Executive MBA
DURATION
20 Months
LANGUAGES
English
PACE
Part time
APPLICATION DEADLINE
Request application deadline *
EARLIEST START DATE
Request earliest startdate
TUITION FEES
EUR 75,000 **
STUDY FORMAT
Blended, Distance Learning
* rolling admissions process
** april 2023 intake; EUR 80,000 - september 2023 intake; to become an IE University student, all IE Community members should make a one-off contribution to the IE Foundation; this is a single payment of €1,200 to be made during the enrollment process
Introduction
IE Business School’s Executive MBA empowers you to transform yourself so that you can stay ahead of the curve and be the leader a changing world needs. You will acquire competencies elected by a C-level leader and prepare for your future in today’s rapidly evolving business world.
Over the course of 20 months, alongside a diverse group of international executives and in the hands of our expert faculty, you’ll gain the skills you need to make a positive impact in today’s competitive business landscape.
Our Executive MBA is a highly personalized program, focused on your professional and personal development. It’s a transformational journey, designed to help you achieve—or even exceed—your goals. Together with your personal executive coach, you will develop your own personal development plan, based on your unique career and life objectives. And your executive coach will be there for you throughout the program, to support your learning journey and help you put your plan into action.
Your career success is important to us, which is why we ensure that you’ll be ready to put your learning into practice from day one. You’ll practice in real-time contextual business scenarios where you’ll apply the concepts, tools, and methodologies from your academic knowledge and turn them into tangible deliverables. Working on proposals that you will deliver to a number of critical stakeholders from the CEO ecosystem will prepare you to actively engage at the highest levels in the professional arena.
You’ve already built a solid career and demonstrated your industry expertise. Now is the time to take another step on your lifelong learning journey; push your boundaries, scale up your professional footprint, prepare to drive excellence, and lead with purpose with the Executive MBA.
5 Reasons to study the Executive MBA
Get the leadership skills to stay relevant in the digital era
The Executive MBA is designed to create the next generation of business leaders, ready to make a positive impact in the fast-changing, global business world. We provide a truly experiential, skills-based, integrated learning environment that will put you in real business scenarios where you can convert the concepts, tools, and methodologies you have learned into tangible deliverables and present them to internal and external stakeholders. You’ll gain the technical and interpersonal skills to become an inspirational and purposeful leader.
Get ready for the C-suite
We’ll help you to get C-suite ready, giving you the cutting-edge insight, global strategic vision, and practical experience you need for today’s business world. Our Executive MBA teaches you how to take your skills to the next level and demonstrate them effectively, leaving you ready to make an impact in the boardroom and beyond.
Personalized Career Transformation
Whether you’re already on a growth path in your current environment or thinking about changing industries, you’ll have access to a personal executive coach throughout the program. Together you’ll work on your individual executive career transformation plan, and you’ll also have customized activities to help you expand your executive professional footprint. To help you achieve this goal, students will also be guided by a mentor throughout the program, whose years of experience and expertise will give them valuable insight into their future careers.
Network with experienced sector leaders - for life
At IE Business School, you’ll be immersed in a diverse community of leaders from different industries, enabling you to grow your top-tier network and expand your professional footprint. You’ll gain exposure to top executives from different industries, as well as benefit from exceptional networking opportunities with fellow executives and our expert faculty. Additionally, you’ll have lifelong access to our unparalleled global network of over 60,000 alumni.
A future-proofed learning methodology
Our unique methodology combines online and face-to-face learning in an environment that reflects today’s reality; there’s no need to put your career on hold in order to benefit from a world-class academic experience. Through a project-based, hands-on approach, you’ll cultivate your leadership skills in a risk-free yet challenging learning environment as you collaborate with fellow executives and faculty from across the globe, gaining the skills and knowledge you’ll need today and well into the future.
Bootcamps
The blended nature of the Executive MBA features optional face-to-face periods that are a critical element of the learning experience.
