Our Curriculum

The Preparatory Knowledge Program takes place before official programming begins and offers three optional primers.

The main objective of this programming is to ensure that you get off to a good start in the MBA program so that when classes begin, class-time is used to maximum benefit. It’s also a great way to get a refresher of the business basics, reacquaint yourself with the school routine, and get to know some of your classmates.

Economics Primer

The Economics Primer will train you to see real situations and business problems through the economic lens.  In this course, you will learn microeconomic concepts such as supply and demand fundamentals, opportunity cost, and scarcity.

Finance & Accounting Primer

The Finance and Accounting Primer will show you how financial business transactions are recorded and used to support decision-making.  In this course, you will learn accounting concepts such as the accounting cycle, generally accepted accounting principles, debits and credits and the recording of transactions, and the building and interpretation of financial statements.

Quantitative Analysis Primer

The Quantitative Analysis Primer provides a solid base of probability and statistical modeling concepts along with higher level approaches to structured quantitative problem solving.  Along with learning about regression, sampling, and statistics, students also develop advanced skills in MS Excel.

• Accounting and Control for Managers
• Decision Making with Analytics
• Developing and Executing Strategies
• Leading People and Organizations
• Managing Operations
• Marketing Products and Services
• Leveraging Information Technology (3/4 course)
• Macroeconomics for Business Decisions (half course)
• Communicating Effectively (half course)

Accounting and Control for Managers (ACM)

In ACM you will examine the areas of Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Cost Accounting, and Management Control Systems, concentrating on the transformation and interpretation of financial measures to assist managers in making decisions regarding alternatives.

Decision Making with Analytics (DMA)

The goal of DMA is to introduce you to business decision-making using a quantitative approach.  You will look at decision-making where the future is uncertain, analyze complex decisions where models are needed, and examine problems where many decisions must be made simultaneously. During this course, you will be introduced to a selection of quantitative approaches that have important applications in business.

Developing and Executing Strategies (DES)

Developing and Executing Strategies is concerned with achieving superior firm performance and sustaining it over the long run.  The course is organized around three ideals: value creation, value capture and value distribution.

Leading People and Organizations (LPO)

This course is divided into three sections: developing leadership skills, building effective organizations and leading change.  Using a variety of materials and approaches, you will heighten your self-awareness about your own role and behavior with respect to each topical area, and increase your effectiveness in these areas of activity.

Managing Operations (MO)

In MO you will learn how tactical decisions such as process design, planning and control, and project management are the basis for broader quality and supply chain management systems.. You will also learn to identify and understand how effectively managing operations contributes to customer value.

Marketing Products and Services (MPS)

MPS will teach you to identify and seize market opportunities through effective marketing strategies.  It will provide you with the tools and concepts to contribute to the development of marketing strategies for your organization, and to constructively evaluate the marketing strategies developed by others.

Leveraging Information Technology (LIT)

LIT will arm you with an understanding of the technical, organizational, and strategic issues surrounding the management of information and communication technologies. You will learn about key IT issues that firms face, and you will learn the analytical tools you need in order to take effective action to leverage information technology successfully.

Macroeconomics for Business Decisions (MBD)

This course is devoted entirely to increasing your understanding of global economic forces and how they affect business.  By the end of the course you should be comfortable reading, discussing and interpreting economic news as it appears in many high quality publications and reports.  You will also be able to incorporate important macroeconomic variables into your analysis and decision making about industries and firms.

Communicating Effectively (CE)

In CE, you will focus on mastering verbal and non-verbal communication skills in order to be an effective leader.  Various presentation styles will be analyzed, but through your own experiences in this hands-on course, you will develop a deepened personal appreciation of how to maximize your own unique style.

Business Law

This course will introduce you to Canadian business law and give you an understanding of general legal principles as they apply to business.

Competing with Analytics

The course will build on material covered in the MBA core class “Decision Making with Analytics”. It will provide you with an understanding of the field of business analytics with a focus on examining the ways that globally competitive corporations are using analytics to achieve a sustained competitive advantage.

Consumer Brands Marketing

You will learn hands-on how brands are managed, how brands cope with competitive and environmental threats and opportunities, and how brands are handled in the channel by both manufacturers and retailers.

Corporate Financial Reporting

The course is oriented to users of financial statements and concentrates on the measurement and communication of financial data to individuals outside the firm: considerable attention is devoted to corporate annual reports.

