Imperial College Business School


Imperial College Business School is a business school in London, United Kingdom. It was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2004 on Exhibition Road, and forms part of Imperial College London. As an internationally-focused business school, over 90 percent of the faculty are from outside of the UK, and the alumni network spans 124 countries. It holds triple accreditation from AMBA, EQUIS and AACSB.

History

The business school can trace its earliest origins to 1955, when the Operational Research/Management Science course started at Imperial in the Production Engineering Section of the Mechanical Engineering Department. There were only 5 students enrolled when the programme commenced in October 1955 at 14 Prince's Gardens, with an arrangement in place for students to be able to attend one-day intensive economics and accounting courses for one or two terms at the London School of Economics. The agreement became a reciprocal one lasting until 1966. In the mid-1960s, there was even the idea of creating a joint School of Administration, Economics and Technology but this was ultimately rejected in favour of a new graduate school of business being started in the capital. Imperial and LSE acted as co-sponsors in the establishment of this new school, named the London Graduate School of Business Studies and now known as the London Business School. Accordingly, the London Business School's first academic planning board included the heads of Imperial College and LSE.
From the ORMS course, a Department of Management Science was established at Imperial in 1971, under the leadership of Samuel Eilon. The department was composed of staff and students from Imperial's Industrial Sociology Unit and at its inception had 15 academic staff and around 60 students on an MSc course. Over subsequent years the department grew and its focus shifted towards business studies.
In 1987 the Department of Management Science was merged with Imperial's Department of Social and Economic Studies to form a new School of Management, based in 2 large Victorian houses on Exhibition Road. David Norbun was the first Director. The School launched a new three-year part-time Executive MBA course.

Business school

In 2000 Gary A. Tanaka, an alumnus of Imperial, agreed to make a substantial donation to the college. It was decided to utilise the donation, together with other resources, to fund the transformation of the School of Management into a research-led business school. Tanaka ultimately donated a total of £27 million to Imperial, of which £25 million went to the new business school, in what was at the time the largest single donation to any European business school. The new Tanaka Business School was launched in 2003, with David Begg as Director.
In August 2008 the school was renamed Imperial College Business School because the old name did not strongly emphasise its association with the College. The school's accommodation was subsequently named "the Tanaka Building". An alternative speculation is that the college changed the name of the school to distance itself from Tanaka's fraudulent activities after he was tried and found guilty of conspiracy, securities fraud and investment adviser fraud in the same year.
In March 2013 the British hedge fund manager and Imperial alumnus Alan Howard donated £20.1 million to fund the establishment of a finance research centre, the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis.

Campus

The business school is located on Exhibition Road at Imperial's South Kensington campus. This was built on the site of the Goldsmith's wing of the Royal School of Mines, incorporating the 19th century vaults of the older building. The new building was designed by Foster and Partners with engineering consultancy from Buro Happold. It was constructed between September 2002 and June 2004 at a cost of £15.7 million, and was opened in 2004 by Queen Elizabeth II. It has 639 seats in seven lecture theatres and desk space for 70 PhD students. The building was renamed the Tanaka Building in August 2008. The business school also operates out of a secondary building, 53 Prince's Gate, also in South Kensington. From the 2020–2021 Academic year, some teaching and research will operate from Imperial's White City campus.

Taught programmes

Postgraduate

Imperial College Business School offers the following postgraduate programmes: MBA, Master's programmes, Joint Master's programmes, and a Doctoral programme.

Undergraduate

The school itself does not offer undergraduate degrees, however the majority of undergraduate students in other faculties at Imperial College London will have the option of studying management modules towards their degrees. Some departments' students can combine management with their science courses to attain a joint-honours degree. Medical students can study an intercalated BSc in Medical Sciences with Management while in their fourth year before returning to clinical training. Medical students from other universities can join this course.

Research and doctoral programme

Imperial College Business School is recognised as a leading research institution in business and management. In the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, Imperial's business school had the highest proportion of ‘world-leading’ and ‘internationally excellent’ research in the UK, ahead of the London School of Economics at 89%.
Doctoral students joining the business school's 5-year PhD in management programme assimilate into one of the following three research groups:
Entrance to the PhD programme for new doctoral researchers at the business school is around 5% each year, with an annual intake of around 15 students.

Doctoral theses

Since 2008, 100 candidates have successfully completed their doctoral degrees at the business school via the submission and acceptance of a research thesis. These are held in physical form at Imperial's central library and can also be accessed electronically using the university's online repository, Spiral.

Executive education

The Business School offers Executive Education programmes in Technology, Innovation, Leadership, Marketing, Health and Finance. Programmes are split into short programmes for individuals, custom programmes for companies, and online programmes.

Rankings

The business school is ranked 19= in the QS Global MBA ranking 2020, 55 in the Financial Times Global MBA ranking 2020, and is not included in The Economist's 2019 ranking of the top 100 full time MBAs globally; it is also ranked 13 among European business schools in 2019–20 by Bloomberg Businessweek.
In the QS Global MBA rankings by specialisation, Imperial is ranked 2= for MBA's specialising in entrepreneurship, 20 for specialisation in consulting, 28 for specialisation in finance, 22 for information management, 24= for specialisation in marketing, 14 for specialisation in operations management and 22 for specialisation in technology. It was also ranked 5 for its master's degrees in management and in business analytics. In graduate surveys it ranked 1st in entrepreneurship in Europe within Bloomberg, Financial Times, QS Global MBA Rankings, and Reuters -The World's Most Innovative Universities.

People

Directors and deans