Master in Strategy and Digital Transformation Program

This course is based on a business management simulation game that integrates the functional areas of production, marketing, logistics, finance and strategy.

It increases the participants’ awareness of operating a company from a general management perspective.

At the end of the course, the student should be able to:

Understand how to design and implement a strategy for different kinds of markets

Interpret and forecast market situations and financial results and translate them into goal-oriented decisions

Analyze problems, find solutions and take decisions in a context characterized by changes

Recognize the interactions among the various companies and external stakeholders in a complex and interrelated environment. 

At the end of the course, the student should be able to: 

Understand the main strategy theories, and apply them to organizations that operate in increasingly global markets

Answer the question: ‘What determines the success or failure of firms around the globe?’

Gain insight into the decision-making process underpinning international business strategic management

Implement the “strategy tripod” to analyze strategy from an industry-, institution-, and resource-based view

Identify and discuss challenges and opportunities that the globalization of markets poses to companies

Understand the activities, goals, and responsibilities of organizations active in a global environment

Have greater awareness about ESRS topics such as the relevance of CSR for companies that operate in international markets, triple bottom line, and stakeholder theory. 

Digital transformation is the process of shifting your organization from a legacy approach to new ways of working and thinking using digital, social, mobile and emerging technologies.

This course introduces students to the essential elements, outcomes, and ramifications of digital transformation within organizations and beyond.

The course offers both theoretical and practical perspectives and insights on the nature of digital transformation, its process, and its value.

At the end of the course, the student should be able to:

Define digital transformation and explain its drivers, challenges, and benefits for business and society

Identify and assess the readiness and maturity of an organization for digital transformation

Evaluate the outcomes and impacts of digital transformation initiatives on the performance, competitiveness, and sustainability of an organization

Compare and contrast the transformative impact of different digital technologies that enable digital transformation, such as artificial intelligence, data analytics, and cloud computing

Critically analyze real-world cases of successful and failed digital transformation initiatives in different industries and sectors.

Understand the implications and opportunities of emerging technologies such as blockchain, big data, IoT, automation, and artificial intelligence for business strategy, as well as the economic, ethical and societal issues they raise. 

The course focuses on several legal tools for protecting intangibles, in particular intellectual property rights.

More precisely, it aims at explaining which different forms of protection may apply on an intangible basis, what are the related advantages and costs, so that the owner can think strategically.

How to protect your brand?

How to protect your innovation?

How to protect your creativity and related initiatives?

Understanding change: students will gain awareness in order to accept that change is a big challenge, at both personal and organizational level, but that it can be managed.

Diagnosing the change context: students will work together using models that allow them to detect the biggest difficulties that managers and teams face during change programs but also lead them to understand what the best way is to act on these challenges.

Planning the change intervention: students will focus on practical actions, to help them understand that, although change is a constant challenge affecting various levels (personal, cultural, organizational), it is important to respond to it in a practical way.

Communication and change – managing resistance: In the final part of the class, students will discuss the capabilities that managers and organizations need to develop in order to become more agile and better ready to face change.

Leading and managing continuous change: what are the competencies that managers need to have to lead successful change programs?

This course provides a variety of opportunities for students to learn current IS-led business and strategic issues.

The course covers the following topics: Networked Enterprise, Business analytics, IS implementations, and IS strategies.

At the end of the course, the student should be able to:

Analyse latest trends of IS-led phenomena and its organizational, global, and societal impacts

Critically evaluate the strategic impacts of IS implementations

Identify critical issues in IS challenges and propose potential solutions

Contribute to strategic conversations about the roles of information systems in organizations. 

This course presents an introduction to global marketing.

The topics covered in class include the international marketing context, the selection process of potential international markets and alternative market entry strategies, the development of the international marketing strategy, and the standardization vs. adaptation debate when designing the international marketing mix.

In addition to lectures, the course consists of (video) case studies, in which students will have to critically apply the concepts discussed in class and propose their own solutions to the various real-life problems and/or situations.

Last but not least, students will be asked to work on a group project applying the concepts learned in class to a global company of their choice.

An active, interactive, and critical approach is fundamental for this course.