Derivatives

The objective of the course is to provide a solid understanding of how derivative products are structured, priced, and used. This knowledge is essential for executives of corporations that issue securities and use derivatives to reduce financing costs, and for corporations that face significant financial or commodity risks and use derivatives to manage these risks.

Entrepreneurial Finance

This course focuses on the financial challenges facing mid-sized companies that are growing rapidly or have the potential for rapid growth.  Some of the topics to be addressed include government assistance programs, joint ventures, bank financing, franchising, mezzanine financing, private placements, leveraged buyouts, merchant banking, venture capital and initial public offerings.

Entrepreneurial Manager

The main thrust of the course is to develop an action orientation – the decisions an entrepreneur needs to make on a timely basis to launch a new venture and to keep it on track.  You’ll look at how and when to start a business and how to tap opportunities, emphasizing how one develops business models that convert good ideas into viable ventures. 

Financing Health Care Enterprises

This course is primarily concerned with the challenges of financing the discovery and development of new pharmaceuticals and medical devices, managing the financial aspects of growing firms in the medical sector, exiting from an investment and valuation of shares.

Financial Models

This course will help you develop proficiency in making and analyzing simple models of business decisions involving optionality.  The decisions include the valuation and hedging of financial portfolios, derivative securities, and trading strategies.

Financial Strategies for Global Success

The focus of the course is on strategic planning with respect to corporate decisions that interface with the financial markets. You will learn to analyze these decisions from a financial perspective, emphasizing creating/preventing price tension, bidding strategies, sourcing of funds and valuation under alternative organizational structures.

Global Marketing

This will be a rigorous case-based exploration of marketing around the world. Emphasis will be on crossing borders, or defending against those who cross into our marketplace.

Global Supply Management

The course is composed of three parts: purchasing and supply management; logistics activities in the supply chain; and supply chain strategy.

Health Management, Leadership and Innovation

This course will provide you with an understanding and appreciation of a health innovation framework; topics include innovation adoption, innovation engagement, innovation testing, and innovation.

The Health Sector

The purpose of the course is to provide a foundation for students who wish to pursue careers or who have an interest in the health sector.  The course begins with a discussion of the Canadian context - policy, population health issues, globalization and health - focusing on a systems view of the health sector.  It then looks at specific industries including medical instruments and devices, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and health care delivery.

High Impact Presenting

The 4 P’s of the course are: Persuasion, Presentation, Practice, Performance, with special emphasis on “hands on” personal experiencing.

International Study Trips

During your time in China, India or Latin America you’ll visit local businesses, make connections with business leaders, join in 'cultural plunge' team activities and learn how businesses operate successfully in these economic climates.

Management Consulting

The purpose of this course is to provide you with an overview, as well as selected skill development, in the areas of traditional “expert” consulting and results-focused “high impact” consulting.  You will learn how to provide true value to clients in a range of project types and situations, from solid analytical inputs to working side by side driving large-scale organizational change.

Management of Services

Management of services is a general management course that integrates material from several disciplines, especially operations, marketing, human resources and strategy.  The course takes both a strategic as well as an operational perspective and seeks to improve your understanding of organizations that produce services instead of (and in addition to) goods.

Managing People

The course is organized around six sets of activities critical to managerial success, each involving face-to-face interaction and a high degree of interpersonal skill: Selecting Employees; Coaching for Exceptional Performance; Resolving Conflict; Getting Commitment to Goals and Standards; Conducting Performance Reviews; and Managing Problem Employees.

Negotiating for Leaders

A basic premise of this course is that while a manager needs analytical skills to develop optimal solutions to problems, a broad array of negotiation skills is needed to get these solutions accepted and implemented. The course will allow you to develop these skills experientially (through participation in negotiation role-play exercises) and to understand negotiation in useful analytical frameworks.

New Media Marketing

This course merges theoretical concepts with strategic and practical solutions, and lays the foundation for the type of insight necessary to intelligently and strategically engage the environment while avoiding its many pitfalls.

New Venture Creation

The purpose of this course is to explore the many dimensions of new venture creation and growth and to foster innovation and new business formations in independent and corporate settings.  Initially you will focus on opportunity recognition, followed by exploring a wide range of issues that often face entrepreneurs in the processes of new venture creation and growth.

