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Online Sessions
September 2023
Begins 18 Sep 2023
Online
7 weeks
Deadline to Apply: 4 Sep 2023 (11AM CET)
€2,390
February 2024
Begins 05 Feb 2024
Online
7 weeks
Deadline to Apply: 22 Jan 2024 (11AM CET)
€2,390
Building strategic thinking and financial acumen
Confronted with the threats of disruption and a shifting competitive landscape, companies are pushing for greater strategic agility by fostering business acumen throughout their organisation. As a result, business acumen is no longer a skill confined to senior leadership. Instead, it is crucial for professional success and advancement across a wide range of roles and responsibilities. The greater the understanding of business strategy and financial performance, the more executives can deliver faster and smarter decision-making. They will also be better equipped to drive the innovation and change that organisations need to succeed and maintain long-term sustainability in today’s challenging markets.
Are you an executive – in any function, from operations, HR, marketing, legal, IT, etc. – who is now being called upon to take a strategic perspective on your organisation? Developing your business acumen will allow you to better understand the drivers behind an organisation’s financial performance, as well as how to leverage that knowledge in your areas of responsibility.
Do you work in corporate sales or advisory and need to understand your clients’ evolving business challenges? Business acumen will improve your ability to act as a strategic partner for your clients, tailoring your recommendations and clearly communicating your organisation’s distinctive value proposition.
Business Strategy and Financial Performance is designed to give you the key tools and perspectives from strategy and finance to achieve these objectives. The programme will help you understand the evolving strategic agenda of a company and then leverage that understanding to identify concrete opportunities to elaborate the strategy, drive organisational alignment, and ultimately enhance financial performance.
How you benefit
- Develop your ability to think strategically and see the big picture so that you can align an organisation’s internal resources and capabilities with its evolving external environment
- Learn to take a value approach to navigating business decisions and driving sustainable competitive advantage
- Understand the impact of management choices on company financials to develop a strategy execution plan for superior financial performance and sustainability.
Participant profile
Business Strategy and Financial Performance is designed for:
- High potentials looking to accelerate their development as business leaders
- Executives in functions such as HR and IT looking to improve their ability to act as business partners within their organisations
- Those responsible for B2B client relationships looking to deepen their customer understanding and to position themselves as strategic partners
This programme qualifies for the INSEAD Online Certificates: Leading in a Transforming World.
Embracing the exciting new possibilities
created by digital

Our online programmes combine our deep expertise in developing high-quality executive programmes that translate into business impact with the convenience of modern online learning. INSEAD is among the top three Executive Education providers globally, with a world-class faculty and an ability to deliver cutting-edge business content to an international business community. True to our pioneering spirit and tradition of innovation, in 2014 we started developing customised online programmes for leading global companies including Microsoft and Accenture. A tremendous success, our customised online programmes have now won numerous learning industry awards based on strong results for completion rates, for relevance, and for business impact across more than 20,000 executives.
Effective online programmes must overcome one key challenge: sustaining the interest and the motivation of participants during the programme. We do this in myriad ways that build on the high-quality delivery and expertise for which INSEAD is renowned. There are multidimensional interactions with peers and world-class faculty, individual learning support from our coaches, certification upon successful completion, and real-time application back to participants’ own context.
Peter Zemsky
Deputy Dean of INSEAD, Dean of Innovation
The Eli Lilly Chaired Professor of Strategy and Innovation
INSEAD's cutting-edge online programmes




Through outstanding design and delivery, INSEAD’s online programmes build upon our world-class faculty’s ability to convey very complex concepts in the simplest yet most comprehensible way.
- Content designed specifically for the online format, including short high-impact videos
- Professional, television-quality filming in INSEAD amphitheatres with actual participants
- Use of relevant and engaging examples and short case studies from a wide range of industries
Through a rich set of interactive elements, we build a community of faculty, learning coaches and diverse, high-quality global executives who learn together as a group - one of INSEAD’s strengths.
- A mobile-friendly learning platform built to maximise interaction and engagement
- Faculty answering questions during the programme via live calls and just-in-time videos
- A learning coach guides participants through the programme at each step, simulating content discussions and helping them with their learning.
- The guided ‘real-world assignments’ feature of the programmes encourages participants to take newly acquired skills and apply them within the context of their actual job and organisation.
- The projects are closely aligned with the learning in the programme and benefit from the learning community, with feedback from the learning coach and from peer review.
Upon successful completion of all programme activities, combined with satisfactory grades on the final assignment, participants are awarded with an official Certificate of Completion from INSEAD, which they can also showcase on their LinkedIn profile. The top performers will receive a Certificate with Distinction.
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