At the end of the course, the student should be able to:

Effectively search for, identify, and analyze information related to global market opportunities

Conduct a market attractiveness analysis

Determine appropriate market entry strategies

Develop a global marketing strategy

Design appropriate marketing programs for foreign markets.

The goal of this course is to develop the analytical skills for making corporate investments with regards to financial decisions and risk analysis.

This course will examine various theories and employ the concept of present value, the opportunity cost of capital, discounted cash flow analysis, capital budgeting, corporate capital structure and financing decisions, and issues of corporate governance and control.

Understand the concepts of financial statements

Calculate and employ financial ratios

Understand the concept of time value of money and risk

Select value creating investment projects

Evaluate the cost of financing for a project/firm

Assess the value of taxes in financing decisions.

Coming soon.

The Career Program aims to help IÉSEG students build and implement their professional objective in line with their aspirations, skills and the socio-economic reality of the market.

The objective is to facilitate their integration into the labor market, in an environment that allows them to develop personally and professionally.

All students benefit from a credited program tailored to their track or major, taught by a dedicated team of experienced professionals.

The Career Program includes collective credit courses, digital resources, and on-demand coaching provided by the Career team for those who need additional support.

A cycle of thematic events fosters connections with companies and helps students build their professional networks.

Our pedagogical approach blends various teaching methods, including digital modules, interactive and blended learning, coaching, peer-to-peer, learning by doing, live scenarios, debriefing, and reflection, in line with IÉSEG’s teaching and learning strategy.

Credited Language courses for all levels are included in the program.

French is the mandatory choice for any non-French speaking student.

For native French speaking students, other languages are offered (Chinese, Spanish, German – list subject to change).

Agile business transformations are at the heart of corporate clients’ challenges, even more so in contexts of growing, complex, and ambiguous change.

This Course provides an understanding of the challenges of transformations and their operational implications while giving students the opportunity to gain a consulting perspective and become SAFe SA certified.

Using big data for decision-making is becoming critical for business success in several domains.

Using big data analytics for organizational decision-making requires interdisciplinary knowledge: technical knowledge for data storage and manipulation, analytic knowledge on how to transform, analyze, and present data, and organizational knowledge on how managerial decision-making processes work.

The course introduces students to big data analytics from such an interdisciplinary perspective.

Students will learn how to break down a big data problem into a data collection, analysis, and presentation problem by adopting adequate methodologies.

Students will learn what is, and what is not, big data.

They will understand which are the main sources from which big data are produced and will explore the opportunities and challenges of using big data for helping organizations generate knowledge from information and making decision-making more effective.

Mixing theory and practical applications the course will engage students actively to address how to frame big data problems, how to design a big data strategy, and eventually how to master the design of an interactive dashboard for visualizing and presenting data to interested stakeholders.

At the end of this course, the students should be able to approach large-scale data science problems with creativity and initiative.

While technology innovation, product/service innovation, and even process innovation are often taught, it is business model innovation that is driving the growth of many enterprises.

Whether it is breaking down business models into their fundamental components, analyzing the current models used in certain industries or synthesizing new models from models existing in various industries, this course aims to place business model innovation at the center of the value creation.

The course provides an overview of digital marketing and its tools. It notably discusses Digital Analytics: Analysis & Reporting (SEO, SEA) and Optimization / Automation (SEM). 

Real life experience in a hackathon format where students will consult on organizations’ digital innovation and transformation issues. 

HR digital transformation is about “HR teams taking up the dual challenge of transforming HR operations on the one hand and transforming the workforce and the way work is done on the other” (Deloitte’s 2017 Human Capital Trends report).

This course discusses how digital tools can support HR functions as well as the role of the HR function in the context of a wider digital strategy.

It aims at contributing to driving HR digital transformation.

The objective of the course is to introduce advanced methods of project management.

At the end of the course, students should be able to:

Understand the major approaches and related methodologies of project/group organizational design

Understand the principles and the objectives of project management (including agile)

Master tools for managing time and resources in order to lead projects effectively in different business contexts

Understand how to organize project teams, considering the individual and social implications of teamwork. 

The course objective is to cover the supply chain strategy and concepts and to give students a solid understanding of the analytical tools necessary to solve supply chain problems.

