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Discover the
MBA for innovation

Management of Technology MBA

Curriculum

Ca

This is a part-time, in-person program in Vancouver, Canada; unfortunately, international students are not eligible to apply.

Our international students are encouraged to explore our Full-Time MBA, Graduate Diploma in Business Administration or Master of Science in Finance programs.

In the SFU Beedie MOT MBA program, you’ll get the core business and management training you’d expect from an MBA, all in the context of the tech sector.

During the first five semesters you’ll build on your skills as you acquire them. Then, in your final semester, you’ll bring everything together in the Industry Consulting Project.

Before classes officially start, you’ll take pre-MBA online refresher courses, such as Excel and Financial Accounting.

You take them online during July and August before classes start in September, enabling you to learn at your own pace and ease your entry into the MOT MBA program.

These mandatory courses take approximately 30 hours to complete, depending on your background and prior knowledge. You will receive more information and instructions after you have been accepted into the program.

Orientation*

The three-day (full days) mandatory orientation happens the first week of September after Labour Day. Please note: BUS 761 (Leadership for the Technology Driven Enterprise) will be taught during this period.

Managing Technological Innovation

Examine successful product and process innovations in industry, and learn how to innovate and manage technological change within new ventures and multi-divisional enterprises. You’ll examine:

  • Real-life case studies
  • How to manage a technology portfolio
  • Effective organization and change management
Leadership for the Technology Driven Enterprise*

Develop critical management competencies at the individual, interpersonal, team and organizational levels. You’ll learn about:

  • Effective organization
  • How to motivate people
  • Taking a leadership role

Note: This is an intensive course that takes place during Orientation.

Financial and Managerial Accounting**

Learn the concepts and principles involved in financial accounting from the user perspective. By the end of this course, you’ll understand:

  • How to read financial accounts
  • How to use accounting information to make managerial decisions
*Includes weekday daytime classes and requires time off work. Calendar with exact dates shared well in advance.
**Eligible for advance credit transfer with a final GDBA grade of B or higher.
Managerial Economics for Technology Firms**

Gain an understanding of the basic concepts involved in microeconomics, and how economic reasoning affects managerial decision making. You’ll learn about:

  • The importance of economic concepts, models and quantitative applications
  • How to apply economic concepts to problems encountered by technology managers
Strategic Use of Information and Knowledge**

Learn how to use information to support better decision making, monitor operations and enable global communications. And see how organizations are doing it. Topics include:

  • Knowledge management and information technology to support a learning organization
**Eligible for advance credit transfer with a final GDBA grade of B or higher.
Business Ethics**

Ethics is a huge and important topic in business. Learn how to navigate the moral issues and debates raised by direct participants and stakeholders in the high-tech economy. Topics include:

  • Character-building practices
  • Moral stages in the high-tech career
  • Corporate social responsibility and the role of reputational capital
Topics in International Business

This course will address emerging issues in international business relevant to technology intensive firms. Globalization means that cross-cultural business interactions have become more commonplace.

Business Operations Design

Explore the strategic role of operations in technology-based firms. By the end of this course, you will understand the impact of operations on business performance. You’ll learn how to:

  • Use operations to create innovations
  • Innovate to create new operational capabilities
**Eligible for advance credit transfer with a final GDBA grade of B or higher.
Marketing Technology Based Products and Services**

What differentiates high-tech markets from more traditional ones is the environment of shrinking product life cycles, rapid changes in information and knowledge and great uncertainty about competitors. This course is designed to teach strategies for developing and executing marketing strategies in technology-intensive markets. You’ll learn how to use a variety of learning techniques including discussions, cases analyses, and a marketing decision simulation. The course will define hi-tech products, attempt to understand customer response to them, and find ways of crafting marketing strategies for them, while bearing in mind that the tectonic plates of technological change are continually shifting.

Negotiations***

Negotiation is the art and science of securing agreements between two or more parties that are interdependent and who are seeking to maximize their outcomes. You will plan for various negotiation situations and use interactive exercises to improve your ability to negotiate.

    Financing the Organization**

    Applied Finance is the core finance course required of all business majors, and it serves as the basis for all other courses in the area of finance as well as providing the basic tools that every business student will need to be successful in their chosen career. Emphasis is placed on the underlying principles and practices and how they relate to the decision-making process faced by a financial manager charged with the objective of shareholder wealth maximization and value creation.

