(Paris, de L’Etraz, professor of entrepreneurship at the IE Business School and the executive director of the new program pictured above)
A year ago, Berkeley’s Engineering Leadership Professional program under the Fung Institute of Engineering Leadership was launched as a leadership program for Silicon Valley engineers who wanted a deep dive in business and management but didn’t want to commit to an MBA program. Meeting every Monday night for six months, this program has attracted engineers from Facebook, Cisco, Yahoo, Applied Materials and Network Appliances, among others.
“This is a hidden gem of a program,” says Ikhlaq Sidhu, the curriculum designer and academic director of the program. “The first year they liked it. This year they love it. The goal is to help engineers and scientists lead and innovate.”
Now two prominent business schools—IE Business School in Madrid, Spain, and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology–are partnering with Berkeley to bring a version of the program global. The schools plan to launch the new program, which will combine three weeks of in-person sessions with six months of online learning, in March of next year.
“Today, so many technical decisions are also business decisions,” adds Sidhu. “Our curriculum offers both real life technology leadership perspectives and proven academic frameworks.”
The new program begins with a week-long session in Silicon Valley, then morphs into online mode for three months of Internet study, followed by a week in Hong Kong and then three more months of online work. It concludes with a weeklong residential session in Madrid at IE Business School. Then, participants will be given two years in which to decide whether they want to pursue IE’s blended global MBA program.
“For the week in Silicon Valley, we actually have lined up a set of faculty from Stanford and Berkeley and industry people from the valley,” adds Sidhu. “In Hong Kong, there is a whole different set of faculty and industry people who can talk about how to do business in Asia. And in Madrid, the IE Business School professors plus people we will fly from Silicon Valley will address the leadership and culture building issues. The blended stuff in between will be done by IE professors.”
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