A joint program for mid-career professionals that integrates engineering and systems thinking. Earn your master’s degree in engineering and management.
Using innovative classroom and project-based activities, the Enterprise Management Certificate is designed to develop students’ abilities to take a holistic approach to solving the most pressing challenges of today’s businesses. Both coursework and projects will help students to develop their skills in marketing, operations, and strategy and prepare them to be future business leaders with multi-disciplinary perspectives. The certificate prepares students for careers in large enterprises where such a cross-functional viewpoint is critical.
The EM Certificate provides a unique experience: students participate in projects with actual companies from day one of their first semester. Lectures, faculty mentors, and MIT Sloan’s signature Action Learning curriculum train students for careers in large organizations in areas such as marketing, operations, strategic management consulting, product development, and innovation management.
Action Learning is a cornerstone of the certificate, and all students complete the EM Lab in their first semester and the Management Practice Hack-a-Thon in their second semester.
Special features include certificate-exclusive dinners and networking events to meet leading practitioners, faculty, and business leaders. Students also have the opportunity to learn with a cohort of like-minded classmates through EM Certificate community events.
By Drawing on Expertise from Multiple Domains, Students Can Solve Problems Creatively
In the EM Certificate, classroom lectures, faculty mentors, and cross-functional teams promote a multi-disciplinary approach to addressing business issues. It is highly flexible and allows students to tailor their coursework to their interests.
Building upon the broad training provided by the core management requirements, the EM Certificate requires electives in marketing, operations, strategy, and finance to deepen cross-functional expertise. Students choose additional electives from management practices, business analytics, product development and innovation, and global management. A recommended set of electives, linked to specific careers, is intended to guide students and act as a signal to potential employers that the student has completed highly relevant coursework.
Required courses:
15.830 EM Lab: Intro to Enterprise Management
ES.608 SIP Workshop: Management Practice Hackathon
Developed in part due to the kinds of opportunities students were pursuing after graduating and the types of companies that were coming to MIT Sloan to recruit, the EM Certificate is flexible, allowing students to focus on their specific areas of interest and pursue their career goals. MIT Sloan worked to shape a curriculum that would help graduates succeed in the kinds of roles they were seeking.
Recent summer internships of EM Certificate students include Amazon, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, IBM, and Nike. In addition, EM Certificate graduates have accepted positions at Fidelity Investments, Genentech, McKinsey & Company, Microsoft, and Tesla.
The EM Certificate has two major Action Learning components: the EM-Lab, which takes place during the students’ first fall term, and the Management Practice Hack-a-Thon, which takes place during the Sloan Innovation Period in the first spring term.
Enterprise Management Lab
The Enterprise Management Lab, or EM-Lab, titled “Introduction to Enterprise Management,” is the first Action Learning component of the EM Certificate.
The EM-Lab, taken during the fall of a student’s first year, is designed to lay the foundation by developing a student’s abilities to apply integrated management perspectives and practices to real business challenges in large organizations.
As with all Action Learning initiatives, EM-Lab combines classroom lectures and faculty mentorship with project work for real companies. EM-Lab host companies represent leaders and innovators in both the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Sample past and current host companies include:
Amazon
BD
BMW
Boston Symphony Orchestra
Dell
Google
IDEO
Microsoft
NPR
Philips
Procter & Gamble/Gillette
SAP
Verizon
VMWare
EM-Lab students work in small teams on tightly scoped projects focused on marketing, operations, and/or strategy for host companies. Though projects may be housed in one of these functional areas, students are encouraged to stretch their thinking beyond their projects’ primary functional domain to develop holistic solutions. The goal of every EM-Lab project is to promote an integrated mindset through which students will address and view business issues.
EM-Lab project work typically takes place over an eight-week period starting in October. Students receive project descriptions from participating companies and work with their respective clients for several hours per week. The projects culminate with the student teams creating formal presentations for their client companies that feature the teams’ findings and recommendations. In some cases, student teams may be offered summer internships to continue their project work.
Companies interested in hosting MIT Sloan students for an EM-Lab project should contact Dr. Sharmila C. Chatterjee, Senior Lecturer and Head of Enterprise Management Certificate at schatterjee@mit.edu.
Management Practice Hackathon
The Management Practice Hack-a-Thon is the second Action Learning component of the EM Certificate and is completed by participants in the spring of their first year. It is an innovative competition that enables students to integrate the lessons they’ve learned in the classroom with their business experience to help companies solve their most pressing interdisciplinary challenges.
Collaborating with EM Certificate students on cross-functional problems, host companies gain access to talented system thinkers and contribute to the community by providing critical experiences necessary for developing seasoned professionals. Participating students benefit from real-world experience in a tightly scoped, fast-paced, and exciting four-day competition environment. The Management Practice Hack-a-Thon pits three to four student teams against each other as they compete to solve marketing, operations, or strategy problem. They then present their recommendations to a panel of judges. The goal of the competition—and of the EM Certificate as a whole—is to encourage students to stretch their thinking beyond functional silos to design the best solution to the problem at hand.
As supermarkets take hold around the world, small farmers risk getting cut out of the supply chain. A proposed digital marketplace could keep them in the game.
Students in the EM Certificate come together throughout the year for a series of formal and informal community events, including networking events with industry leaders, a year-end gala, and a regular speaker series. They also participate in popular MIT Sloan clubs that connect them with other students with similar interests in the enterprise management field.
Companies
Opportunities
There are many opportunities for companies to connect with MIT Sloan and access the creative problem-solving skills and fresh perspectives of EM Certificate students. We welcome leading strategy, operations, and marketing executives to join us for our speaker series or to meet with students at a dinner or networking event. And we encourage companies to contact us to participate in the EM-Lab or the Management Practice Hack-a-thon, where student teams can help advance your thinking and work to solve one of your pressing business challenges.
More Information
For more information about working with MIT Sloan and its EM Certificate students, please contact Dr. Sharmila C. Chatterjee, Senior Lecturer and head of Enterprise Management Certificate, at schatterjee@mit.edu.
Students
Student Advisory Board
EM Certificate students are also welcome to join our Student Advisory Board, a group that contributes to the ongoing development of the certificate and its features. The members of the Student Advisory Board solicit feedback from current students to continue to develop and improve the certificate, interact with prospective students, and serve as student ambassadors, promoting the certificate around the School. The Community Building and Events Subcommittee focuses on building camaraderie among students and on planning engaging and informative events together with the business community.
Speaker Series
In the past, guest speakers have included executives from Amazon, Phillips Healthcare, McKinsey & Company, Capgemini Consulting, Bain & Company, and the Toyota Production System Support Center. These executives share their insights into lessons they’ve learned and problems they’ve solved by taking multidisciplinary approaches to business challenges and breaking out of company silos. They discuss their successes and failures and present instructive case studies that enhance students’ classroom learning and encourage them to think broadly about business problems.
Sharmila Chatterjee, Senior Lecturer
MIT Sloan School of Management
100 Main Street, E62-543
Cambridge, MA 02142
617-253-8214 Website schatterjee@mit.edu
Naomi Stephen, Administrative Assistant
MIT Sloan School of Management
100 Main Street, E62-411A
Cambridge, MA 02142
617-324-7328
nstephen@mit.edu
