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Northwestern University

Curriculum

Bold Outcomes in Business Begin With Human-Centered Design

2 years

Join your cohort in June and graduate in June two years later

full-time

Complete a minimum of 28.5 credits during seven quarters of full-time study

internship

Add to your resume with summer internship at the end of the first year

What makes our curriculum different?

View the skills set you'll gain and the classes that will give them to you.

Design & Innovate

Harness your team's creativity to design what's next

In order to prepare our graduates to lead design and innovation teams, we have designed our curriculum to focus on the following skill sets:

User-Centered Design

Learn to develop customer insights, personas, and journey maps through ethnographic research. Lead with empathy for customers and users, and gaining a deep understanding of customer needs.

Innovation & Ideation

Apply principles of innovation to ideas, products, business models, and always “thinking big”.

Cross-Functional Teamwork

Grow your ability to fostering communication among engineers and designers.

 

Required Core Courses:

Visualize and Verbalize

Capture imaginations

Visual and Verbal Communication Skills

Storytelling is critical to getting buy-in and peak interest in stakeholders and customers alike. Learn to present your ideas and solutions – and the data that motivates them – in a manner that is engaging, clear, and memorable. You will learn to communicate to the whole brain by turning verbal messages to salient visuals, expressing abstract numbers as sensorimotor objects, leveraging existing association networks, and telling immersive stories.

Core Courses:
Whole-Brain Communication

Dive into Programming

Know how it's built

The new reality is that every company is a software company.

Basic Programming

Know your products inside and out, and communicate more credibly with the developers on your team by understanding of how software works and how software is built.

Required Core Courses:

Gain Core Business Management Skills

Lead with confidence

Traditional MBA Skills

Hone your leadership skills, strategic thinking, and business acumen with a foundation of conventional MBA classes, including classes in:

  • Finance
  • Marketing
  • Leadership
  • Microeconomics
Required Core Courses:

Get More Than an MBA

Know your business from every possible angle

Compliment traditional business skills with analytics expertise that will enable you to make the most informed decisions.

Deeper Dive (MBA+)

Delve even deeper into business management than the traditional MBA skills with advanced analytics to drive data-driven decisions for your organization.

Required Core Courses:
See Course Timeline

Most Impactful Classes

Differentiate Yourself with MMM

Don't take our word for it. Check out a few of the courses that our alumni feel made the difference in their careers.

Go Beyond the Classroom

Try out new skills through hands-on experiences and field work

In addition to classroom education spanning business, design innovation and technology, the program also offers a robust variety of co-curricular, hands-on learning opportunities and field work. Students learn how to identify, research, and solve problems throughout the entire ecosystem of a business including product development, operations management, product management and growth strategy.

  • A capstone Business Innovation Lab working with a major corporation
  • Exclusive workshops and seminars with innovation business leaders
  • An exclusive MMM studio and prototyping space with access to workshops, individual trainings, and technical support
  • Opportunities to visit and work in professional design facilities, both domestic and overseas
  • MMM-specific business and design competitions
  • Access, mentorship and support from both professors and administrators from Kellogg, Segal and McCormick
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