Creative Enterprise MBA

This is a new program; please contact admissions staff for launch date.

"Business has become, in this last half century, the most powerful institution on the planet. The dominant institution in any society needs to take responsibility for the whole…Every decision that is made, every action that is taken must be viewed in light of that responsibility. This requires more than incremental adjustment; it calls for a fundamental redefinition of business as a social partner."
- Willis Harman, co-founder along with founder Rinaldo Brutoco, World Business Academy;
author, Global Mind Change

The Creative Enterprise MBA at Meridian is centered at the intersection of three primary emphases:

These emphases are integrated into a coherent curriculum in support of the student's development of personal, organizational, and cultural leadership competencies.

Transformative Innovation delivers solutions fundamentally superior to those currently available to meet the deepest needs of individuals or society. Such innovations are fueled by visionary shifts in thinking, new business models, cooperative alliances, entrepreneurial insight and persistence. We aim to cultivate entrepreneurs and executives capable of imagining transformative innovations then making them happen.

Transformative innovations vary in scope from the grand to micro scale, are delivered by established companies or entrepreneurial organizations, and can be catalyzed by for-profit or non-profit enterprises. For example, the Grameen Bank is a family of for-profit and non-profit entities transforming the lives of millions of people. Community MusicWorks, a local non-profit enterprise offering free music lessons in an inner city neighborhood in Providence, Rhode Island reaches far fewer people, yet it is fundamentally transformative in the lives of the people they reach.

Meridian’s second core area of emphasis is Business and Social Entrepreneurship. This supports our MBAs in launching or running a viable business, non-profit, or hybrid organization that results in positive social outcomes. These outcomes can spring from business innovation in a range of areas including policy and governance, organizational structure, and product or service evolution. Positive outcomes can also be derived via social creativity, such as building unique coalitions that blend efforts of private business, citizens, government, education, NGO’s, and other organizations.

Business and social entrepreneurship allows an individual or a group of individuals to earn a good living while meeting the deepest needs of society, such as alleviating poverty, reducing hunger, improving literacy rates or accessibility of local foods, providing clean renewable energy, or preserving the rain forests. Meridian aims to nurture business and social entrepreneurs and executives who understand how to build successful enterprises while serving the needs of community and human spirit.

The third area of emphasis within the Creative Enterprise MBA is Applied Wisdom and Sustainability. A meaningful understanding of sustainability and green principles of conducting business are now requirements for any creative enterprise. At Meridian we pay close attention to deepening the process of integrating this foundation into all of our thinking.

Living through broader principles of wisdom is also something we examine because this is how humans build meaning, purpose, community and spirituality – essentials if business is to be a true partner in creating a healthy society. These qualities don’t materialize overnight. They evolve over a lifetime of paying attention to wisdom practices, making the effort to apply them into our daily lives.

The Creative Enterprise MBA integrates perspectives from the major wisdom and spiritual traditions, neuroscience, and deep ecology to explore possibilities for how wisdom can be applied in social entrepreneurship and executive action. The program promotes no particular school of wisdom, but present a banquet of offerings from which you choose what empowers you most, grounding your actions in a context of being connected to a larger universe.

We also provide a lecture series, teleseminars, internships, mentoring and other participative activities that build upon the core curriculum, helping students develop the business savvy, ability to respond to rapid change, and networking opportunities they need to be successful social entrepreneurs and executives.

The Creative Enterprise MBA at Meridian delivers core business competencies of strategy, marketing, accounting, finance, and organizational development, infused with an understanding of transformative innovation, business and social entrepreneurship, and applied wisdom and sustainability. It cultivates the knowledge, skills, and instincts required to build creative enterprise, while nurturing imagination, courage, compassion, clarity, and conscience – with a focus on embodying these qualities in entrepreneurial or executive action.

Diverse Learning Formats

Meridian MBA students will spend half of their class time in sessions at our San Francisco Center, located within the Hub SOMA inside the San Francisco Chronicle building. The Hub is an international network of workspaces and communication platforms for engaged social entrepreneurs. Class sessions at our San Francisco Center foster student interaction with social entrepreneurs acting at the “intersection of money and meaning”.

MBA students spend the other half of their class time at Meridian’s scenic campus in the hilltops of Marin County, 25 miles north of San Francisco, providing a more contemplative view.

Our MBA program utilizes Learning Communities and is offered in two learning formats: monthly weekends or blended online. The blended online format substitutes internet based learning for weekend sessions. Both formats include immersion learning during two weeklong sessions spent in residence each academic year.

“We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist, using
technologies that have not been invented, in order to solve problems
we don't even know are problems yet.” -Karl Fisch

Information Session for Prospective MBA Students

If you're interested in an introduction to the MBA at Meridian University, we invite you to participate in an information session where you'll have the opportunity to:

Meet with Meridian faculty and staff.
Speak with the Director of Admissions regarding the application process.
Schedule individual information meetings for a later date with faculty and admissions staff.

Information provided will include how Meridian’s MBA Program supports students in developing the leadership capacities and business knowledge needed by organizations undergoing the transformative innovations required by the emerging creative economy. Prospective students will have the opportunity to meet with Meridian faculty and staff.

Information session attendance is free of charge, but registration is required. Please click here for dates, times, and registration information.