EMBA Americas curriculum

Designed for experienced professionals, the Executive MBA Americas program curriculum prepares you for the next phase of your career. The coursework is applicable to all industries and functional areas.

Throughout the program, individual and team assignments provide opportunities for applying course concepts and techniques. You can use your own organization and professional experiences as the context for your work, providing an immediate benefit to your organization.

Curriculum highlights

Emphasis on general management
Provides a holistic view of how an organization works
Requires both individual and collaborative assignments
Integrated and sequenced
Includes customization with elective courses

Course requirements

The Executive MBA Americas program features an integrated and sequenced series of courses that provide both basic business fundamentals and advanced, strategy-driven topics. You’ll complete 60 credits of required courses and electives over the course of 22 months.

Sequenced course requirements

Courses are taught in order and build upon one another as you progress through each term. The first year of the program focuses on the typical “business core,” while terms three and four focus on innovation and global business, respectively.

Elective courses

You will complete up to seven elective courses during the program, taking two or three courses during each January residential session. In the second year, you will choose one elective in the July residential session. Offerings vary yearly based on student preferences and global business trends.

Global business study

In the final term, complete a faculty-led, one-week international immersion. You’ll gain firsthand exposure to global business and the global economy with market-focused learning driven by corporate visits, business meetings, and cultural experiences

Typical course sequence and descriptions

The Executive MBA Americas program is 22 months long (four terms) and combines class weekends and residential sessions. Each term begins with an immersive on-campus residential session.

Term 1: July — December

The following six courses are required during the first term of the Americas program.

Leadership & High Performance Teams
Leadership & High Performance Teams focuses on the theory and practice of high performance in task-performing groups. The aim of this first course in the EMBA Americas program is to provide information and experiences that are useful during your time at Johnson as you work in your learning teams and in your current role—course learnings are directly applicable to the teams you participate in and lead at work.

Managerial Statistics
Managerial Statistics develops your skills in decision-making and communication under conditions of uncertainty and risk. Topics include introduction to data analysis, probability and discrete random variables and decision analysis, continuous random variables and portfolio analysis, sampling theory and confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, simple regression, and multiple regression.

Managing and Leading in Organizations
In Managing and Leading in Organizations, you will examine what managers and leaders actually spend their time doing and what factors lead to more effective performance. The course focuses on three leadership competencies that are crucial for your success: 1) critical thinking and decision making, 2) smart collaborating with an eye toward creativity and change, and 3) the ability to motivate, influence, and inspire.

Microeconomics for Management
Microeconomics for Management provides a broad range of basic microeconomics models that are first applied to a wide range of general applications and then to business and management. Topics include opportunity cost, supply and demand, benefits and costs of government intervention in the market, the model of perfect competition, monopolies and pricing strategies, oligopoly, and game theory.

Financial Accounting
The goal of this course is to introduce you to the fundamental concepts of financial accounting. Financial accounting information is commonly used by current and potential investors to make investment decisions. The focus of this course will be on training you to be a knowledgeable consumer of accounting information for business decisions, rather than a producer of such information. In particular, the emphasis will be on the uses and limitations of financial accounting information.

Critical Thinking for Business Leaders
This course is based on the simple, essential proposition that leading well requires thinking well. Succeeding in any business leadership role requires you to think critically and make quality decisions with, and on behalf of, organizational stakeholders, even in the face of challenges such as imperfect/incomplete information, changing and unforeseen circumstances, and human nature in all of its complexity and unpredictability.

Major content themes focus on constructing a persuasive argument and deconstructing arguments made by others; approaching business problems systematically and thoroughly; and producing a problem solution that is well-reasoned, likely to be well-received by ultimate decision-makers; and able to be implemented successfully. You will be introduced to, and then practice using, analytical frameworks that you can apply to organizational challenges and opportunities in order to solve problems and communicate your proposed solutions effectively and persuasively. These are not only indispensable leadership skills (although they are certainly that), they are indispensable life skills.

