Developing a Business - Executive MBA courses from a student perspective

"For the first time since starting the Executive MBA in January 2021, I got to attend class at the MSM campus in Maastricht. It was exciting and a much better experience than Zoom. A major reason to choose MSM was the great diversity of the student body and having so many nationalities in one class really adds to a rich exchange of different views.

Entrepreneurship
Lecturer David Dingli came in from Malta to deliver the course on Entrepreneurship. As a business owner myself, I was looking forward to this course and it gave me valuable insights. David is an enthusiastic and energetic lecturer who spoke about innovation, the lean start-up approach and running a business intelligently. An inspiring guest lecturer from Malta took us through his fascinating entrepreneurial journey. The course also touched on funding, entrepreneurship ecosystems and compiling a business plan. The latter was helpful as it is the topic of my thesis.

Many businesses struggle to reach escape velocity and this course helped me analyze the challenges in my own business and bring them back to some fundamentals such as recruitment, talent management and financial stewardship. In doing so, the subject connected to other courses in the program and facilitated a solid introduction for aspiring entrepreneurs in the class.

Group work and presentations were done during the class which should be standard practice as lingering group assignments have become a source of frustration for most students. Every group kept a logbook which is valuable in assessing the group dynamics and decision-making process."

Digital Transformation
After the excellent Data Management Tools (DMT) course he taught in July 2021, it was a pleasure to meet Dr. Khaled Wahba in person for Digital Transformation (DX). Having traveled all the way from Canada, Khaled took us through three days of customer experience, internal operations and management paradoxes, Business Model Definitions and many relevant case studies. The fourth day consisted of group presentations evaluated by Dr. Vincent Feltkamp.

The importance of digital transformation is an eye-opener. Especially the way tech drives organizational growth and impacts the culture. For a company like mine, which is increasingly a networked organization, it is important to enhance digital ways of doing business while building and maintaining a cohesive and motivated team.

With almost everyone back in class there was also time for socializing. Our intake connected with a dinner on Sunday and on Wednesday MSM treated the entire class to a night out in beautiful Maastricht. This was a great opportunity to get to know classmates better."

Servaas van den Bosch is founder and managing director of Emergo Consulting that focuses on communication, public relations and change management in Africa and beyond.