As a result, the goals and objectives are as follows:

Describe how a company achieves strategic fit between its supply chain strategy and its competitive strategy

Identify the major drivers of supply chain performance, understand how they are related

Understand the trade-offs between different SC networks

Apply concepts to improve supply chain performance

Analyze a supply chain network, identify problems and suggest improvement solutions focusing on the key drivers of the supply chain

Analyze global supply chain network design decisions in an uncertain environment. 

Coming soon.

The Career Program aims to help IÉSEG students build and implement their professional objective in line with their aspirations, skills and the socio-economic reality of the market.

The objective is to facilitate their integration into the labor market, in an environment that allows them to develop personally and professionally.

All students benefit from a credited program tailored to their track or major, taught by a dedicated team of experienced professionals.

The Career Program includes collective credit courses, digital resources, and on-demand coaching provided by the Career team for those who need additional support.

A cycle of thematic events fosters connections with companies and helps students build their professional networks.

Our pedagogical approach blends various teaching methods, including digital modules, interactive and blended learning, coaching, peer-to-peer, learning by doing, live scenarios, debriefing, and reflection, in line with IÉSEG’s teaching and learning strategy.

Credited Language courses for all levels are included in the program.

French is the mandatory choice for any non-French speaking student.

For native French speaking students, other languages are offered (Chinese, Spanish, German – list subject to change).

This course is designed to provide an overview of machine learning and artificial intelligence approaches and to demonstrate how those techniques are applied in decision-making.

Course contents:

Overview of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in day-to-day life

Fundamental Supervised Learning algorithms with case studies

Fundamental Unsupervised Learning algorithms with case studies

Some words on Artificial Neural Network and Deep Learning

Best practice in Data Science

The course will conclude with some open discussions regarding the future of ML/AI in industry and society in general. 

The goal of this course is to give students the tools to create/maintain fruitful international business relationships through negotiation processes aiming to reach mutually satisfying outcomes.

The content of the course will be centered on the following topics: distributive and integrative negotiation settings and strategies, the influence of culture in negotiation strategy, and a glimpse into complexity in international negotiations.

Overall, the objective is to provide key concepts and analysis of grids, to be useful in various professional settings, in particular in intercultural settings.

This course will consist of a mix of theory delivered to the students and application exercises and realistic role plays.

Class discussion will be based on the students’ performance in the exercises, and the concepts will be illustrated by the group’s experience in negotiation.

Active class discussion will enable appropriation of the concepts and to create links with the participants’ past experience.

It is often stated “accounting is the language of business”. This course provides an introduction to this global language.

One must understand accounting to function effectively in today’s international world.

Further, one must develop an understanding of the ethical and regulatory environment of accounting to respond to diverse business decisions and situations.

Although some students do specialize in accounting and other quantitative disciplines, even those that do not will find their skills strengthened by being able to work with and explain the meaning and limitations of accounting information.

Objectives of the course:

Evaluate the use of accounting information for both external and internal decision making

Understand financial statements to assess overall business performance, financial solidity and profitability

Construct and interpret management accounting information for decision-making, planning and control.

This course will give a global view on human resources management with a chosen focus on how to build engaging organizations and foster engaged people and teams, rather than describing process-only policies.

The course will use a combination of lecture, discussion, individual work and team workshops.

At the end of the course, students should be able to:

Outline the interactions between human capital management and organizational performance in a multicultural environment

Understand the key differences between satisfaction, motivation and employee engagement

Demonstrate basic knowledge on what is driving team performance and behaviour, and what characterizes an engaging leader

Discuss how HR and CSR can monitor organizational engagement and improve employee experience at work. 

This course provides participants with a profound understanding of entrepreneurship, new business development, and business plan writing.

Through lectures, testimonials, fieldwork, and group assignments, participants are confronted with the how, where, when, whom, and why of starting and developing new business activities.

As part of an international and multicultural team, participants are invited to work on an operational business plan aimed at either the creation of a new venture (NVC-track) or the acceleration of new business for an already established SME (NBD-track).

This course’s ambitions thus go beyond providing theoretical insights.

Hands-on experience is gained throughout out-of-class field work covering all steps of the entrepreneurial decision-making process (e.g., idea generation, feasibility analysis, industry study, market analysis, marketing plan, production plan, product development, and financial statements).

