Discover the
MBA for innovation
Management of Technology MBA
Curriculum
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 and final Capstone.
Pre-program
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.
Year 1 - Fall
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
**Eligible for advance credit transfer with a final GDBA grade of B or higher.
Year 1 - Spring
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
Year 1 - Summer
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
Year 2 - Fall
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.
***Course runs on Saturdays. Calendar with exact dates shared well in advance.
Year 2 - Spring
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**
Year 2 - Summer
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

Connect with our team
Our admissions team is more than happy to answer your questions so you know what you can expect before, during, and beyond your program.