Educating the Leaders of Tomorrow

Tomorrow’s work environment calls for open-minded, technology-driven managers. We prepare our Fellows for this challenge in MBA seminars, case‑based workshops, and masterclasses with CEOs.

CDI Munich

Our Unique MBA

The Collège aims to develop a young leader’s mindset so they can cope with agile companies, ever-changing variables and leadership in a globalised and digital context.

A year spent at the Collège is a year in a thriving network of like-minded and ambitious Fellows, renowned professors, challenging managers and inspirational entrepreneurs. The seminars are organised across our three campuses – that is, every Fellow will attend courses in Paris, Munich, and Turin.

In MBA seminars, case-based workshops and masterclasses with CEOs, you will deal with the following challenges in the business world:

  • How to develop a company in a dynamic world
  • How to increase company performance
  • How to use technology to address new markets (innovation)
  • How to be self-performant in the business world

The curriculum is constantly adapted and varies slightly to meet the specific requirements of the French, German, and Italian markets.

CDI Munich

At the Collège, you will develop the following skills alongside management know-how:

  • An entrepreneurial mindset
  • Leadership in international teams
  • Communication skills
  • Value-driven thinking and acting
  • Ability to cope with change, agility, and uncertainty

 

Learn more about

»I believe the Collège is also an excellent representative of high performance in talent development.«

Memmel
Ralf Memmel
Vice President Human Resources @ Infineon

How to Develop a Company
In a Dynamic World

Strategy

Strategic management refers to managerial decisions and actions that determine the organisation's competitiveness and long-term performance. The strategy classes provide a framework to develop analytical thinking, strategic decision-making, and the ability to deal with strategic complexity. You will experience and learn about strategy formulation, strategic management, and strategy implementation. To do so, you will work on various case studies (in class and in teams) and interact with C-level managers in the classroom.

The general learning outcome is to

  • Be able to conduct a broad environmental analysis,
  • Formulate strategic choices and policies that determine the long-term success of firms,
  • Understand the differences between business-level and corporate-level strategies,
  • Demonstrate how to identify strategic problems and make recommendations.
Macroeconomics and Economic Policies

This course aims to teach macroeconomic mechanisms and how they determine the evolution of the global economic environment:

  • Principles of macroeconomics, interest rates, exchange rates, monetary/fiscal policy, inflation, unemployment and phases of the business cycle
  • Understanding macroeconomic factors for large groups and economic aggregates to identify their systemic behaviours
  • Focus on recent trends, political choices, and how central institutions affect corporate business choices
Marketing

These courses will introduce you to marketing and the definition of the marketing environment (PEST and SWOT tools). You will be able to define a winning marketing strategy, from the context analysis to the practical steps. Applications will focus on real cases, e.g., in the aviation and telephone industries.

Further topics:

  • Consumer segmentation, including building a strong and valuable brand
  • Market segmentation and differentiation
  • Principles of phygital marketing (combining digital and physical)
  • Learning how to perform quantitative and qualitative research
  • The value of price and customer value
Geopolitical Scenarios

Starting from the 2009–2011 crisis, you will get a deep analysis of cause–effect processes, passing from the Italian to the European economic and political situation. The final aim of the course is to define how the economy is influenced by and consequently influences business dynamics.

Functioning of the Administration

In this seminar, members of the French Council of State will share the governance of the administration (ministries and public authorities).

Media

Led by a journalist and media executive, this seminar helps to understand the role of media in society and business through masterclasses.

How to Increase Company Performance

Digital Transformation

The course aims to cover issues relating to the digitalisation processes of companies operating in different sectors. It provides an approach to cover the management of information and communication technology, the choice of infrastructure and systems, strategic planning, and the governance of ICT.

Board of Directors

In this course, you will understand what happens when different stakeholders act together in statutory meetings with the final purpose of developing a company's strategic choices.