Portfolio Management

The course takes the perspective of an institutional investor and deals with important issues such investors face including the development of investment policies, the implementation of investment strategies, and the management of risk.

Private Equity

This course provides an overview of the world of private equity, and how it fits into both the portfolios of many investors as well as the broader capital markets.  The unique terminology, expected returns and challenges facing private equity funds are all examined.

Project Management

This course is designed to provide students with a holistic, integrative view of project management, including both the technical elements (e.g., scope, schedules, budgets and status reports, etc.) and the socio-cultural elements (e.g., leadership, teamwork, politics, etc.).

Regulation of Financial Markets

The course strikes a balance between setting out the basic regulatory requirements for banking and securities activities, and the management decisions that are required to deal effectively with them.  It will prepare you to manage in complex, regulated markets in different countries.

Risk, Accountability & Governance

Risk, accountability and governance are the philosophy, practices, and procedures in which companies are directed.  This course examines two approaches: the rules based approach to governance (largely a US based approach) and the comply or explain approach chosen in the UK, with an understanding that Canada falls in the middle.

Strategy Implementation

The purpose of this course is to improve your skills and capabilities in evaluating and responding to the challenges of strategy implementation. Specifically, you will consider how the social structure of an organization shapes what you can accomplish, how to build a position of structural and social power that will allow you to implement strategy, and how to design and manage organizational structures and business processes that lead to a more effective strategy.

Sustainable Business Practices

This course examines how environmental and social factors are reshaping the competitive landscape of business.  It will teach you to a) apply conceptual frameworks to evaluate environmental and social performance; b) assess how markets respond to environmental and social concerns; and c) develop a competitive advantage in an era of higher environmental and social expectations.

Transformational Leadership

The course provides a learning journey that takes a deep dive into your own character strengths as a platform for multi-level leadership: self, others, organization and society.

Value Investing

The course is intended to teach you the fundamentals of the value investing approach to investment management as developed by Graham and Dodd.  The substantive areas covered will be

1. The fundamental assumptions and approaches to value investing
2. Techniques for assessing fundamental value based on traditional and value investing-based valuation
3. The design of strategies for searching efficiently for value investing opportunities
4. The structuring of value-based portfolios to control for risk

• Cross Enterprise Leadership
• Entrepreneurship Challenge
• Global Business Environment
• Ivey Consulting Project or Ivey New Venture Project

Cross Enterprise Leadership (CEL)

This capstone course addresses some of the “big” questions like “Who leads best and how do they do it?” and “How are great leaders developed?”  Team teaching is a key feature of CEL to reinforce the cross-enterprise leadership perspective.

Entrepreneurship Challenge (EC)

In this 5 day module you will develop tools for creative thinking and apply them to a real world problem currently being faced by a guest entrepreneur. You will also engage in two case discussions, with the focal entrepreneurs present for the debrief and case updates. Finally, you will have the opportunity to learn about some of the issues that are unique to business families.

Global Business Environment (GBE)

GBE is an exploration of some of the major forces and trends that will affect business in the 21^st century. The goal of this class is to help you see your actions as future business leaders in the broadest possible frame of reference.

Ivey Consulting Project (ICP) or Ivey New Venture Project (INVP)

INVP is an entrepreneurial, team-based field project that takes you through the process of developing/refining an idea for a new venture, researching and analyzing that opportunity, writing a detailed and compelling Business Plan and creating/presenting a “Business Plan Pitch” to an external review panel.

ICP partners teams of students with a company to study a cross-enterprise issue, problem or opportunity of operational, organizational or strategic significance. You apply and integrate the knowledge and skills acquired throughout the Program to determine the best course of action for the company and present your findings to a group of company representatives.

Upon completion of the program, students have the opportunity to apply for one of two student-run volunteer initiatives overseas.

China Teaching Project (CTP)

CTP offers a unique opportunity for you to positively impact future business leaders in China while obtaining valuable international experience. As an Ivey MBA, you’ll expose undergraduate business students in Beijing or Shanghai to a new and exciting way of learning by teaching a case-based course.

LEADER Project

LEADER is a student-driven economic development program based in Eastern Europe and Russia. Founded in 1991, this volunteer initiative provides you the opportunity to teach modern business skills and empower students and entrepreneurs. Additionally, you’ll review and consult on business plans for local entrepreneurs and business owners.