Program structure and content
EMBA Module Building Sustainable Businesses
The content is structured as one integrated learning journey around the same core challenge: sustainable innovation in a time of major transitions is a wicked problem. It is complex, involves real trade offs, multiple stakeholders, and no standard formula. Each of the five components highlights a different aspect of that complexity, enabling you to choose direction with confidence.
Together, the four themes build clarity across strategy and leadership, market dynamics and adoption, value creation, and innovation steering toward circularity. In the closing Live Performance Challenge, everything comes together in a real life case with an external organization, serving as a reality check for your choices, rationale, and first credible pathway.
The EMBA Module Building Sustainable Businesses prepares you for the Live Performance Challenge with 4 lecture weekends on
- Strategic Leadership
- Marketing Management
- Creating Shared Value
- Sustainable Innovation Management
Content
Live Performance Challenge
In the Live Performance Challenge, you work in teams on a wicked problem brought in by a real organization with a genuine question. In a pressure-cooker setting, you quickly immerse yourself in the context: who are the players, where do interests collide, what has already been attempted, and why has progress stalled? The focus is not on the perfect answer, but on choosing direction under uncertainty. You map the field systemically, make trade-offs explicit, and identify leverage points that can truly create movement. You translate this into a set of sharp solution directions and a first credible pathway. You pitch this to the client, alongside other teams, immediately testing what holds up and what remains too vague.
Academic Director speaking
Who still disagrees with sustainability? The argument that we are accountable only to shareholders, and not to society, is outdated. Yet the case for sustainability often remains stuck in the realm of morality. Words such as stewardship are invoked, and we express the ambition to leave the world a little better for our children. That is a moral argument — important and valid, but not a business argument. When we approach it from a business perspective, it becomes challenging. Ultimately, we are still accountable to shareholders. We have extensive legacy investments, processes, assets, and mindsets that stand in our way. We are constantly under pressure to think in terms of quarterly results rather than the long term. And we can suddenly be sidelined by a disruptive innovation we did not see coming. If we want to remain competitive over the long term, we must participate in the transition. But how? How do we chart a course toward an uncertain future in turbulent times? What is the business case for sustainability in our organization? What is a first step toward circularity? This program removes blind spots and creates a sense of urgency. At the same time, it provides tools and frameworks you can use to initiate productive and meaningful conversations within your organization.
Executive Professor Dr. Roemer Visser
Time investment and certificate
The program has a lead time of 5 months in which you participate in 5 lecture weekends of 3 days. The course load is 16-18 hours per week.
Certificate
Upon successful completion, you will receive a certificate of attendance that can eventually count toward an Executive MBA degree, if you complete all 4 EMBA modules and complete your graduate program (Capstone).