International Investments

In this course, you will understand the principles and fundamentals of finance:

  • Bonds, derivative assets, arbitrage, and financial engineering
  • Pricing of financial instruments, a formal approach to price forward/futures
  • Hedging interest rate risk and risk management
  • Swaps, options, pricing of options, and applications of financial options

The course focuses on financial markets and instruments:

  • Discuss the vocabulary of finance
  • Understand essential techniques (compound discounting, pension funds, credit pricing, basics of financial decisions, short sale or arbitrage)
  • Define and understand a financial product
  • Understand the importance of risk management
  • Get to know various types of investments and some specific aspects of markets
Accounting

These courses will make you understand the role of accounting and controlling in a business context. In various case studies, you will use the instruments and techniques of accounting and controlling, such as:

  • Costing and profitability analyses of products, services, markets, and customers
  • Performance measurement
  • Understanding why accounting information must include both financial and non-financial information (and how you can analyse this information)
  • Understanding a balance sheet for company assessment and valuation
  • Understanding the role of private equity
  • Definition, construction, and interpretation of main blocks of financial statements: income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statement
Financial Modelling

Corporate finance application through the management of highly complex Excel worksheets. Understanding how to develop effective business plans for company valuation and stardom operations or debt restructuring operations.

Valuation, Restructuring, and Financial Engineering

This corporate finance course aims to introduce valuation methods, the concept of value drivers, and the basics of value-based management through a mix of lectures and various case discussions (in class and in teams).

  • Definition of financial valuation models applied to real cases
  • Financial markets
  • Review of corporate and financial strategy
  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • Venture capital
  • Corporate ownership and governance
HR Management

You will understand the strategic role of human resources within organisations. With case studies (in class and teams), you will learn about the principles and application (in modern management) of

  • Business drivers for HR strategy,
  • Recruitment strategy,
  • Executive remuneration and compensation,
  • Management development and leadership,
  • Structuring and evaluating employee performance.
Managing Interprocesses in Industrial Companies

The importance of communication, relationships, and stakeholders' roles in prioritising and obtaining a competitive advantage over time. The best practices to be adopted within different types of organisations.

Introduction to Business Law

Participants will receive an introduction to the basic principles of business law.

Social Commitment

This class provides a concept of actuarial science and explores the social commitments of corporations.

Social Law

Learn about the core concepts of social law and its general application.

How to Use Technology to
Address New Markets (Innovation)

Innovation

Impact Innovation:
"Companies that want to stay competitive need to think about how their business would be like years from now."
This is an in-depth course on working with impact (radical) innovation. It includes a scientific understanding and application of tools and methods for exploring and experimenting with impact innovation in the context of a chosen scientific domain. The course covers hands-on exercises on tools and methods applied in leading firms, discussions on governance, and setting up organisations to impact innovation effectively.

Strategic Dilemmas:
"Running a large corporation is complex. Strategies constantly include trade-offs, risk and uncertainty. We need to be able to integrate a series of disciplines in business to make qualified long-term decisions."
This course gives an in-depth case-based learning experience with practical application. The case presented will include areas of innovation, digitalisation, operations, finance, and how a challenge from the executive management can be handled by a set of experts (you). During the case, you will act as an internal management consultant and provide direct recommendations to executive management.

innovation4change (I4C)

innovation4change is dedicated to the impact innovation world. The programme's objective is to apply the most advanced technologies to contribute to the resolution of problems of social interest, with the ambition of generating a significant impact on the world in a medium- to long-term perspective.

Venture Lab

From the business idea to a sustainable business, this course is about business planning and marketing of innovation and start-ups. The course is highly practical: Each group identifies technology innovators from research or start-ups and works with them on new business models and market approaches to find new product–market mixes for a given technology or innovation. Over three to four months, the teams work on a business plan presented at the end.

In various case studies (in class and in teams), you will also learn about

  • Venture capital
  • The building of a financial plan
  • Capitalisation terms and elements of pricing
  • Negotiating deals
  • The preparation of profitable exit strategies
  • The role of entrepreneurship
Sales in a Digital Era

Structuring a sales proposition for an existing or new business idea is fundamental, particularly with the final objective of managing rapid changes in business and organisational models. The course aims to define a sales strategy within the company and how to plan pricing accordingly, also according to the new trends occurring within corporations.

Strategic Technology Management

The seminar focuses on growth through innovation. Through various case studies (in class and in teams), you will learn about

  • Managing technology-driven enterprises
  • Managing innovation project portfolios
  • Principles of innovation
Design Thinking

Leaders – corporate, public, NGOs, and entrepreneurs – must navigate complexity triggered by two mutually reinforcing paradigm shifts: globalisation and digitalisation. This requires human-centred, creative, iterative, and pragmatic approaches that help to imagine and roll out new, better ideas and unthought-of solutions. Design thinking is such an approach to innovation: Visualising and designing "possible futures" of processes, products, and services is critical to business competitiveness. Design thinking is the productive combination of analytical thinking, intuition, and doing.

