Mba programs, courses, seminars, conferences and workshop

PROGRAM

VISION AND MISSION

Program in brief
The USI EMBA is a modular, Advanced Master in Management degree (60 ECTS) taught in English by an exceptional international faculty at Università della Svizzera italiana.
The 18-month program includes 15 courses: 11 core courses, 3 electives, 1 international study tour (Boston, July), and 14 workshops held on Friday evenings before each module.
Classes follow a hybrid format: one day of self-study followed by two consecutive on-site days in Lugano (Saturday and Sunday) each month, excluding August. Two elective courses are shared—one with the previous cohort and one with the upcoming one—offering a unique in-class networking experience across three generations of participants.
The program concludes with a two-month final project under faculty supervision, culminating in a thesis defense.

Vision

USI EMBA’s vision is to empower the next generation of global business leaders, instilled with unwavering ethics to drive transformative- positive change in the world.

Mission

USI EMBA’s mission actualizes its vision to shape ethical global business visionaries, through an unwavering commitment to excellence in education, led by our experienced international faculty who bridge theory and practice in intimate class settings. We embrace cutting-edge innovation, champion values and ethics, and commit to sustainability, nurturing strategic alliances. This empowers our students to lead by example, catalyzing profound, positive change in the relentless pursuit of a more sustainable and harmonious world.

USI EMBA distinctive features

Innovative content, focus on ethics, change and sustainability
Distinguished, world- class faculty and guest speakers with extensive experience: both from leading international business schools and from strategic consulting companies around the world.
Weekend format: lessons are Saturday and Sunday. In this way, Executive MBA participants can continue working full-time while they study, simultaneously advancing their careers and their professional and personal development.
Personalized learning experience: thanks to the small class size of twenty participants, exchanges between participants and faculty are meaningful and tutoring ensures that each individual gains the maximum from the courses.
Highly international student profile, 12 years average of working experience
Personalised career development services
Study in thriving Lugano, Switzerland, at the center of Europe’s cultural and business hubs

Diversity Group of People Brainstorming Meeting Ideas Concept

CURRICULUM

he USI EMBA 14 begins in November 2025 and extends until May 2027. Classes are conducted in Lugano every month for a total of fourteen months, utilizing a combination of online and on-site teaching. The first day of each session is asynchronous, followed by a transformational weekend on Saturday and Sunday, running from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm.

Workshops

Every Friday evening, before the start of the weekend course, workshops focusing on key soft and strategic skills are held by experts in their respective fields. These sessions provide participants with valuable insights and practical approaches to enhance decision-making, communication, and leadership capabilities.

The workshops include topics such as:

The Use of Randomization and Experiments in Business Decision-Making
Strategic and Creative Decision-Making
Evergreen Communication Skills
Managing Emotions
Data Science: Learning from Data or Persuade by Seeking the Truth
Dealing with Difficult Behavior in Negotiations
Leadership: Leading Today and Preparing for Tomorrow
Mastering Causal Links and Loops: Informing Strategic Decision-Making

These workshops form an essential part of the EMBA experience, supporting participants in developing competencies that contribute to their professional and personal growth.

Core courses

Leadership
This course invites participants to reflect on how they lead today and how they want to further develop their leadership skills and mindsets for leading successfully ‘tomorrow’.

Strategic and creative decision making
This course focuses on improving critical thinking and strategic decision making skills.

Business Analytics
Using quantitative tools to analyze business information and to develop a company’s strategy is a requirement for business leaders. This course covers an introduction to probability, statistics, optimization, all used in understanding business trends and improving efficiency.

Strategy
This course aims to provide an advanced overview to the key principles and practices of business strategy and strategic management in today’s fast-paced competitive environment. Understanding of the key theoretical concepts about good business strategy, how to make a strategic decision (aka, strategy formulation) by minimizing risk.

Finance
Understanding the finances of a company is essential. This course teaches the logic underlying the firm’s financial decisions: investment, financing, and payout policies.