In doing so, participants accumulate entrepreneurial knowledge and behaviors that support innovative solutions and new value development.

This course equips students with analytical tools and a strategic perspective to understand how geopolitical dynamics impact global business environments.

Through an interdisciplinary approach, students explore the influence of political risk, international relations, and global power shifts on trade, investment, supply chains, and corporate strategy.

Emphasis is placed on real-world cases and interactive discussions to help students assess geopolitical risk and adapt business decisions accordingly.

By the end of the course, participants will be able to integrate geopolitical thinking into strategic planning, enabling responsible and resilient decision-making in complex international contexts.

Participants will also be able to integrate geopolitical thinking into strategic planning, enabling responsible and resilient decision-making in complex international contexts.

Particular attention is given to the social impact of geopolitical shifts, encouraging students to consider how business decisions can promote inclusive growth, ethical practices, and long-term societal resilience.

This is a modular, asynchronous course designed to provide participants with a comprehensive and integrated understanding of AI and its transformative impact on business strategy.

Bridging technical knowledge and strategic insight, the course guides learners through a rich curriculum that explores how AI drives innovation, enhances operational efficiency, and creates sustainable competitive advantages.

The learning journey culminates in real-world case studies that demonstrate how leading organizations have successfully integrated AI into their strategies, operations, and innovation processes.

These examples provide actionable insights and help bridge theory with practical application.

Crucially, the course also engages with the broader societal and environmental impacts of AI, positioning ethical, ecological, and workforce considerations as central to strategic decision-making.

By the end of the course, participants will not only understand how AI works, but also how to deploy it responsibly and strategically for long-term business success in complex, dynamic environments.

Creativity is one of the critical components of an organization’s ability to survive and thrive in today’s competitive and dynamic markets.

This course will provide participants with a rich understanding of how creativity can be facilitated and managed in a work setting.

They will acquire knowledge regarding various theoretical conceptualizations (i.e., how do you define creativity), antecedents (i.e., what makes you and others more creative) and outcomes (i.e., what is the impact) of creativity as well as knowledge on design thinking techniques and tools to lead teams in the creative journey.

How do creative ideas happen? How can we foster our creativity and the creativity of those around us? What are the paths of creative development of individuals who are successful in their creative endeavours? What are the implications for fostering and managing creativity in the workplace? What are the obstacles to creativity? What is the nature of creativity in teams and organizations?

These are some of the questions we will address.

During the course, a variety of teaching and learning techniques (including design thinking) will be used to enable participants to think critically and imaginatively about various perspectives of creativity.

To realize the goal of a shared learning experience between participants and the instructor, the course is aimed at integrating real challenges and practical experiences of creativity, projects, presentations, experiential exercises, and critical reflection on the various course materials.

This advanced course provides a comprehensive exploration of how organizations can effectively manage, measure, and align performance at individual, team, and organizational levels.

The course begins by clarifying the concept of performance management – what it is, what it is not, and what characterizes effective strategic performance practices.

Students will examine the challenges of defining and measuring performance accurately, and how to align performance indicators with broader strategic goals such as employee engagement, retention, and organizational growth.

Throughout the course, students will engage with a range of human resource management tools applicable at various stages of the performance management cycle.

Legal, ethical, and reporting considerations—as well as software solutions—will also be addressed to provide a holistic understanding of modern performance systems.

A key focus of the course is the social dimension of performance management.

Students will explore how to design systems that are valid, reliable, and fair for all employees, with a strong emphasis on eliminating bias and supporting diversity, inclusion, and social justice.

The course encourages critical assessment of whether performance systems genuinely enable all individuals, regardless of background, to demonstrate their full potential.

This includes addressing how organizational culture, leadership behaviors, and system design can unintentionally disadvantage certain groups—and how such challenges can be effectively mitigated in practice.

Credited Language courses for all levels are included in the program.

French is the mandatory choice for any non-French speaking student.

For native French speaking students, other languages are offered (Chinese, Spanish, German – list subject to change).

4-to 6-month internship or work experience anywhere in the world. Alternatively, students can opt for a consulting project or a thesis.