Abstract:

Starting from 2017 an annual national competition among managers "Russian Leaders" is held in Russia. Its aim is to identify those who are able to form a new generation of digital economy leaders. Each year 300 finalists of the competition (200,000 managers take part each year) receive an educational grant of 1 million rubles (about 14,000 euro) to pay any educational program in any educational organization in Russian Federation.

The Faculty of Economics of Lomonosov Moscow State University (LMSU) has developed a new Executive MBA program especially for the winners of the "Russian Leaders" competition. This educational program targets to form a new generation of top managers (executives) applying an ecosystem approach.

The authors of this article use the term “ecosystem” to mean an educational program, in frames of which stakeholders create a regulated network with strong links between different types of educational interactions and professional communications, which are combined into a comprehensive offer of consumer value based on modular solutions with flexible layout options (the possibilities of combination are greatly expanded due to the digitalization of the educational environment).

The customer value complexity means that Executive MBA program is actually research, training and consulting all at once. At the same time, students of the program actively interact not only with professors/teachers of the Faculty of Economics and other departments of Moscow State University, but also with leading experts from various business areas (holders of the latest knowledge and competencies, best management practices of today), and with the future generation of managers (undergraduate students). In addition, research activities within the framework of the educational program are aimed at solving real management problems, which are posed by heads of regions, companies from different spheres and industries. The students actively interact with managers of relevant organizations (peer-to-peer interaction) to find existing problems solution.

Active project work within the EMBA program promotes the development of an ecosystem based on knowledge sharing (KS). KS is understood as a process, in which learners create new knowledge in collaboration with each other by exchanging their explicit and implicit knowledge.

In 2020 the authors conducted a survey among EMBA students which showed that:
- interaction with peers was useful for more than 50% of respondents;
- over 40% of EMBA attendees would like or have already held classes as experts in other educational programs of the Faculty of Economics;
- more than 70% of the students consider it efficient to conduct joint research with undergraduate students of economics as a future generation of managers.
- students’ assessments of the competence level of invited experts from different spheres show that more than 80% of respondents evaluate experts from business sphere rather than from the spheres of science and education.

Thus, the application of the ecosystem approach in Executive MBA program brings together managers of different generations, competence levels, regions, spheres and industries, that allows to arrange the education process more effective and efficient.

Keywords:

Ecosystem approach, executive MBA, educational management, knowledge sharing.