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Triple Crown Accredited
The highest global standard (AMBA, AACSB, EQUIS), guaranteeing quality and rigour.
The Perfect Start
Accelerate your success from day one with a unique foundation module designed to sharpen your learning edge.
Live Global Networking
Build powerful professional connections through dedicated, real-time collaboration with a high-calibre cohort.
World Class Insights
Master the future of business under the guidance of industry-leading experts and renowned academics.
Course content
The Exeter MBA (Online) develops mid-career professionals into leaders who can drive digital transformation and harness AI for strategic advantage, with a particular focus on GenAI and emerging technologies. You will study core MBA disciplines including strategy, finance, operations and organisational leadership, enhanced by key emerging business skills such as digital transformation, AI in business and data-driven decision making.
The programme combines live online seminars, interactive learning environments and flexible independent study, delivered by expert faculty and industry practitioners to create a collaborative and practical learning experience.
You will apply your learning through a capstone project, a work-based project within your organisation, addressing real organisational challenges and delivering measurable business impact and return on investment, supporting accelerated career progression.
Modules focus on areas such as AI and Design Thinking, Strategic Foresight, Ecosystems Thinking, and Negotiation and Influence, equipping you with future-ready, practical skills. You will learn alongside experienced professionals, building global business connections and lasting professional networks within a supportive learning environment.
Please note that the module information displayed here is subject to change.
180 credits of compulsory modules. The modules are offered on a carousel model where you may join the programme at one of three points each year.
Compulsory modules
| Code | Module | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| Compulsory 1 | ||
| Business Transformation in a Digital World | 30 | |
| Business Analytics and Marketing Strategy | 30 | |
| Integrated Financial Management | 30 | |
| Leading Dynamic Organisations and Operations | 30 | |
| Strategic Foresight | 15 | |
| AI and Design Thinking | 15 | |
| Capstone Project | 30 | |
MBAM862Z: Business Transformation in a Digital World
Module Description:
The foundation module is underpinned by Exeter’s approach to strategy and leadership, informed by our influential research in digital transformation, climate and circular economy. Here you will begin to develop the strategic, leadership, and ethical capabilities we know are required to operate effectively in a rapidly evolving global landscape shaped by systemic uncertainty.
You will examine organisational leadership in an AI-enabled economy, where Generative AI, platform dynamics and rapid change are reshaping value creation, competition and risk governance. You will consider the ethical and strategic implications of generative AI, enabling critical evaluation of its use in decision-making, organisational design, and stakeholder engagement. You will also examine how technological disruption intersects with environmental pressures and shifting socio-economic expectations to redefine organisational purpose and performance.
You will explore contemporary strategy as a dynamic, practice-based discipline, where leaders must continuously sense, interpret, and respond to change rather than rely on static plans. This will include the development of core capabilities in horizon scanning, pattern recognition, assumption-testing and adaptive strategy design under pressure.
MBAM863Z: Business Analytics and Marketing Strategy
Module Description
This module explores marketing and business analytics in an era defined by data abundance, attention scarcity, and GenAI-enabled decision-making. You will be equipped to navigate complex, dynamic environments where value is co-created across networks of customers, platforms, and institutions. Integrating marketing, responsible economics, and data analytics, the module will develop your capability to transform data into insight, and insight into sustainable growth strategies.
You will engage with complexity science and systems thinking to understand markets as adaptive systems, shaped by cultural, social, and technological forces. Drawing on cultural economics, the sociology of value, and the anthropology of community, you will examine how meaning, identity, and trust influence exchange. You will also address the politics of platforms, information environment literacy, and the geopolitical and ideological forces that both help to create and fracture communities and markets.
MBAM864Z: Integrated Financial Management
This module develops your financial management capability as a leader operating in a digital economy shaped by automation, fintech, data abundance and GenAI. Whether your background is in finance or not, you will build the practical fluency needed to engage confidently with financial information, challenge assumptions, and contribute meaningfully to financial decision-making in your organisation.
You will develop foundational skills in interpreting financial statements, understanding cost behaviour, managing cash flow and evaluating organisational performance through both traditional and contemporary metrics. The module equips you to read the financial story behind the numbers and to enter into effective, informed dialogue with finance specialists and stakeholders.