The blended nature of the Executive MBA features optional face-to-face periods that are a critical element of the learning experience. These periods offer a unique opportunity to live the IE experience to its fullest. You will be able to meet and collaborate with your fellow classmates, network in person and learn from the different professional backgrounds of your colleagues. They are highly recommended and offer you the chance to elevate your learning experience and gain a global vision of business through long-lasting professional contacts. In addition, these periods feature our unique Bootcamps—four short, intensive, and highly focused modules that will center on impact skills and boosting your career.
You’ll address cognitive and behavioral skills, learn how to network at the very highest levels, discover business “speed dating” and more. All while networking face-to-face not just with the professors—each of them leading industry practitioners in their own right—but also your fellow professionals, drawn from a broad range of industries, backgrounds, and geographies.
Rankings
1 worldwide Online MBA - QS 2020
2 worldwide Online MBA - Financial Times 2020
Ideal Students
You have a solid career and are an industry expert, but you’re ready to be the next best you: a leader with purpose and real impact.
You want to gain the thinking, behavioral and digital skills required of C-suite executives so that you can lead organizational transformation, address global economic challenges and tackle today’s social issues through an ethical and sustainable approach to business.
You want to prioritize your personal and professional growth while being an active member of an international executive network.
Our Executive MBA is for you if
- you want to get out of your comfort zone and push the boundaries of constant improvement.
- you want to transform yourself to lead change in people and business, for a better future.
- you want to develop a global network of top professionals from across sectors.
- you’re an industry expert with a solid career, but want to future-proof your leadership skills for the digital era.
- you’ve established yourself in your industry of choice, but want to take your leadership skills to the next level.
Curriculum
The Executive MBA focuses on leadership in the digital era. It’s a unique program aimed at aspiring C-suite leaders who want to transform themselves and their organizations.
Companies' needs are changing quicker than ever in today’s rapidly evolving business world. Our program departs from the traditional focus on “hard and soft skills” and lessons are delivered as "learning pills” that result in each individual having their own understanding of how it all comes together, leading students toward a more effective integrated learning approach to content and experiences that fosters the mastery of their application in specific business contexts.
Under the guidance of our experienced faculty members, who are all sector experts, you’ll be placed in numerous business scenarios where you’ll not only apply tools, concepts, and methodologies from your academic knowledge but also convert them into deliverables in real time for your internal and external stakeholders.
To prepare you for C-suite success, the program also offers a Board Readiness module. This module focuses on the role of the Board and Board Committees, how to become a Board member, boardroom dynamics, and other topics relevant to Boards, such as corporate governance, strategy, culture, and risk management. In the Final Leadership Project, you’ll present your to the Board of a company to whose CEO you’ve presented your transformation proposals.
Leading your own brand and career
Throughout the program, IE Business School provides a helping hand for your personal transformation. In the beginning, you will work on your personal objectives, and convert them into a personal development plan. You will have at your disposal the personalized services of an executive coach to help you work on your brand and career development. This will define not only your objectives but also specific actions that will lead to the achievement of those objectives.
Every student is assigned a personal coach to follow up on their Executive Career Transformation Action Plan. Each student’s plan will have regular touchpoints with the executive coach.
Examples of program activities include, but are not limited to:
- Executive career development curriculum
- VIP exposure, including “speed dating” with top executives from different industries
- Personalized career coaching, features regular, 1-to-1 sessions throughout the program
Bootcamps
In a series of four in-person Bootcamps throughout the program, you’ll learn to understand key behavioral impact skills, which ultimately define what you do and how your behavior impacts the outcomes you generate for your organization and your surroundings.
While the Bootcamps are optional, they hold the potential to deepen your understanding of the entire program, featuring practical workshops, simulations, and varied situational role-playing exercises designed to enhance your problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, strategic thinking, and decision-making. You’ll practice active listening and discover how to inspire others, integrating and applying these cutting-edge competencies in numerous business scenarios.
Leaders’ Business Expertise
In a C-suite role, you need a 360° understanding of all relevant business aspects, not only relating to your own role, but also from the perspective of your peers. This is critical to driving sustainable operational and organizational excellence. Leaders’ business expertise comprises a range of modules designed to enhance the technical business skills that help leaders make the right decisions by understanding the business landscape, dependencies, and the impact of seemingly unrelated business aspects.
