Transformation: Reinventing the Executive MBA

Changes in the business world have affected business schools‘ curriculum redesign, repositioning and innovation at both the course and program levels. Business schools are faced with this critical question: How should we arm our graduates with the knowledge, competencies and skills of agile leadership, sustainable innovation, entrepreneurial perseverance, strategic transformation, renewal and ethical stewardship so that they can succeed?

Business schools also face unprecedented challenges stemming from the rapidly evolving digital disruption and transformation of business output (the “fourth industrial revolution”). Some schools have developed new academic programs and/or redesigned their curriculum to maintain their competitiveness. Curricular changes should lead to appropriate learned skills that will be essential as firms continue to adapt to a radically changing world.

Three distinct domains are identified as critical areas for success in today’s business world and directly impact curriculum redesign, repositioning and innovation: 1) Digital technology literacy, 2) Data analytics literacy, and 3) Transformational leadership literacy. To master skills in these three realms, a change in mindset is needed. Mindset, popularized by Carol Dweck, is defined as the set of attitudes, skills and behaviors that executives need to successfully manage their challenges.

This article, written by Associate Dean Daewoo Park, was originally published in 2020, with the beginning paragraphs reposted here. For the full article on the college’s reinvention of the Executive MBA, please visit the 2020 edition of NIU Business magazine.

~ posted by M. De Jean, Director of Marketing and Editor in Chief, NIU Business magazine

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