Data-Driven Business

To strengthen the ability to think about all the consequences of the digital revolution for the European industry, the Collège des Ingénieurs offers seminars that focus on digitalisation.

Data4Business is an ambitious programme that will prepare you to become a leader in the corporate world. You will learn to use the power of data to drive innovation and impact in businesses. The bottleneck in digital transformation driven by data is identifying real business needs and designing adequate answers using data. We will focus on this business mindset, using data only to create value for a business.

Driving Business Value with Applied Data Analytics will enable you to analyse medium-size data sets quickly and to visualise and communicate conclusions and interpretations clearly. This includes an initial data exploration and preparation in Excel/PowerBI and the creation of interactive dashboards with meaningful visualisations in PowerBI. The course is wrapped up with PowerPoint and techniques for designing slides efficiently and effectively in the style of big consulting firms.

How to be Self-Performant in the Business World

Communication

You will learn how to demonstrate effective written and verbal communication by acting on the pillars of communication and topics related to storytelling and identity. You will also focus on how to communicate and network in the digital space.

Negotiation

In this course, you will learn how to increase the probability of success during negotiations and business meetings and relate to other parties involved in different types of transactions. You will focus on how to ask and reply according to the person you have in front of you. You will work on various case studies and negotiation simulations.

Beyond intuitive negotiation, you will learn the keys to more rational thinking in negotiation. You will also learn about fundamental preparation, project negotiation, and dealing with emotions to enhance the negotiator's effectiveness.

Public Speaking

Learn how to manage stress and define posture, body language, and pause. You will define speech structure and language in front of an audience, with suggestions for coordinating a PowerPoint presentation.

Organisation and Performance

Learn how to build a personal career strategy, considering yourself as part of a personal project plan or a business. You will understand how to recognise and list the main parameters for optimising a business and identify the main questions to ask yourself when carrying out business – with the final objective of increasing business and personal performance.

The course will enable you to improve the following:

  • Your team effectiveness (collaborative intelligence, meeting, mailing, team knowledge, leadership, conflict management, and team building)
  • Your personal effectiveness (intelligence, stress resistance, agenda and desk organisation, and personal branding)
  • Your effectiveness in business (increasing sales, reducing costs, managing a unit with projects and processes, scoreboards, and KPIs)
Leadership

Recognise that you need more than the right skills to solve a problem efficiently. Be aware that teams must go through several phases before working efficiently together. Discover the key drivers available to team leaders to accelerate team development.

Leadership in Action

Each MBA candidate should individuate a managerial skills model and realise the leadership style that suits them best. In fact, like private life, professional life consists of relationships, where the essential factor is the quality of human relationships. Therefore, the course aims to develop relational intelligence and the virtuous circle of emotional maturity and empathy in each candidate.

Leadership Starting With You

This course raises awareness of the importance of soft skills in a leadership role. You will increase self-awareness from the perspective of motivation (what drives us, what our drivers' satisfaction level is, what motivates others) and understand that our way of seeing the world is not universal. The course creates a profound moment of connection between the fellows as they start the MBA journey together.

Career Coaching

Long-term career planning involves a lot of guidance and preparation. It involves identifying core skills and values while developing broad personal and career goals. You will also identify career and employment trends. How can you prepare for future career developments?

Decision Analysis

In this seminar, participants will explore the fundamentals of decision analysis, will explore cognitive biases, and will focus on making informed decisions and acting effectively in uncertain times.

Project Management

It is vital for each company to manage resources and activities accordingly in a project life cycle. You will understand in depth the planning and analysis of the various passages of a project (start-up, planning, execution, performance monitoring, closure), including, as a core part, risk management techniques and tools for coordinating projects.

Business Presentations and Presentation Techniques

A business presentation aims to propose a documented business idea to an executive committee of the company where the MBA fellow's mission takes place. The targets are to

  • Detect top management issues
  • Have a development perspective of the idea and make recommendations on actions (with figures, if possible)
  • Bring to life everything you say with extra influence, personal impact, authority, and natural presence
  • Develop compelling content that quickly connects with people (from all backgrounds) and discover strategies for handling questions
  • Comprehend how to gain buy-in from difficult personalities

By gaining personal feedback and supportive coaching through video analysis, you will feel confident in implementing all these skills.

Seminar Insights: Soft Skills

To drive decision-making processes forward, your ideas must be heard and convincing. In MBA soft skill seminars, you will be equipped with the skills to effectively communicate with management by adopting their language, understanding decision-makers’ viewpoint and articulating your innovations as persuasive business cases.