Building on these foundations, you will explore how investment decisions are appraised, how organisations fund their activities, and how capital structure and risk interact with strategy and long-term value creation. Throughout, you will work with realistic cases, dashboards and emerging GenAI-enabled tools, developing judgement about when and how to deploy technology critically and responsibly in financial analysis.
MBAM865Z: Leading Dynamic Organisations and Operations
Organisations of every kind must now negotiate the dynamics of constant change, driven by a convergence of AI innovation, economic instability, and geopolitical shifts, alongside rising demands from both employees and customers in increasingly competitive markets. This module explores operations and organisational behaviour not as separate functions, but as a single, interdependent system. It acknowledges that the methods we use to transform organisations to embrace automation and agentic AI have a profound impact on evolving employee experiences and expectations.
We will cover key theoretical approaches to operations management and efficiency, reimagining priorities for organisations that must develop the capability to sustain transformation and embed new technology while maintaining high performance amidst global disruption. We will explore questions beyond the mere implementation of AI, focusing on the new value that streamlined, automated functions can deliver and how to align people and processes to realise the promise of human-AI collaboration. You will interrogate how generative AI, algorithmic management, and automation are fundamentally rewriting the social contract of work, considering the business-critical requirements for AI governance, data protection, and ethical decision-making in the race to digitally transform operations.
MBAM866Z: Strategic Foresight
Strategic foresight is the systematic practice of exploring, anticipating and preparing for multiple potential futures. Unlike more traditional linear strategy work, strategic foresight acknowledges the need to develop preparedness for and agency in, a range of potential disruptive operating environments. This is not forecasting or prediction, but the embrace of uncertainty.
This module will further develop your abilities in strategic foresight, using techniques including horizon scanning, scenario planning and back-casting. You will investigate trends and developments in your political, economic, social, technological, and legal environments to identify emerging forces, shifting customer needs and potential disruptions.
Emphasis will be placed on creating detailed narratives leading to the design of flexible strategies that enable the sensing and seizing of diverse opportunities. You will hone your skills in the creation of actionable options that are financially viable and socially responsible, fostering a practice of proactive considered decision-making enabling organisations to create, influence and respond to futures, rather than practice reactive crisis management approaches.
MBAM867Z: AI and Design Thinking
This module develops your entrepreneurial and intrapreneurial capability through design thinking and structured innovation methods. Whether you are seeking to launch a new venture or drive innovation from within an existing organisation, you will build a practical, transferable toolkit for identifying opportunities, framing problems, and developing solutions that create real value.
You will work through a structured innovation process from need-finding and problem framing through ideation, value proposition design and business model development. With a consistent emphasis on evidence-based experimentation rather than assumption-driven planning. Using tools such as the Business Model Canvas, value proposition mapping and lean experimentation frameworks, you will learn to test ideas rapidly, interpret feedback, and iterate with purpose.
A sustained design sprint, linked to a live challenge in your own organisational context, guides you through prototyping, testing, iteration and refinement. This applied project forms the backbone of the module, ensuring that your learning translates directly into actionable outcomes for your workplace. GenAI tools are integrated as creative and analytical collaborators throughout the sprint process, and you will critically evaluate their role in augmenting innovation practice.
MBAM868Z: Capstone Project
The Capstone Project is the culmination of your MBA journey. Grounded in your own organisational context, it requires you to identify a substantial workplace challenge, synthesise learning from across the programme, and design, implement and evaluate an intervention that delivers measurable impact.
This is not a traditional dissertation. The capstone is structured as an applied management project in which you act as both strategist and practitioner—defining the problem, engaging stakeholders, making and justifying decisions under real constraints, and delivering outcomes that matter to your organisation. You will draw on strategic, financial, operational, analytical and leadership capabilities developed throughout the programme to demonstrate integrated, cross-functional thinking at master’s level.
You will be supported by an academic supervisor who will guide your project from scoping through to completion. A structured sequence of project workshops and peer review sessions will develop your research and consultancy skills, help you refine your methodology, and provide regular formative feedback. Peer learning remains central: you will present progress to your cohort, act as a critical friend to others, and benefit from the diverse sectoral perspectives within your learning community.
Entry requirements
To be considered for The Exeter MBA (Online), you will normally hold a degree equivalent to a minimum of 2:2 and have at least three years' management experience. If you do not hold a degree, significant management experience of five years or more will be considered.
