MBA students matriculating at IESE Business School in September 2026 will engage in a new curriculum, centered around AI. In response to a changing business landscape, IESE seeks to prepare its students for the impact AI has had and will continue to have on business leadership, the nature of work, decision-making and more.
“We made a deliberate choice not to bolt AI onto a couple of electives and call it a transformation,” said Marc Badia, Deputy Dean of IESE Business School. “AI now runs through every first-year course, because in two years our graduates will be in roles where the question is not ‘can you use AI?’ but ‘can you lead and manage in a human+AI organization?’ That is a leadership challenge in every function – finance, operations, strategy – not a specialist topic.”
The new curriculum integrates the development of AI capabilities across 18 first-year courses and more than 40 AI-integrated sessions.
Capabilities Garnered from the MBA Curriculum
IESE outlines three capability areas around which the curriculum has been redesigned: Personal AI fluency, AI-enabled workflow and operating model redesign, and strategic AI acumen.
To become “AI-capable leaders,” IESE MBA students will be taught:
- Personal AI fluency: how to work effectively with AI, including choosing the right tools for the task, structuring context, verifying outcomes and ensuring responsible use.
- AI-enabled workflow and operating model redesign: how to rethink how work is organized, including identifying use cases, redefining roles and processes, setting evaluation metrics and enabling change management.
- Strategic AI acumen: how to make decisions at the system level, including innovating with business models, prioritizing investment and managing risk.
IESE employs the case method — meaning students are given real-life business situations, they read and discuss the particular challenge, and then decide how to resolve it — for most of its teaching. With the integration of AI, cases now routinely include an AI-generated analysis–not as the answer, but rather an object of evaluation. Part of the students’ AI training will entail judging whether the AI reached the right conclusions, while defending their own case takeaways and decisions.
AI Across the Two Years
The first-year courses and AI sessions are complemented by pre-program courses and workshops, arming every student with at least a baseline level of AI tech knowledge and application skills. During the second year of study, MBA students take electives and projects that deepen their technical understanding, transformational skills, and judgment. IESE also offers a concentration on AI, Tech, Data and Digital Business with 27 electives available.
Throughout their studies, students build a portfolio of applied work, such as AI audits and agentic workflow blueprints, in order to graduate with tangible evidence of their capabilities. IESE also maintains close ties with employers to ensure alignment between what is taught, how it is assessed and what organizations are seeking from leaders of AI-augmented workplaces.
IESE cites these changes as part of their broader strategic focus and building on their Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Management Initiative.
Read the full announcement here.
