Essential courses

The Essentials cover essential analytical and management skills. For some students this material will be new, for others it will be review. This material is delivered on-line on an asynchronous (pre-recorded) basis, so that each student may follow at his or her own pace. They are completed during the first year of the programme. Students who have taken equivalent modules as part of the Luiss Business School MBA may request exemption:

• Economics of Strategy
• Fundamentals of Business Statistics
• Fundamentals of Accounting
• Financial Statement Analysis
• Quantitative Methods for Finance

Research Methods

These sessions help students to prepare for their own thesis research, and also to critically evaluate the claims made in the research of others. We address the structure of research projects, and the arguments made in them; both qualitative and quantitative methods; literature reviews; the presentation and dissemination of research results; and epistemological problems of research. Research Methods sessions are synchronized with the Core, using research examples from the topics being covered in the Core.

Core courses

The four Core Modules explore the business challenges posed by the green and digital transitions in depth.

Module 1: Management and Strategy in the Green Transition

April 2025 – Rome

We will analyse problems of business strategy and leadership in the context of the green transition:

• The green transition as a move to a new techno-economic paradigm; lessons from past paradigm changes, and limits of those lessons in the green case
• Strategies in the transition
• Dealing with change, and with conflicting goals: old ways and new ways, sustainability, and profitability
• How is the transition affecting your organization’s business model and value proposition?
• The external business environment – regulatory and stakeholder issues, customer/supplier relations along the value chain, globalvalue chains
• Sustainability issues in facilities, locations, and transport.

Module 2: The information economy, digitization, and intangible assets

October 2025 – Amsterdam

In this module we analyse the challenges digitization poses for both the strategy and the structure of business

• Forms of organization in the digital context: platforms, ecosystems, networks
• Intangible assets
• Innovation in a digital context
• Effects on market structure; winner-take-all competition
• Implications of big data.

Module 3: Sustainability and digitization: marketing issues

April 2026 – Rome

In this module we will deepen how, by rigorously working on marketing essentials, companies might increase their economic, social, and reputational performance, affecting multiple stakeholders. Over the course of the module, starting from a deep understanding of (a) value creation mechanisms in marketing and (b) applied research methodologies in this field, students will be developing a forward- looking perspective on critical issues related to sustainability and digitalization, combining a theoretical and an applied perspective. We will examine how consumer behaviors affect – and are affected themselves – by those topics, along with issues related to Customer Centricity and Customer Experience; how Touchpoints evolution affect Decision Journeys and Moment of truth; New forms of Brand and Product Management in a digitalized and sustainable perspective; changes fueled by MarkTech; Integrated Marketing Communication and Marketing Performance Measurement.

Module 4: Accounting and Corporate Finance in the Modern Environment

October 2026 – Amsterdam

In this module we study the current trends and trajectories that enables Accounting and Finance practice to support contemporary organization in achieving Sustainable success through the creation of short, medium and long term value. Innovative practices arising from the dual (green and digital) transition will be discussed along with the evolutions on financial and managerial accounting; valuation of intangible assets; sustainable finance; political and environmental risk in the corporate valuations; integrated reporting; multi-capital performance measurement and impact-oriented analysis; best practices in data analytics.

Field trips

Field trip. In the second year, after completion of the Core modules, we will meet (location to be decided) to visit facilities of two different multinational companies, and to learn from them how they are meeting the challenges of the green and digital transitons.