Full-time MBA Program
Foundation for Leadership
Leading Through Innovation in the Berkeley MBA Program represents a challenging set of educational experiences that take advantage of the school’s culture of leadership and innovation.
- The lessons begin in MBA orientation, with an exploration of the innovation process.
- They continue into the core MBA curriculum, which covers the foundation of management and business, with an emphasis on leadership development.
Leadership course enhances vital skills
A cutting-edge, required Leadership Course will develop your capacity to lead others by giving you an in-depth understanding of your own capabilities, based on 360-degree evaluations from past managers, co-workers, peers, and clients. You will also:
- Participate in experiential leadership exercises
- Read the latest advances in our understanding of leadership
- Discuss cases offered by top leaders of organizations
- Develop a customized plan to elevate your own leadership potential by improving such skills as fostering creativity and mastering a flexible set of leadership styles.
Peers@Haas: community support for personal growth
When the Leadership Course concludes, you have the option of joining a structured, peer-coaching program designed to make you a more effective leader of innovation. Called Peers@Haas, it starts by having you identify one specific behavior that you want to change, and then ask fellow students, alumni, and others to judge your progress toward improvement over the next 11 months. Students work together with a partner, and also meet with six-member coaching groups monthly.
Haas@Work: real-time competitive challenges
Leading Through Innovation is supported by a series of experiential programs and executive skills seminars. Key among them is Haas@Work, a successful applied innovation program that sends teams of Berkeley MBA students to work with top executives at a local firm. In the program, you research a competitive challenge posed by the firm and develop innovative solutions during a one-day, on-site workshop. The best ideas are selected by the executives, and a student team is then chosen to implement the strongest solution at the firm.
Executive skills courses hone leadership abilities
A series of optional executive skills courses also helps you fine-tune your leadership abilities. Recent speakers have included Srikumar Rao of Columbia University, who taught students how to manage ambiguity and uncertainty, and to focus on challenging the status quo in the pursuit of dreams. Marshall Goldsmith, acclaimed author on effective leadership, prepared students to be effective peer coaches in leadership.
Leading-edge electives
Finally, you can master Leading Through Innovation by taking a series of cutting-edge elective courses, such as:
- Creativity and Innovation in Marketing, in which the goal is to enhance your ability to generate creative ideas, and not merely to evaluate ideas of others, as is true of more traditional courses.
- Managing Innovation and Change draws from economic, organizational, and engineering perspectives to identify the sources of innovation inside corporations.