As part of the enrolment process, applicants will undertake a brief interview with our Student Recruitment team to verify programme eligibility. Interview responses will be recorded and retained in line with admissions procedures.
English language requirements
International students need to show they have the required level of English language to study this course.
The required test scores for this course fall under Profile B2.
Fees and funding
Total fees for this programme are £23,100.
Applicants who are residents in Devon and Cornwall may be eligible for a £3,000 scholarship towards tuition fees. Further information, including eligibility criteria, is available from our team.
Applicants joining The Exeter MBA (Online) in September 2026 are eligible for the Innovation Cohort Scholarship, worth 20% (£4,620) of tuition fees. For further information about the scholarship, including how awards are applied, please refer to the full terms and conditions or speak to our team.
Fees are charged per module. You can pay in full at the beginning of the course or as you go by paying for the module or modules you are registered to study in each term.
Teaching and research
Applied Online Learning
The programme combines flexible, 24/7 access to structured, narrative-driven digital content with regular live online seminars, interactive workshops, simulations and authentic assessments, delivered by expert faculty and industry practitioners.
Learning is applied directly to your organisational context, enabling you to solve real-world challenges while balancing study with professional and personal commitments, within a structured and supportive learning experience.
Regular, scheduled live sessions form a core part of the programme, offering opportunities for interactive, collaborative and applied learning. These sessions are timetabled in advance, with a choice of weekly time slots to support different time zones and professional commitments. Led by expert faculty, they provide space for discussion, practical exploration of live challenges and reflective activities, with recordings available where needed to support flexibility.
Research-informed Learning
All modules are grounded in the latest research on digital transformation, AI, leadership and innovation, including practical applications of GenAI in business. You will explore evidence-based strategies and apply global insights to contemporary business challenges, ensuring content is rigorous, relevant and focused on real-world application.
Independent Research
Through the 30-credit capstone project, you will conduct in-depth research on a strategic organisational challenge. This enables you to address a real business issue with measurable outcomes, bringing together your learning across the programme while developing analytical and problem-solving capabilities and demonstrating data-driven decision-making in complex organisational contexts.
Professional Alignment
The Exeter MBA (Online) is aligned with recognised leadership, innovation and professional standards, preparing you for senior leadership and career progression in a global market.
Modules and the capstone project develop skills employers value, enabling you to deliver measurable impact and a clear return on investment, with strong potential for accelerated career and salary progression.
Meet the Exeter MBA (Online) academics
The University of Exeter Business School’s strong academic reputation attracts internationally recognised researchers and experienced educators, with 92% of Business and Management Studies research rated as world leading or internationally excellent in the Research Excellence Framework (REF) 2021.
The Exeter MBA (Online) builds on the University’s established Senior Leader MBA, ranked 15th globally in the CEO Magazine Online MBA Rankings 2026, combining this heritage with a contemporary focus on digital transformation, AI in business and leadership.
You will learn from experienced faculty who bring together academic expertise and real-world insight, including programme leaders Clare Hearn and David Butler, who have delivered on this established course. Through this, you will engage with current business challenges and apply the latest thinking directly to organisational contexts.
The Exeter MBA (Online) is taught by a team of leading academics and practitioners, including:
Your Career
Professional recognition
The Exeter MBA (Online) is delivered by a triple-accredited business school and aligned to recognised leadership, innovation and management standards. Completion signals readiness for senior leadership and international, cross-functional roles, demonstrating expertise in managing AI-enabled, digitally transformed organisations in a global business environment, with a clear focus on GenAI and emerging technologies.
Professional capability
Students develop strategic, financial, operational and analytical skills needed to manage complex organisations. The curriculum embeds responsible leadership, innovation, digital transformation and AI-enabled data-driven decision-making, with a growing emphasis on GenAI in practice. The reflective portfolio and capstone project provide clear evidence of your development, demonstrating future-ready capability and measurable workplace impact.
Career development
The programme prepares mid-career professionals for promotion, salary progression or strategic career moves. Through applied learning and the capstone project, you will build experience in leading teams, driving innovation and delivering measurable business impact and return on investment, supporting accelerated career progression.
You will also build lasting professional networks across industries and regions, strengthening peer connections through a collaborative and supportive learning experience.
Study a 100% online Masters degree at a Top 15 University*
Apply now for January 2027 entry »
* 14th in The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2026
