expect? Very, very simple. What is the value proposition, who is the customer, how does this thing work, how do you make money, how do I make money? That simple. We're talking about startups here, but that applies to anybody in any company, big or small. So if they can communicate that well on a Friday morning, they'll have done a great job.
They've got the inputs. Now it's a question of whether they can turn those inputs into a compelling 15-minute pitch tomorrow morning. This evening, we've been doing dry runs with all the teams to make sure that they're ready, looking for coherence, looking for logic. Can we see the value proposition, can we see the customer segment and how to sell to it? Do we understand how they make money? Do we understand how they make money for their investors?
Stefan Michel: So I will be very tough with you, first because you can take it and this is ... It's very tough, the exercise.
Any person, right before the speech, there's going to be some nervousness. But I believe in our case, because I plan to present and pitch it, and I'm confident about it.
Tino Bendix: To pitch for real VCs is going to be very stressful. You don't know how they will react, and you basically have to be able to answer very quick and with a convincing voice.
Vladyslav V.: Well, how did the pitch go? That was a learning experience. We thought we did well, but the VCs did not like it. They had a lot of technical aspects they wanted to clarify, and the risk element was also unclear for them. Clearly we did not completely understand the world of a VC.
Fred Kittler: From the presentation, I can't tell if it's a feature, if it's a product, or if it's a business. And if it's not a business, you don't want to invest.
Lucy Han: The pitch went very well, and we had a really much better presentation than yesterday. We also answered almost all of the questions of the VCs.
Stefan Michel: This was outstanding.
Stefan Michel: I'm very impressed by three things. The learnings of the participants, just the difference between yesterday's dry run and today's presentation, for some of the groups, was really impressive. Secondly, I'm very happy about the caliber of venture capitalists that we have here. That makes this exercise a real world, real learning opportunity. And finally, I'm also impressed by the quality of the startup companies that work with us on this startup competition.
Jim Pulcrano: This week, we're putting them through a fire hose of ideas, new business models, new ways of doing work. And my hope is at the end of it, that they'll see, there is another world out there. A world of innovation and ideas and risk-taking that is different from maybe the corporate world they come from.
Anda Cristescu: I've learned a lot of the breadth of different industries, different businesses, small, large, private, public. How the economics work, how customers and markets work, which I would have never been able to do through a simple career ascension. And I look now at the possibilities that are out there for myself professionally, and for my personal fulfillment, in a much broader way. And it's really about choices now, which I really didn't feel I had before. Now, there's a world of opportunities in front of me. "
Hear from global leader and IMD EMBA alumni Christophe Regnault.
"Hello, my name is Christophe Regnault. I'm an alumni, EMBA executive MBA class 2014. I joined the executive MBA because to me, IMD was the only school where you really dive into concrete, down-to-earth, things that enable you to immediate deliver and apply it in your professional environment. Towards your team, towards your organization, the projects you are dealing with and so forth and so on.
So, what did I enjoy the most? Dealing with concrete things that you can immediately apply. On numerous projects, basically, you go back to your office with a working frame, that you can immediately apply and start work on associating all the different stakeholders across your organization.
I really also enjoy very much the leadership stream. Ben Bryant, work with the coaches. What I also mostly enjoy at IMD, is the learning. It's a learning journey, and you bring the learning with you all throughout your professional career. So you keep on learning and it keeps on popping in your head like, yeah, you always remember all the stuff you've been through with your colleagues doing the expeditions that you went to. Whether it was India, China, the US, Silicon Valley, so forth and so on. And then it gives you, when you mostly need it, great input to sort of like being able to step back and really deliver what you were expected to deliver. "
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