Term 2: January — May

You’ll begin your second term by opting into either the AI Pathway or Executive Management Pathway, which will inform the elective courses you select during your week in residence. You will then complete the four remaining required courses before finishing your first year in the Americas program.

Electives
You will complete three electives of your choice. Elective options are reviewed annually and are subject to change. A sample of electives includes:

AI Applications for Business
Analytics for Marketing Strategy
Business Strategy in a World of AI
Core Leadership Skills for a VUCA World
Courageous Communication
Data Analytics with AI
Designing and Building AI Solutions
Design Thinking
Digital Transformation, AI, and Innovation
Disruptive Innovators from China & Other Emerging Markets
Entrepreneurship of Physical Products
Financial Analysis & Equity Investing
Intro to FinTech, Finnovation, and Finalytics
Management Presentations
Negotiations

Managing Operations
Managing operations examines the management of processes—operations that convert inputs into outputs. Topics include process improvement, queuing theory, productivity, constrained optimization, inventory management, quality management, service operations, supply chain management, and the role of manufacturing in the firm.

Business Strategy
Using modern, economics-based theories of markets and firms as a foundation, you will study a multitude of real-world strategic business situations. In Business Strategy, you’ll learn about a wide variety of industries using both class readings and student experiences as you gain a set of analytic tools that can be applied to many business circumstances and provide further confidence in day-to-day strategic decision making. The course includes reading, lecture, and, most importantly, in-class discussion.

Managerial Finance
Managerial Finance introduces the basic principles of finance. Topics in the course are relevant to day-to-day life as well as financial managers. You’ll learn to make better decisions on your own financial matters, understand how corporations make financial decisions and how capital markets work, and develop a good foundation for more advanced finance courses.

Marketing Management
Marketing Management examines how managers make marketing decisions in complex and competitive environments. Topics include consumer behavior, promotion and advertising, channels of distribution, international and competitive strategy, new product development, marketing of services, segmentation, and pricing strategies.

Term 3: July — December, second year

The second year of the program is intended to elevate students’ learning and abilities, building upon the first year. The third term is based specifically around themes of innovation and impact. Students take courses that span design thinking, sustainability, and advanced financial frameworks such as Macroeconomics and Investment Banking. In addition to four required courses, you will have the choice of an elective this term.

Macroeconomics and International Trade
Investment Banking Essentials is structured to provide Executive MBA students with “real-world” investment banking experience in an academic environment. Working individually and in teams, you will play the role of investment bankers throughout the semester. You will be introduced to the capital raising, leveraged buyout, and merger and acquisition processes.

Executive Presence
Executive presence and leadership communication skills are essential for career success. They allow senior leaders to engage effectively in different contexts because they are the basis for building trusting relationships, convincing tough stakeholders, and showing confidence at a senior level. Business leaders must demonstrate high-level competence, inspire confidence, and lead with a presence that AI simply cannot emulate. Through real-time practice and peer feedback, this course will enable you to use your communication skills to convey leadership potential, connect across diverse audiences, and navigate a globally dynamic environment.

Technology Strategy
Technology Strategy arms you with frameworks to navigate today’s technical landscape, which is changing at breakneck speed. We start with creating & capturing value via disruptive technologies, including the limits of “tech push” and loopholes in intellectual property protection. Then we do a deep dive into AI, learning how large language models work, why it is so hard for LLMs not to hallucinate, and managing strategic AI deployment costs and risks.

Innovation and New Venture Creation
This project course focuses on the development of a business plan. Key topics in entrepreneurship are covered, including idea generation, identifying and screening opportunities, conducting customer development and market research, delivering an elevator pitch, and forming a management team. Over the course of the term, you and your team will generate a business plan and receive feedback from faculty. At the end of the term, teams present their plan to a panel of professional and angel investors, entrepreneurs, class members, and professors.

