Tag Archives: Executive Education

Using technology to shape the future of executive education — Peter Hirst

There is growing interest in online programs as a way to expand the reach of executive education. However, that is balanced with our pedagogical philosophy at MIT Sloan, which involves high levels of engagement and interaction among faculty and students. A big question is: How do we keep that collaborative learning model in the context of an online program?

While there are many technologies to explore, we’re currently experimenting with one called AvayaLive™ Engage which offers an immersive online world in which participants interact in real time with avatars. We piloted it for executive education purposes last year by offering an online workshop for participants following an in-person program.  We learned a lot in terms of what was effective and what needed to be tweaked, but our big takeaway was that the platform provides a dynamic learning environment for participants. Read More »

Jonathan Lehrich: Global Organizations Lab brings the MIT EMBA to Leading Companies

Jonathan Lehrich, Director, MIT Sloan Executive MBA Program

Working full-time while earning their MBA, students in MIT Sloan’s Executive MBA Program are constantly applying what they learn in class to their jobs. There is a compounding effect in that the more times they apply what they learn, the more they accumulate knowledge and expertise in their toolkits.

However, it’s a big world out there and a lot more can be learned when they have an opportunity to apply that knowledge outside of their own companies. After all, there are only so many experiments you can do in your own company before you bump into barriers. Read More »

Erik Brynjolfsson on Big Data: A revolution in decision-making improves productivity

MIT Sloan Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson

There is a fundamental change underway in the way that companies make decisions. Instead of relying on a leader’s gut instincts, an increasing number of companies are embracing a new method that involves data-based analytics. This ‘Big Data’ revolution is occurring mainly because technology enables firms to gather extremely detailed information from and propagate knowledge to their consumers, suppliers, alliance partners, and competitors.

Companies that use this type of ‘data driven decision making’ actually show higher performance. Working with Lorin Hitt and Heekyung Kim, I analyzed 179 large publicly-traded firms and found that the ones that adopted this method are about 5% more productive and profitable than their competitors.  Furthermore, the study found a relationship between this method and other performance measures such as asset utilization, return on equity and market value. There is a lot of low-hanging fruit for companies that are able to use Big Data to their advantage. Read More »