Executive Development Program: Leading Into the FutureNEW
The business world is changing faster than ever. Ensure that you and your organization keep up, thrive, and have the tools necessary to take on the future.
New York City is where businesses of all sectors come to accelerate and shape the future of their organizations, break preconceived notions, and become exposed to new ideas and unexpected challenges every day. It energizes people, inspires ideas, and influences the future. And Columbia Business School harnesses all of this knowledge to inform, transform, and empower executives.

Impact
Big Data. Cryptocurrency. Diversity. Innovation. Transformation.
The business world is changing faster than ever.
New technology, new terminology, new industries, a transforming workforce. How can you ensure that you and your organization keep up, thrive, and have the tools needed to take on the future?
Fast-Track for the Future
Things happen in NYC first for a reason. This dynamic city is always at least two steps ahead. It knows how to pivot and reinvent itself especially when it comes to business. New York City is where businesses of all sectors come to accelerate and shape the future of their organizations, break preconceived notions, and become exposed to new ideas and unexpected challenges every day. It energizes people, inspires ideas, and influences the future.
And Columbia Business School, at the very center of business, harnesses all of this knowledge to inform and transform executives, empowering them for the future.
With Columbia Business School’s Executive Development Program you’ll:
- Fast-track your understanding of the critical issues of today so that you have an effective way to engage your organization with potential challenges or issues now and in the future
- Strengthen your knowledge of core business principles
- Refine your leadership ability with a personalized approach tailored to what works for you
- Get the tools you’ll need to effectively navigate and engage in this complex world
- Learn from faculty who are world-leaders in their field and at the forefront of future trends
- Hear from and have access to expert practitioners based in New York City
- Acquire leadership skills that allow you to make a difference with every person you interact with
- Immediately be able to use the knowledge you gain to influence and shape the future of your organization
Impactful Experience
Summary of benefits
The Fundamentals + The Future
Columbia Business School’s Executive Development Program: Leading Into the Future first provides a solid foundation on the fundamentals of business: economics, strategy, finance, marketing, operations, and leadership. Then, the program takes a deeper dive allowing participants the opportunity to get immersed in the critical issues and topics of today whose understanding is paramount to future success (e.g. the future of work, climate, blockchain, and cybersecurity). Get in-depth and research-led analysis from faculty at the forefront of these dynamic areas — who are also world-leaders in their field — while also hearing from expert practitioners that Columbia Business School is able to access because of our unique networks and location in New York City.
Leadership for Business & Beyond
In today’s challenging world, leadership is needed now more than ever. With emerging technology, new industries, and a transforming workforce, organizations will need to adapt. It’s leadership that will effectively implement these necessary transformations. While leadership can be learned, there is no cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all technical approach that works for everyone. The model of an individual all-knowing leader is too limited for modern times. And leadership skills go beyond the workplace. They show up in many aspects of life. The key is paying attention to what’s going on around you and knowing how your individual skills can be implemented in these situations. The Executive Development Program provides the personalized tools you need to make a difference in every single room you enter and with each person you speak with.
Interactions That Inspire
Columbia Business School’s Executive Development Program: Leading Into the Future is interactive. Engage in cultivated exchanges with faculty and your peers — executives from different sectors, cultures, and countries — who will provide diverse perspectives and insights.
Effectively Navigate a Complex World
Empowerment comes from having the knowledge you need and the right tools to get the job done. Columbia Business School’s Executive Development Program: Leading Into the Future, provides a clear vision of the landscape, the technologies, the social disruptions, and the social change and transformations that are relevant to business. Get a deeper understanding of essential trends that may dramatically alter how business is conducted in the future including the future of finance (e.g. cryptocurrency), managing a future workforce, reflecting on technology strategy, artificial intelligence (AI), big data, and analytics.
“The future is happening now. What previously worked for executives in the past may not work tomorrow. This dynamic program is a wakeup call. It provides the tools they’ll need to tackle those complicated, uncertain, difficult problems that are coming their way. By understanding the unknown, they’ll be able to deal productively with the future. This program prepares our students to really future-proof their strategy for the business decisions that they're having now. Once completed, participants won’t be able to stay still. They’ll be inspired and can immediately put into practice what they’ve learned.”
Program Structure
What to Expect
High-quality, interactive, and immersive programs featuring in-depth and research-led analysis. Get a clear vision of what you’ll need to lead into the future including technology strategies, the future of finance, AI (artificial intelligence), big data, and analytics, managing a future workforce, social disruptions, and social change and transformations. Fast-track your understanding of key business topics that will shape the future of your organization.
The program will:
- Include interactive and immersive sessions featuring in-depth and research-led analysis
- Be taught by faculty who are world-leaders in their field, at the forefront of these future trends, and skilled at communicating in an accessible way
- Provide access to expert practitioners based in New York City
- Build a network of peers from different sectors, cultures, and countries who can provide diverse perspectives and insights
- Allow participants to acquire personalized leadership tools that work for you as a unique individual
Fundamentals I
Live Online
June 6–10, 2022
5 days, 3 hours each
- Program Introduction and Economic Outlook
- Strategy and Finance
“New York City is really something we try to integrate into our program. One of the reasons why I live and work in New York is because I'm exposed to new ideas, new problems, and new challenges every day. I find that inspiring. The kinds of issues business leaders everywhere are going to deal with appear in New York City first. We’ve specifically designed Leading Into the Future to take advantage of that. We’re not just conveying information but, instead, having students experience it with practitioners that will walk in the door and speak to them, allowing our students to put that knowledge into practice at their companies the next day.”
Participant Profile
- Executives with 10+ years of management or senior functional experience who are developing implementing the strategies shaping the future of their organization.
- Executives whose goals involve engaging in organizational transformation.
- A senior leader transitioning from making internal operations decisions to a more prominent role, one that requires engaging external stakeholders on a leadership team. While they may have heard or read about future trends, they need expert guidance to help relate what one should do in the face of some of these challenges.
- Executives looking to refine their leadership skills with a personalized approach that will help them discover how to make a difference in every room they enter.