Marketing
Without a market, is there any point in having a product? Understanding consumers, competitors and product development is critical to most businesses. Moreover, in today’s increasingly global market branding takes on a new dimension. Finally, this course looks at the new channels and tools available for product promotion.

Operations Management
How can you develop reliable yet flexible supply chains? Where is the best location for production? How and why would you introduce quality systems in your organization? These are some of the issues dealt with in this course.

Negotiation
The negotiation process is a part of every manager’s day-to-day activities with people inside and outside the organization, people whose cooperation is essential to attain your goals. Having negotiation skills is not a choice for an execvutive, leader or an entrepreneur; it’s a must.

Financial Performance Measurements
This course provides the necessary information and tools to understand financial accounting and reporting. In addition, it offers an introduction to the useful concepts and frameworks that form the basis of managerial accounting.

Economics
How to think like an economist? This course delivers core insights from micro-economics and also explains how macro-economic forces affect the business environment. It trains participants to apply economic reasoning in order to successfully manage a business and to extend this knowledge to new concepts, including sustainability and the digital revolution.”

Human Resources Management
Hiring is critical for most organizations, but how do you get it right? What is performance and how do you evaluate it? How do you create the right incentives for your valued employees? This course looks at all these aspects of managing employees.

Entrepreneurship
Creating new enterprises is vital for the economy, and so are the processes inside organizations for creating innovative products and services. In this course the discussion will be around creation of new companies as well as ways in which existing organizations can stay or become entrepreneurial again.

Elective courses

While the core courses are the central pillars of the program, the advanced courses give participants the opportunity to take a more in-depth view on selected topics and issues. Using their negotiation and leadership skills, the Executive MBA students will have the chance to exert their influence on the choice of the elective courses. The list of the elective courses consists of:

Managing economic crises and global risks
Leadership – Leading today and preparing for tomorrow
Corporate development strategies
Finance and sustainability
Business Dynamics
Project Management
Business applications of artificial intelligence
Leading organizational change
ESG4 Climate change mitigation
Strategic & creative decision making
ESG Reporting

Final project
Once the core curriculum has been completed, the participants, with the help of the relevant professors, finalize their project. The three-month final project is generally conducted within the EMBA participant’s company. An integral part of the advanced management learning experience, the project positions the participant as a consultant. Leveraging their new skills and professional experience, the participants work on a strategic issue for their company under the guidance of a USI Professor.

USI METHOD

Global in scope, regional in focus. The program’s global scope involves collaboration with an international faculty, employing strategic case studies from all over the world. Meanwhile, the regional focus ensures a personalized and applied learning experience, facilitated by the small class size and rooted in the Swiss tradition of excellence.

Our approach accelerates intellectual development, providing participants with greater strategic vision and immediate applicable knowledge. It is practical, emphasizing group work, practice-based learning, and self-reflection. Participants leverage and build on their own experiences to enhance their leadership skills and effectively manage complex projects.

The USI EMBA design incorporates distinctive features such as assignments balanced between practice and theory, business simulations, and small group work activities with classmates from diverse backgrounds and experiences.

Upon completing each module, participants return to their organizations equipped with new skills to better identify, frame, and solve complex business problems. They gain the confidence to make crucial business decisions in an uncertain and rapidly changing environment, along with leadership skills to drive fundamental change within their organization and industry. The USI EMBA also offers the opportunity to put these new skills to the test during the keystone project at the program’s conclusion, under the expert guidance of USI’s top faculty.

FACULTY

Truly international faculty

All of our faculty members are highly experienced and qualified, with international backgrounds. The USI EMBA faculty is carefully selected for their excellence in applied research, extensive work experience in both private and public sectors, and their roles in teaching executive education programs at top business schools.

These academics excel in assisting executives in applying the latest management theories to their work, and they adopt a multidisciplinary approach to their subjects, encouraging participants to do the same.

ANDREAS BERNHARDT

Visiting Professor of Leadership