It includes the 360° Business Foundations, Advanced business topics, and your choice of specialization track: Leading Business Transformation or Leading People and Organizational Transformation.
Leading transformation in a digital era
You’ll have the opportunity to apply your knowledge directly as you acquire skills and expertise with hands-on projects that focus on creating a transformation roadmap for a company. This is followed by a number of business sprints in which you and your fellow students will work in groups to deliver solutions for specific business challenges and secure the expected outcomes.
Board Readiness Module
This module will address a comprehensive set of strategic topics which are on the agenda in every boardroom, giving you a 360° understanding of what’s required for a CEO to successfully manage relationships with the board.
The Executive MBA gives you the opportunity to take part in two optional residential weeks that will broaden your global business perspective and enhance your network. These optional weeks are Global Immersion Week and Global Network for Advanced Management Week.
(In order to attend the Global Network for Advanced Management Week, students will place a bid on their preferred location and later, will be allocated a destination by the Selection Committee based on their performance and motivational essay, as well as the number of spaces available. Kindly note that not all students receive their first choice.)
Career Opportunities
We are with you at every step of your transformation journey. The 20-month program duration is only the first step on that journey. Remaining relevant as a leader in the future means, among other things, becoming a lifelong learner. We ensure your learning continues by providing you with relevant and exclusive content, such as master classes on pertinent topics, VIP speakers, our Global Alumni Week, business and technology updates, etc.
At IE Business School, your professional development doesn’t end at graduation. Throughout the program, you’ll have opportunities to grow your global executive network as you mix with top executives, academics, and industry leaders. With personalized career coaching, an executive career transformation plan, and lifetime access to our Talent & Careers service, you’re fully prepared for the future. And you’ll have lifetime access to our exclusive professional network of over 70,000 alumni across the world.
Scholarships and Funding
The Financial Aid office looks for solutions to help cover program costs. The IE Foundation provides resources thanks to contributions from alumni, corporations, and anonymous donors.
Low-interest rates for students
IE works alongside some of Spain’s largest financial institutions to bring students affordable ways to finance their programs. In addition to competitive interest rates, these loan programs offer grace periods and up to 10-year repayment plans.
IE loans
Financial Aid awarded to students | IE Business School
Financial aid awarded to students
Scholarships range from 5% to 35% of tuition, and are awarded according to three criteria: merit, diversity, and financial need. IE also has a special fund with an endowment of €6 million for scholarships aimed at supporting women’s education. All financial assistance is possible thanks to contributions made by various companies to the Corporate Fund of Excellence.
Corporate Sponsorship
IE Business School’s blended approach to education provides students with the skills they need to make a real impact within their organizations while advancing their careers. Instead of having to choose between education and professional development, students often do both simultaneously with our Executive MBA.
Approximately 45% of IE Business School students currently receive some form of corporate sponsorship. These companies understand that by participating in our Executive MBA programs, their talented professionals will broaden their understanding of the newest business innovation tools, and bring in a refreshing global perspective to their organization.
Several scholarship options are available. Please check the university website for more information.
Admissions
Program Outcome
During the program, business-oriented academics will strengthen your hard skills, while the leadership-focused practical training ensures that you are ready to drive lasting change in your organization.
Program Tuition Fee
Program delivery
Our blended methodology combines online lectures, forums, and activities, with face-to-face modules in various locations around the world. By bringing together the best of online and in-person courses, we provide our students with a unique, unconventional educational experience.
The Executive MBA is available in English, Spanish or a combination of the two a bilingual option. If you opt for the bilingual version of the program, the first two periods would be taught in one language while the final period would be studied in the other.
English Language Requirements
Certify your English proficiency with PTE. The faster, fairer, simpler English test, accepted by thousands of universities around the world. PTE, Do it worry-free!
Program Admission Requirements
Demonstrate your commitment and readiness to succeed in business school by taking the GMAT exam – the most widely used exam for admissions that measures your critical thinking and reasoning skills.
Download the GMAT mini quiz to get a flavour of the questions you’ll find in the exam.