Faculty

Stephan Meier
James P. Gorman Professor of Business, Columbia Business School

Stephan Meier
James P. Gorman Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
Professor Meier holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Zurich, was previously a senior economist at the Center for Behavioral Economics and Decision Making at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and taught courses on strategic interactions and economic policy at Harvard University and the University of Zurich.
His research interest is in behavioral strategy. He investigates the impact of psychology and economics on human decision making and its implications for public policy and company strategy. Current research topics include how non-selfish behavior affect organizations or the effect of borrower's decision-making on financial institutions' strategy.

Dan Wang
Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School

Dan Wang
Associate Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
Dan Wang is Associate Professor of Business and (by courtesy) Sociology at Columbia Business School, where he is also the incoming Faculty Co-Director of the Tamer Center for Social Enterprise. His research examines how social networks drive social and economic transformation through the analysis of global migration, social movements, organizational innovation, and entrepreneurship. He teaches the core MBA Strategy Formulation course, an elective MBA course on Technology Strategy, a PhD seminar on Organizational Theory. He also teaches in several Executive Education programs on Social Networks and Technology Strategy. He earned his BA from Columbia University (Columbia College) and PhD from Stanford University.
He received the 2020 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in the Core and the 2018 Singhvi Prize for Scholarship in the Classroom, Columbia Business School’s top teaching honor conferred by the graduating MBA class. He was also named to Poets and Quants’ 2018 list of “Best 40 Business School Professors under 40.” In 2021, he received the Robert W. Lear Service Award, given by the graduating class for his commitment to the MBA student body.
Wang’s research lies at the intersection of business and society with a focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. One of his main research streams focuses on the global migration of high-skilled individuals. Specifically, Wang studies “reverse brain drain”, or how the return migration of skilled professionals spreads ideas, technologies, and new ventures to different parts of the world. Another research area focuses on how social protest and activism create an interface between business and society. In this work, Wang has analyzed collaboration networks across social movements to predict innovation, knowledge sharing, strategic choices, and protest scope across activist groups. Finally, in on-going work on entrepreneurship, he has analyzed the implications of different network structures of venture capital syndication for the innovation output and financial performance of start-ups.
His work has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Annual Review of Sociology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Social Forces, Social Networks, Strategic Management Journal, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, and Theory and Society. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Strategic Management Journal and Special Issue Editor for Organization Science and has served as a Consulting Editor for The American Journal of Sociology. He is co-editor of the book series, Elements in the Structural Analysis of Culture, Social Organization, and History with Cambridge University Press. His work has been cited in The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and NPR and has been recognized with multiple awards from the Academy of Management. He has also been awarded both the Dissertation (2012) and Junior Faculty Fellowship (2017) from the Kauffman Foundation. He has also contributed to practitioner-oriented publications such as Strategy+Business, and written Op-Eds for CNN.
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