Queen’s FELIA Mini-MBA China: Leadership in the Context of VUCA and Black Swans
Read below to find out how our Academic Director, Dr Ulf Bosch, found his experience delivering our Mini MBA programme at Tianjin University, China.
Our Academic Director, Dr Ulf Bosch, enjoyed an exciting week at Tianjin University, China delivering our immersive Mini-MBA programme to with a group of thirty engineering leaders for the future. The week featured as part of a two week initiative with the QUB FELIA innovative engineering academy, bringing together engineering PhD students from the UK and China. The Future Engineers’ Leadership and Innovation Academy was created to develop creative, technical, transnational communication, and leadership skills for the next generation of our engineers, innovators and entrepreneurs. The academy builds on the successful Mini-MBA programme developed by the William J Clinton Leadership Institute.
This Mini MBA programme itself uses a blend of self-directed reading, class-based activity, case studies and practical learning activities to enhance its participants’ skills in core areas of leadership, technical engineering in an international context. It involves practical cross-disciplinary team-building activity which supports the creation of a technology business and is enhanced by design thinking skills.
Ulf's words on his experience:
"Seeking truth from facts 实事求是 – poet Han Gu’s famous expression is the leitmotif of Tianjin University, China’s oldest university (est. 1895) and a leader in scientific research outputs. In that vein, it was a pleasure and privilege for the William J. Clinton Leadership Institute at Queen’s Business School to launch our compact-sized Mini-MBA for PhDs within the Future Engineer Leadership and Innovation Academy (FELIA). Initiated by a consortium of world-class universities, the programme offers and all-encompassing account of business activities in an dynamic context, including leadership, markets and strategy, finance as well as people and performance. Apart from academic theory and practical cases, the students immersed themselves into the notions of VUCA (*volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) and black swans, later referring to (shock) events that are outside the norm, hard to predict and/or little understood. China is synonymous with the superlative and unforeseen – so, unsurprisingly, there were many black swans, even on campus. What is fascinating about this place is the energy that stems from the dichotomy between tradition and modernity."
To find out more about Future Engineer Leadership and Innovation Academy, click the link below;