What is a business executive?

What set Singularity University Executive Program apart from other business schools'  programs?

• SU has received significant media coverage, I would like to know what makes its exec programs unique, and different from other leading more traditional business schools?

• Answer:

  I got my MBA in 2006. I recently went to Singularity University's Executive Program (short version). The two are totally different and complimentary. SU is NOT a business program in traditional sense of the word. Program length. MBA is 1 or 2 years, SU is 4 or 8 days Topics covered. MBA covers traditional business disciplines like finance, marketing and strategy which have been around for decades. SU doesn't do any of that; instead, it tells you about a number of new technologies that are on the bleeding edge of innovation (they claim their curriculum changes ±20% from one session to the next because something new always comes up): what they are, how they work, what applications they have, what the timeline is into the future, and why you should care Teachers. In MBA, you have tenured or associate professors of that university, with an odd speaker sprinkled here and there. At SU you have a community of thought leaders, professors and entrepreneurs who hail from various current occupations (although Stanford looms large) and most importantly are practitioners, not academics Classmates. Average age of incoming regular MBA class is 28. Average age of SU attendees, from subjective observation, was closer to 35 if not 38. This means you get to mingle and discuss cool topics with people who are experts in their fields (of which there is a variety: from doctors to engineers to bankers). Compared to executive MBA, SU class is more diverse in terms of professions represented Overall, I found the program to be an excellent way to abstract away from the day to day job and consider topics that are driving the humanity forward. Highly recommended. You should realize that if you wok in a non-technology intensive industry like corporate banking, the SU program, unlike MBA, will likely not give you tools or ideas that you will be able to apply immediately in your job. Nevertheless, it will inspire you to do great things, think through things in a different way, be much more optimistic about the future, and maybe change jobs (true story: one of my classmates was saying he couldn't stand wasting his life at his job after everything he'd heard at SU).