Advanced Strategic Analysis
Advanced Strategic Analysis will help you develop your strategic thinking, strategy formulation, and execution skills. It will use a series of cases involving companies in different strategic situations, such as in an emerging industry, mature industry, transforming industry, etc. You will engage in developing and/or evaluating appropriate strategies in these varied situations.

Investment Banking: Valuation & Transactions
Investment Banking: Valuation and Transactions combines corporate finance theory with real world corporate transaction experience in an academic environment. Executive MBA students, working individually and in teams, will learn the theory of intrinsic and relative corporate valuation. Students will then apply that theory as they play the role of investment bankers, working on all aspects of the capital raising, leveraged buyout, and merger & acquisition processes.

Strategies for Sustainability
Firms are under increasing pressure to be more accountable for the environmental and social impacts that they create. These pressures create great challenges for managers, but they can also present you with tremendous opportunities. In order to unlock these opportunities, it is important to come to a more concrete understanding of what sustainability means for your company, and in this course, we will examine frameworks that make the messy term sustainability more understandable.

Term 4: January — May, second year

The final term of the program is focused on further developing executive leadership through the breadth of global business. You’ll start the term with your final residential session and three more electives. Then you will complete five remaining courses—one of which includes international immersion.

Electives
You will complete three electives of your choice. Elective options are reviewed annually and are subject to change. A sample of electives includes:

Analytics for Marketing Strategy
Core Leadership Skills for a VUCA World
Courageous Communication
Data Analytics with AI
Designing and Building AI Solutions
Design Thinking
Digital Transformation, AI, and Innovation
Disruptive Innovative Companies from China & Other Emerging Markets
Entrepreneurship of Physical Products
Financial Analysis & Equity Investing
Intro to Fintech, Finnovation, and Finalytics
Management Presentations
Negotiations

Cornell Management Simulation
The Cornell Management Simulation is a business simulation course in which you will work as part of a team to manage a manufacturing company. Each team is responsible for making yearly decisions in four broad areas: sales, marketing, operations, and finance. Teams will all start in the same position, competing with one another to gain market share, generate revenue, and increase profitability.

Global Business Study (international immersion)
In the final term of the program, students choose from two to three destination offerings and participate in faculty-led Global Business Study trips, which are one-week immersions in a global market. The location and theme of these studies vary each year. Destinations may include the UAE, India, Israel, China, Japan, and Brazil. The week is packed with business meetings, site visits, and cultural immersion opportunities.

Machine Learning Applications in Business
AI is no longer a technical curiosity—it is a leadership imperative. This course provides executives with the frameworks and tools to harness data science, machine learning, and AI for strategic advantage. Starting from business challenges rather than technical details, we introduce a decision-making framework that unites diverse use cases into a coherent approach for growth, efficiency, and innovation.

Drawing on real-world applications from startups to the Fortune 500 and the instructor’s experience as both a researcher and entrepreneur, participants will engage with case studies, practical datasets, and real-world solutions.

A central goal of the course is to prepare executives not just for today’s applications, but for the emerging agentic future—where AI systems act as collaborators, decision-support partners, and drivers of organizational transformation.

Managerial Reporting
Managerial Reporting will introduce you to the science of designing, deploying, and defending managerial reporting systems that help organizations achieve their goals. Topics include balanced scorecards, incentive compensation, budgeting, decentralization, outsourcing, job design, behavioral biases, gaming and occupational fraud, budgeting, job order and process costing, variable costing, absorption costing, activity-based costing, capacity costing, and standard costing.

Product & Brand Strategies
The first part of this course focuses on tools and techniques associated with formulating successful new product strategies. You will cover topics such as business innovation, blue oceans, disruptive technologies, and product line design. In the second part of this course, you’ll examine the foundations of brand management and will focus on the tools and techniques needed to create a meaningful brand, position a brand, promote a brand, leverage brand equity, and communicate brand meaning via traditional and digital media.