New Central Saint Martins Birkbeck MBA announced
Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and Birkbeck, University of London, are launching a new collaborative 18-month part-time MBA.
Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, and Birkbeck, University of London, are launching a new collaborative 18-month part-time MBA. The course will combine the design ethos of studio teaching with seminars and online learning. The intention is to bring together the approaches and thinking of a world-leading art and design school, with a university renowned for providing business education to working people. Fulfilling the need for a new and radical approach to the MBA marketplace, Central Saint Martins and Birkbeck have combined their complementary strengths to create a course that brings creative thinking together with a rigorous business and economics base.
The course will challenge some of the orthodoxies of the standard business school approach, in order to create a new type of business graduate: one who can combine genuinely creative thinking and innovation, with core financial and strategic management skills. The collaborative, cross-disciplinary approach reflects the complex and fluid relationships that future graduates will encounter in their careers. It has the ambition to explore alternative value systems, to engage actively with the major economic, cultural, and societal challenges facing the world, and to effect positive change.
In establishing the new course, the starting point is the recognition that business and organisations need fresh ways of tackling future challenges. This is especially true of a world now characterised by uncertainty, technological revolution and globalisation. The course will appeal to a wide range of potential students, some of whom will be non-traditional business school applicants. It is intended for those who may be keen to bring about fundamental innovation and systemic change, rather than incremental refinement.
The workshop elements of the course will employ design thinking as a way of addressing some of the so-called ‘wicked’ problems facing business leaders in the next two decades, while continuing to draw on the established core of organisational and entrepreneurial skills generally associated with the MBA curriculum.
This is the first collaboration of its kind in the UK, and directly addresses the demand from industry for alternative models of business education. The course will create a new network of entrepreneurs and leaders, with hybrid skills and approaches, operating in a world in which innovation, intellectual flexibility and creativity are central to the development of new industries, products and services.
Professor Philip Powell, Pro Vice-Master Birkbeck (Enterprise and Innovation) and Executive Dean, School of Business, Economics and Informatics, says: “Business schools have recognised that traditional MBA models are increasingly less able to equip participants for the challenges they face. Yet, business schools have struggled to adapt their offerings. Birkbeck and CSM, by offering a new MBA, unencumbered by legacy courses, hope to provide a blueprint for contemporary management education.”
Professor Jeremy Till, Head of Central Saint Martins and Pro Vice-Chancellor of University of the Arts London said: “In an ever-changing and ever more complex world, business leaders and entrepreneurs are going to need new ways of thinking and doing. In a radical departure from the standard business school model, we have designed the course to combine core business skills with the creativity and experimentation of an art and design school.”
Any queries should be directed to Dr Pamela Yeow at p.yeow@bbk.ac.uk.
Further information:
- School of Business, Economics and Informatics
- Professor Phillip Powell
- Central Saint Martins
- Professor Jeremy Till