How It Works for You

• Each student is assigned to regular team-based projects, giving you given the opportunity to practice what you are learning as you learn it, with regular faculty feedback.
• Each student plays a leadership role in the project's completion through a rotating team structure that encompasses the entire 20-month degree process.
• You are assessed through student and faculty evaluation for strengths and weaknesses in your leadership and team-based performance.
• You are given an objective analysis of your natural leadership style and suggestions on courses of actions you can take to bolster your weak areas and capitalize on your strengths when taking a leadership role at work.

How It Works for You

Getting a top-down perspective on the running of companies both large and small enhances your ability to see the big picture at your own company. When you can see yourself and your role as an employee in the context of the entire company, you can identify ways to increase your performance and your value as an employee. This increase in value can result in an increased salary, benefits, or uncovered career opportunities; but the most substantial benefit we believe it gives you is the necessary know-how for what running a business requires.

How It Works for You

For many of our students, starting a company is an idea that sounds exciting, but they don't know where to begin. Many worry that there is too much personal risk involved. The IEM Startup Challenge was created to remove that risk. In fact, the goal of this challenge is to earn enough money to pay for your degree — and most students succeed at this goal.

First you are asked to evaluate real world situations we provide and suggest improvements. What are some of the world's problems that are going unsolved and what would be a good way to offer a solution?

Once you are walked through the process of developing a solid product or service idea, we teach the basic fundamentals of taking an idea from concept to market. You will experience what it's like to launch a startup by learning key strategies like project management, venture capitalism, bootstrap funding, time management, patents, crowdfunding, hiring team members, and more.

To date, we have had over 14 companies launch into functional businesses as a direct result of the IEM Startup Challenge. Some of our alumni are making hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from ideas they first explored in their IEM classes.

How It Works for You

In order to bridge the gap between technical professionals and the HR department in charge of choosing who gets considered for promotion, we teach key skills like how to talk with executives, what it takes to be an executive, and the specific steps you need to manage the brand of you.

We firmly believe that each person is, by themselves, a brand. You have a reputation, an image, and a platform that you are either using or losing. Our goal is for our graduating students to know who they are, what value they offer, the monetary value that represents, and how to communicate all of this information to the right people in a professional way that moves them forward, through tools including:

• regular networking opportunities
• our signature elevator pitch strategy
• the Company of One model
• the reverse interview, and
• public speaking training.