Career development with our International MBA concentrations

5 min read

When you study at IE Business School, you’ll be taking a step forwards serious career development. Our renowned International MBA is all about transforming your personal and professional growth to achieve your career goals. Specifically built for experienced professionals with big ambitions, the International MBA is flexible and customizable to your needs. Whether you’re planning to start your own venture, pivot into a new sector, upskill for a changing world or enter the C-suite, this program will give you the targeted skills, network and experiences you’re looking for.

Shape your own career path

When we say the International MBA is tailored to your needs and lifestyle, we mean it. Before you even start, you have a choice of format to work with your existing lifestyle and obligations. You can choose from an intensive, 11-month program, deepen your specialization in the 15-month format, or even double your potential by taking the program as part of a dual degree option over 19 or 23 months.  

Regardless of your choice, you’ll be able to select from four hands-on labs to put your new skills to the test in real-world scenarios. But the program’s innate flexibility is perhaps best exemplified by the eight concentrations that allow you to focus your study on what you’re most interested in. You’ll make your decision around three months after the start of the International MBA, ensuring you can make a well-informed decision based on your emerging interests.

One alum’s transformational journey through career development

To give you an idea of how it works, we’ll follow alum Ximena Errazuriz’s journey through the program. With a varied background ranging from engineering to finance, Ximena had her sights set on moving into entrepreneurship or tech consultancy.

She spent her Global Immersion Month at St Gallen University, one of our prestigious partner institutions around the world. Visiting sector leaders like Roche and Novartis and seeing the Swiss luxury business up close provided unmatched insight and deeper understanding of business in another country.

Unsurprisingly, Ximena chose the Tech Lab to gain experience in working hands-on for real companies—and her project received the Overall Winner award from her year’s Tech Lab entries. Her dedication to her ambitions and her commitment to making the most of the many opportunities the International MBA provides ultimately earned her a place on the Dean’s List and a Beta Gamma Sigma Honor Society certification.

Ximena’s career development has gone from strength to strength, thanks to the transformative 15 months she spent on the International MBA. She’s now Strategic Planner Europe at global tech, software and engineering firm Emerson. “It’s hard to put into words what this journey has meant,” Ximena said after graduating. “Studying for an MBA was a dream, but I never imagined how incredible the experience would be.”

Aligning expertise and experience with ambition

For Ximena, her concentration imparted the specific skills and experiences that her target recruiters were looking for. In the 11- and 15-month options, concentrations kick off in term two, overlapping with the program’s innovative Impact Skills Accelerator, Career Discovery Accelerator and the Job Prep & Search initiatives. If you’re taking the International MBA as part of a dual degree, the specific timing of the concentration varies depending on the combined structure of the two programs.

Your concentration’s structure and content will be the same regardless of which format you’ve chosen for the program. Ximena’s choice provided tailored learning that perfectly fit her own ambitions and purpose, but yours may be very different. Let’s have a look at the eight concentration options available to you:

Digital Business, Transformation & Innovation

Ximena’s chosen concentration taught her to leverage tech to boost efficiency, gain actionable insights from large amounts of data and lead digital transformation across organizations. This concentration prepares graduates to navigate the evolving world of digital business and stay ahead of emerging tech trends.

Entrepreneurship & Corporate Innovation

The Financial Times ranked IE Business School as Europe’s best institution for entrepreneurship teaching in 2022, and opportunities like this are among the reasons why. If you’re a disruptor looking to found a successful start-up, scale your venture or lead innovation within a corporate organization, choose this concentration.

Finance & Investments

This option is aimed at professionals who know that finance is the beating heart of business and economic development. If you’re looking for a challenging, fast-paced career and you’re a naturally analytical person, this concentration will give you a deep and highly practical understanding of the realities of money, investments and global financial systems.

International Business & Strategic Foresight

If what drives you is a desire to understand what’s behind economic trends and what shapes market forces—from political, social, environmental and financial standpoints—this concentration gives you the big picture. It’s a pathway to a stand-out career in today’s interconnected and highly dynamic business ecosystem.

Marketing, Branding & Sales

If you’re a creative thinker with an analytical eye, and you’re looking to deepen your expertise in business communications to create compelling stories that leverage the power of brands, this is the concentration for you. Sharpen your skills, refocus your behaviors and gain a profound understanding of what informs customers’ decision-making.

Product Management & Service Design

Products and services that offer end users real value require both analytical and empathetic understanding of customers and markets. You’ll have to be capable of both creative thinking and effective management to leverage all of these elements and lead projects across any company. If you’re looking for versatile, practical skills and knowledge, this concentration will provide them.

Strategy, Organization & Transformation

In an economic landscape like today’s, businesses that don’t evolve don’t survive. If you want to drive corporate transformation, efficiency and competitiveness, you need the skills and mindset to formulate, plan and lead organizational transformation. This concentration provides the analytical, visionary and management skills to be the strategic changemaker that every business needs.

Sustainability & Business Transformation

Achieving sustainability in business is as exciting as it is challenging. If you want to stand at the forefront of making business more sustainable, at a time when it’s never been more critical, this concentration is for you. It will give you the scarce—and therefore highly sought-after—expertise to conceive and lead such change.

Holistic, transformative, focused career development

Ximena is just one of many alumni who have leveraged our comprehensive but highly customizable program to achieve their career goals. Join our International MBA and you’ll be able to personalize your academic journey, guided by a world-class faculty of highly experienced practitioners and experts. Combine that with our global network of corporate, institutional and academic partners, along with our one-to-one career advising and resources, and you’ll be well on your way to landing the career you’ve been looking for.