MBA 701. Purpose Driven Leadership. 3 Credits.

This course will explore the leadership imperatives and competencies that are necessary to act on business challenges and drive both personal and organizational success in a competitive business environment. On a personal level, it is important to create a leadership model to guide how you influence others, manage change, resolve conflict, make decisions, communicate with impact, and build partnerships to drive impact. On an organizational level, forward-thinking leaders must understand how to integrate operational initiatives into broader strategic plans while still maintaining operational excellence, ensuring talent readiness, and building inter-group alignment among other things.

MBA 702. Critical Thinking Beyond Business As Usual. 3 Credits.

This course emphasizes that business does not happen in a vacuum and will move your critical thinking focus from a discipline-specific way of thinking to a more integrated exploration of how disciplines work together and impact one another. The course examines a variety of perspectives, such as the humanities and social sciences, to gain a more holistic understanding of the environment in which business operates, uncover surprising interrelationships and movements outside the traditional business perspective, and focus on a deeper level of discourse needed to be effective in a rapidly changing world.

MBA 703. The Learning Organization. 3 Credits.

This course explores various perspectives on how participants can build learning organizations. The course begins with Senge's 5th Discipline, which states that learning organizations depend upon the mastery of five dimensions: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building a shared vision, and team learning. Next, the class will explore a model of a learning organization which includes a learning environment, learning processes, and leadership support of learning along with an organizational assessment tool. Finally, the class will discover how the iterative processes involved in the systematic approach to problem-solving of design thinking fosters learning and innovation within organizations.

MBA 704. The Exponential Enterprise & Abundance. 3 Credits.

This course provides a perspective on the dynamic nature of global supply chains, developing a sustainable supply chain management strategy, and aligning it with the organizational strategy. The topics will include but are not limited to globalization, advantages and risks of globalization, emerging technologies in manufacturing such as 3D printing and how it may affect supply chains, long-term sourcing decisions based on environmental and societal impacts, flexibility in sourcing/manufacturing/fulfillment and resilience in case of a breakdown, as well as the relevance of concepts such as Lean, Six-sigma and JIT.

MBA 705. Evidence-Based Decision Making. 3 Credits.

This course explores organizational decision-making based on evidence-based management. Today, many organizations fail to capitalize on existing knowledge available in management research or even in their organization’s own wealth of data. This course examines the practice of, barriers to, and strategies for engaging in evidence-based management to enhance leadership impact. The goal of the course is to equip business leaders with the capability to be critical and analytical thinkers who can challenge established beliefs and utilize best available evidence to make effective decisions in an increasingly complex business environment.

MBA 706. Creating Brand Value. 3 Credits.

This course helps students understand the strategies about building, managing, and protecting brands. Specific areas covered include brand equity, brand value, forming customer relationships around a brand, as well as creating and sustaining brand loyalty. Social media’s influence has extended to many spheres of life and today’s younger generations are more skeptical of marketing and not as brand loyal as were the previous generations. The course explores how to develop better consumer-brand relationships that can create a clear competitive advantage as branding is becoming more participatory and experiential between customers and organizations.

MBA 707. Leading Transformational Change. 3 Credits.

This course focuses on initiating and sustaining positive organizational change considering the importance of both people and process. Emphasis will be placed on learning how to identify and drive organizational changes needed to adapt strategically to changing technology, market, and internal demands. Considering the distinction between incremental versus transformational change, the course will highlight how to catalyze new approaches to improve results by transforming organizational culture, processes, and systems. Finally, the course will explore how to be an effective change leader by proactively recognizing and empathizing with individuals' resistance, making a compelling case for change, and involving others to gain buy-in.

MBA 708. Disruptive Innovation. 3 Credits.

This course will creatively approach the subjects of ideas instigation, business opportunity need identification, and the development of suitable business models within the knowledge-driven, digital, global economy. The course will use numerous discovery, creativity, ideation, problem-solving tools and frameworks, and concentrate on turning them into a viable business solution. It will delve into best practices and strategies of companies that have successfully engaged in disruptive innovation. Further, we will identify internal and external barriers and ways to overcome them stimulating the comparison and integration of different cultural and professional perspectives.

MBA 709. Artificial Intelligence & Technological Advances. 3 Credits.

This course emphasizes the understanding of how artificial intelligence (AI) and technological advances could be used to shape and implement strategic and operational changes at various levels within an organization. The course focuses on how AI and technological advances: (a) are transforming businesses and how they could be used to develop competitive business advantage; (b) could be used in shaping and executing the organization’s strategy; (c) could be leveraged to foster a culture of data-driven experimentation and decision making; and (d) must include an understanding of the ethical issues around the use of AI – and the importance of keeping algorithms transparent, fair, and unbiased.

MBA 710. The Path to Sustainability. 3 Credits.

This course provides an overarching understanding of sustainability, the relationship between business decisions and sustainability, and the reasons why each business decision must be evaluated in term of economic, environmental, and social performances. The course also demonstrates that business leaders must evaluate each business decision with a consideration of long-term sustainability. The course also explores the need for transforming organizational culture so that sustainability is prioritized as a way of life and it allows for the continual integration of lifecycle assessment, which includes sustainability of products from design through disposal.

MBA 711. Culture as a Competitive Advantage. 3 Credits.

This course focuses on understanding the value of the statement "culture eats strategy for breakfast" and then creating initiatives to ensure culture and talent drive ongoing performance and become a source of competitive advantage. The focus is on preparing business professionals to build a strong culture and maximize their people's skills sets to get the most out of them in an ever-changing business environment. The course emphasizes how to implement state of the art talent management tools to build the culture needed to take organizations to new levels.

MBA 712. Alternative Futures & Strategic Foresight. 3 Credits.

This course focuses on new breakthroughs, changing technologies, and cutting-edge innovations that could impact business. Learners will apply strategic foresight and enable their organizations to reframe preferences and expectations for the future. By working as strategic managers, learners will usher in changes in firm strategies, tactics, goals, plans, recruitment efforts, and management styles. This course will introduce topics and enable deeper thinking into the applicability of artificial intelligence, future of biotechnology, the singularity, strategic design and design futures, and emerging issue analysis among other under-researched, highly critical future trends.