    **Eligible for advance credit transfer with a final GDBA grade of B or higher.
    ***Course runs on Saturdays. Calendar with exact dates shared well in advance.
    Strategic Management of Technology-Based Firms

    This course deals with how technology-based firms develop and implement strategies to create competitive advantage. The module treats strategy at two levels of analysis: (a) the overall strategy of the firm and (b) the technology strategy of the firm. Explore how organizations that depend on innovation and the commercialization of intangible assets are managed strategically. You’ll learn about:

    • Developing strategies in science and technology based sectors
    • Tools and techniques for the development and implementation of strategies
    Managing Self and Others: An Organizational Simulation

    In this intensive three-day experience, discover what you would actually do when confronted with the reality of working in a complex and changing company with multiple interdependencies, financial and geographical constraints.

    Special Topics in Business Administration**


    **Eligible for advance credit transfer with a final GDBA grade of B or higher.
    Entrepreneurship

    An overview of entrepreneurial thinking and actions such as: opportunity discovery; strategy and implementation; innovation in the context of uncertainty, ambiguity and risk.

    Capstone Simulation*

    Put your new knowledge to the test in a technology simulation working on your own and within a team.

    Special Topics: Industry Consulting Project*

    In the Industry Consulting Project, you'll work with some of the most innovative companies in the world and talk in depth with their senior representatives. Then you’ll present real-life cases to technology companies in Vancouver.
    Previous companies include:

    • Amazon
    • Change Healthcare
    • Kabam Games
    • Microsoft
    • Nettwerk Music
    • Salesforce
    • SAP
    • TELUS
    • YVR Airport Authority
    *Includes weekday daytime classes and requires time off work. Calendar with exact dates shared well in advance.

    The comprehensive simulations provided the greatest learning for me. They helped change my mindset and connect the different areas of learning into a comprehensive view of how an organization runs.

    Matthew Grunert, MOT MBA

    Sr. Director, Digital Operations & IT

    Motorola Solutions

    My key lessons from the program were learning how to effectively frame and structure a problem or situation, manage a tight schedule, know what to prioritize and how to prioritize it, and identify core problems quickly and addressing them.

    Bobbie Dhillon, EMBA

    Senior Vice President, Marketing & Planning

    G&F Financial Group

    The MSc Finance program gave me the technical foundation that I couldn’t function without. I work with clients in very senior roles, and it’s important to demonstrate your technical knowledge to gain their trust.

    Christine Jakshoej Sangha, MScFin

    VP of Customer Success - Capital Markets

    FINCAD

    The immediate impact of the GDBA has been a change in the way I approach my day professionally. I am equipped to make better decisions. My confidence level has been elevated significantly, and I am enjoying a new sense of optimism in my career.

    Percival Chang, GDBA

    Manager & Investment Funds Advisor

    PH&N Investment Services

    I always saw myself working beyond clinical pharmacy. I felt that I could also shine on the business side of healthcare. I knew that with my strong clinical training an MBA would help open more doors and give me the mobility I was looking for in my career.

    Morenike Akinyemi, FT MBA

    Senior Project Manager, Transformation Delivery

    Provincial Health Services Authority

    The Part-Time MBA was excellent. It gave me exactly what I expected to receive, and I think that is the highest compliment you can pay a program. It met all my expectations and provided a solid grounding in business skills and strategies.

    Oliver Zihlmann, PT MBA

    Director of Development and Alumni Engagement

    UBC Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences

    The i2I program is perfect for people like me who are deeply involved in science, and who want to look for opportunities in the business world. A program like this opens your mind and teaches you that there is another world of possibilities outside of the lab.

    Elena Groppa, i2I

    Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Medicine

    University of British Columbia Biomedical Research Centre

    The learners I work with are 95% Indigenous, and I find that they become more interested and retain information more, when we speak and learn from an Indigenous lens. The Indigenous content integrated into the program has been very beneficial to me in terms of how I can incorporate Indigenous information into the curriculum I currently teach.

    Wanda Rockthunder, EMBA IBL

    Business Instructor, Saskatchewan Indian Institute of Technologies

    Cree, a citizen of the Muskowekwan First Nation, Saskatchewan

    MOT MBA: Matthew Grunnert

    EMBA: Bobbie

    MSc Fin: Christine

    GDBA: Percival

    FT MBA: Morenike

    PT MBA: Oliver

    i2I: Elena

    EMBA IBL: Wanda


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