Strategy is at the core of any successful business; creating a plan for how to achieve important business objectives is the first task of any competent CEO. You’ll explore how to weigh a business’s strategic priorities and decide what to do (and what not to do) before examining tools for evaluating performance against strategy and how to make adjustments (which, as the experiences of our experts will demonstrate, will always be necessary). You’ll learn more about how strategies need to be refreshed and communicated persuasively to your wider team, alongside creating a culture that supports the delivery of your strategy.

Negotiation is everywhere in our daily interactions, and they can mean the difference between success and failure. You’ll learn how antagonistic negotiations rarely work in the long term, and how the ability to build consensus is a powerful tool in promoting shared interests and deepening relationships – with a business partner, local community or government. You’ll also get to test out and critique these skills in a role play negotiation game: will you strike a deal or be left empty handed at the negotiation table?

The leaders of the future will not (all) be middle-aged men in suits; you’ll learn to challenge assumptions about what leadership means (not necessarily CEOs or large company bosses) and learn how leaders can be defined by their actions and values rather than their position – think Nobel Prize winners and Olympian athletes. You’ll have time to test and evaluate your own leadership style rather than merely copying the styles of others, so that you can be an authentic and successful future leader based on your values and what is important to you.

Leadership is replacing management as the dominant methodology for driving elite performance in any team – business or otherwise. You’ll learn the key motivators for young employees (Generation Z and beyond) – such as progression rather than salary – and test your skills in case studies to design the best company to work for. You’ll work on your teamwork skills and understand turn taking (leading
and being led) to promote collaboration and getting the best out of the overall team, recognising and accommodating the strengths and weakness of your classmates.

You’ll explore how finance can make things happen: enabling companies to research and develop new products, take on new contracts, hire new staff or build new premises. You’ll understand how finance can be deployed to solve problems and forms the basis of any investment – whether for future growth or international development. You’ll choose one of these topics to tackle as a case study. Will you be able to finance a deal that works for investors and the business? Can you find a sustainable financing model to promote literacy rates in the developing world?

Impact is now at the core of what motivates potential new staff and how customers make purchasing decisions. Why? Because (some) current business practices are simply not sustainable for the planet or for workers. Governments, employees and customers will demand a better record from business in developing sustainable approaches to industry and acceptable working conditions. You’ll learn how to measure social and environmental impact and gain an appreciation for the current policy environment and what changes are proposed: setting the “rules of the game” for future business to operate. You’ll learn about how businesses measure the “triple bottom line” that includes social and environmental impact and explore how businesses make trade-offs through case studies.

Join us in Oxford’s creative hub to brainstorm ideas with tech and biotech start-ups. You’ll work alongside team members from local cutting-edge industries to think about their business problems and work collaboratively in an ideas generation process. You’ll also explore Peter Thiel’s revolutionary theory, Zero to One, learning the value of creating something completely new in an area where nothing currently exists, giving you the tools for how to create the next game-changing tech giant.

You’ll spend time questioning widely-held business assumptions to better understand where they come from, how to dismantle them and how being able to think different can be a powerful tool for innovation. You’ll explore how entrepreneurs bring together a range of resources to make things happen, and how collaboration and embedding learning from other organisations can boost performance. As an entrepreneur of the future you’ll work with your business mentor to set goals about what you’ll start (either in Oxford or back at home), making a plan for what resources you need, who will help and what you aim to achieve.

Over brunch you’ll read and analyse the English Sunday papers, guided by our experts. You’ll investigate potential business and NGO moves in reaction to the latest news in international relations and geopolitics, looking at opportunities and risks and how businesses shape – and are shaped by – events that make headlines.