Yale School of Management

The Yale Integrated MBA Curriculum

In 2006, Yale SOM introduced a new era in MBA education.

The school wholly redesigned the first-year core curriculum by replacing courses in the traditional disciplines — finance, accounting, marketing, etc. — with courses based on the constituencies a manager must engage and lead to maximize value within an organization. This approach provides the frameworks and concepts of MBA education in a richer, more relevant context — and is responsive to the demands of contemporary business.

The heart of this new way of thinking about the MBA is a series of eight multidisciplinary courses, taught by teams of senior faculty, called Organizational Perspectives. These first-year courses are structured around the roles a manager must draw upon in order to create a thriving organization or business. They are the Investor, the Customer, the Competitor, State and Society, the Innovator, the Employee, the Operations Engine, and Sourcing and Managing Funds. The core starts with a six-week Orientation to Management that prepares students for these integrated courses. The Yale SOM core culminates in the Integrated Leadership Perspective class, which gives students practical experience in synthesizing the lessons of the core through a series of case studies and group projects involving organizations of varying scale and purpose.

Students take elective courses in the second semester of the first year and throughout the second year, both to build on the broad perspective they’ve gained in the core and to dive into the subjects that are most important to them. In addition to advanced disciplinary electives in courses such as finance, marketing, and strategy, Yale SOM offers innovative, multidisciplinary electives that extend the integrated nature of the core curriculum. Yale SOM students can also take a wide range of courses offered in other schools and departments at Yale University.

To support the multidisciplinary nature of the curriculum, Yale MBA students make use of wide variety of original teaching materials tailored to the integrated approach, including a series of online cases that feature source documents, such as 10-Ks, news articles, and interviews with individuals involved in the business problem being described. Materials presented in this "raw" case format reflect the way modern
managers must access and analyze information to make informed business decisions.

Other elements of the Yale program fulfill the school’s leadership mission by developing personal leadership skills and aligning students’ professional goals with their values and aspirations. In the first year, for example, the Leadership Development Program and the Careers course provide opportunities for both focused introspection and personal development, as well as a broader understanding of potential professional roles.