Beyond Best Practice
Creating cutting-edge business practices
At MIT Sloan, the instinct for invention and reinvention is deeply embedded in the culture. Nothing is taken for granted, and everything is approached from a fresh perspective.
MIT Sloan pioneered the science of management, and engineered innovations that have changed the face of global business. System Dynamics, Marketing Science, McGregor’s Theory X and Theory Y, and the Black-Scholes-Merton derivatives pricing model are just few examples of the unprecedented innovations originating from MIT Sloan.
MIT Alumni, steeped in innovative learning and practive, have founded many notable international corporations including Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, Raytheon, McDonnell Douglas, Texas Instruments, Digital, Intel, Bose, Polaroid, Campbell Soup, Gillette, Teradyne, and Zipcar.
Members of the MIT community constantly share new research and techniques that redefine the agenda in their field. By learning a scientific approach to management, graduates of the MIT MBA program are well poised to continue in that tradition.
Inventing New Fields
MIT Sloan graduates don’t just follow cutting-edge business practices — they create them by using quantitative and qualitative techniques. As the birthplace of quantitative finance, system dynamics, and marketing science, the School positively hums with energy that empowers such advanced breakthroughs. Invention and innovation here are cross-cultural, multidisciplinary, and intergenerational. Both are the results of collaborative excellence and the strong belief that, with extensive knowledge, deliberate effort, and entrepreneurial energy, the possibilities are endless.
Action Learning
"Mens et Manus" — MIT's motto, translates from the Latin to “Mind and Hand.” This “learning by doing” mindset permeates the MIT Sloan experience and ensures that our students learn what they will need to know to make a powerful impact as leaders in their chosen careers.
MIT Sloan is unmatched in the depth and breadth of its Action Learning opportunities. The School developed its modern Action Learning programs in 1992 with the advent of the Entrepreneurship Lab (E-Lab). E-Lab pairs interdisciplinary student teams with local business startups for targeted consulting with successful entrepreneurs. In our other, more globally diverse Labs, the student learning environment extends into the villages, cities, commerce centers, and boardrooms of the international marketplace. With Action Learning at MIT Sloan, you’ll have the opportunity to travel to strategic global business regions as varied as Silicon Valley and sub-Saharan Africa and to consult with some of the world’s most respected industry, government, and high-tech leaders — and with leaders in the making.
Reinventing Finance
Finance at MIT Sloan is integrated with MIT’s world-renowned Economics program. Breakthroughs in financial economics are regularly associated with MIT, and many of the most applied theories in business and on Wall Street — including system dynamics, operations research, and quantitative strategies — were born here. Our faculty is known for including the world’s most influential thought leaders in finance and economics — including Black, Scholes, Merton, Samuelson, Wang, Ross, Cox, Lo, and Myers, to name just a few.
Tours and Treks
Study Tours provide you with a course credit opportunity to identify an issue that you feel passionately about addressing, recruit faculty support, design a curriculum, and partner with participating organizations to address an industry challenge. Examples of Study Tours include a clean energy study tour to Europe and an education study tour to Brazil.
Study Treks are more informal, student-organized group trips that are supported by the Career Development Office. These Treks focus on areas with a high density of relevant businesses. Recent Treks have included visits to Japan, New York, France, Korea, Las Vegas, India, Silicon Valley, and Turkey.
Career Roadmaps
MIT Sloan offers a wide variety of career roadmaps that can assist you in creating your own path through the curriculum, helping you to focus on the best course for the future of your chosen career. If you’re undecided about which path is right for you, our career resources staff can assist you in narrowing your choices.
“Because of the diversity of our backgrounds, when we hit the ground in Tanzania it almost was a natural play where different people assume different roles.”
“We are very much an action-learning environment. The way to learn leadership is not only through reading cases, not only through learning theory — in fact we don’t want people to regurgitate the theory. We want people to take theory and to live it, use it.”
“At MIT Sloan you have a lot of opportunities to explore entrepreneurship. Especially in a place like Kampala where you have a lot of development, entrepreneurship can be very exciting.”
“I came to Sloan because of its high rankings within the sustainability community, specifically the professors. The S-Lab class itself is part of what drew me to Sloan. And the reason I came to business school was to learn the business speak that really is what connects with people."
"The relationships that we forged helped us to turn out a better project. We were able to test our hypotheses with the people that we spoke with every single day. And really, I think the friendships that you develop really propel the work that you’re doing."
“The conditions in the neighborhoods we were visiting were different than what we realized before getting there. Beyond that, what was surprising was that there weren’t surprises!”
“I knew about American business, but not enough about what’s really become a global economy. … You can read about it all you want, but there’s no substitute for being there and seeing the context and seeing how completely different these [other countries] are.”
“For 35 years, we’ve been studying how companies get value from information. … We try to help organizations take a more holistic view of what they are trying to do.”
“One of the reasons I came to Sloan was because I wanted to be at a top MBA institution worldwide. But I also wanted access to working with the latest innovations and the highest technology that was coming out of the MIT labs.”
“I can honestly say that when I was planning on coming to business school I never thought that witnessing the birth of a child would be included in the education. It was definitely an experience.”
“I love being in a place that is such a nexus of people and ideas — people coming to learn something new and to define themselves. Being a part of that process is a real honor and a real gift.”
“We’re very interdisciplinary. Among the faculty in the group are an economist, a political scientist, a sociologist, and an industrial relations specialist. We’ve always made a big effort to be open to a variety of perspectives, but also to go beyond being open to them, to want to bring them in, because it makes for a richer environment.”
“It was really rewarding that they wanted to know what we thought. We left there being fairly certain that they will do some of the things that we suggested.”
“[The India Lab] program is one of the reasons I came to Sloan. ... The hands-on learning that MIT offers was a huge differentiator.”
“At MIT Sloan, it’s very much about learning by doing. You learn in your head and in your hand. Other schools emphasize action-focused learning, but I think MIT Sloan embraces more of it.”
