Adaptive MBA Intensives
µþ¾±´Ç±ô²¹â€™s Adaptive MBA intensives offer immersive, three-day seminars led by global experts in leadership, innovation and AI. Earn class credit while gaining practical skills grounded in a Christian worldview. Explore our 2025 intensives below to elevate your career.
Upcoming Intensives
Leading with Integrity: Building Trust, Attachment and Self-Awareness
Speaker: Ron Carucci
Date: Sept. 11-13, 2025
Description: Lead with truth and humility in today’s complex and fractured world. This three-day intensive, rooted in a Christian worldview, explores the call to lead with integrity as an act of stewardship—honoring the image of God in self and others. Learn how trust is built, how attachment shapes influence and how our formative origin stories — and the personal narratives they shape — reveal deeper spiritual truths and invitations to redemption. Drawing from the book To Be Honest, attachment theory, and formative storytelling, this course equips future leaders to lead with moral clarity, relational depth, and the kind of hope that reflects the redemptive arc of God’s work in the world.
Ron Carucci is co-founder and managing partner at Navalent, working with CEOs and executives pursuing transformational change for their organizations, leaders, and industries. With 30 years of experience across startups and Fortune 10 companies, nonprofits to heads-of-state, he has helped executives tackle challenges of strategy, organization and leadership and driven growth in 25 countries. Carucci authored nine books, including the Amazon #1 Rising to Power and the recently released multi-award winning To Be Honest, Lead with the Power of Truth, Justice & Purpose. He is a popular contributor to the Harvard Business Review, where Navalent’s work on leadership was named one of 2016’s management ideas that mattered most. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes, and a two-time TEDx speaker; one of which, on the topic of power, has been viewed 1.3 million times.
Innovating through Adaptive Space
Speaker: Michael Arena, Ph.D.
Date: Oct. 2-4, 2025
Description: Master innovation in the age of artificial intelligence. This immersive, hands-on seminar explores how to drive innovation and lead bold change. Dive deep into emergent innovation theory, exploring how groundbreaking ideas emerge, capture organizational attention and gain momentum to become transformative solutions. Participants will discover how to create adaptive spaces—environments that fuel idea generation, entrepreneurship and innovation—while effectively leveraging existing systems to scale new solutions. Learn practical tools in dynamic sessions on creative experimentation, idea emergence, organizational network analysis, social capital, design thinking, organizational analytics and social agility.
Michael Arena, Ph.D., is the dean of the Crowell School of Business at Biola University and the chief science officer of Connected Commons. Previously, Arena was the vice president of talent and development at Amazon Web Services (AWS), where he used network analysis to drive employee growth, enhance organizational culture, and foster innovation. As the chief talent officer at General Motors, he played a key role in the company’s transformation, detailed in his book Adaptive Space. Arena also spent time at MIT’s Media Lab focusing on human networks and at Stanford’s d.school. He currently teaches in Penn’s Master in Organizational Dynamics program and his work has been highlighted in the Wall Street Journal, Inc. Magazine, Fortune, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, and Sloan Management Review.
Strategic AI Deployment
Speaker: Neil Ahlsten
Date: Nov. 6-8, 2025
Description: Navigate the transformative power of artificial intelligence with confidence. This three-day intensive equips leaders to deploy AI strategically, balancing innovation with stability. Explore emerging AI advancements and examine the unique challenges and opportunities of AI applications in emerging startups and large multinationals. The program delves into critical investment strategies for AI, practical approaches to amplify creativity, innovation and efficiency, and methods to balance rapid deployment with stability and scalable growth. Through expert-led sessions, hands-on workshops and peer discussions, attendees will leave with actionable strategies to drive AI-powered transformation and sustainable success.
Neil Ahlsten is a leader in technology and faith, serving as a partner at 1 Flourish Capital, an early-stage deep-tech venture firm focused on high-character founders advancing human flourishing. He is also a venture advisor for the Impact Foundation. Previously at Google, Neil led commercial and investment efforts for products like Android handsets, Google Maps, and submarine cables. He later founded Abide Christian Meditation and the Amen Catholic Meditation app. Neil holds a master’s degree in public affairs and quantitative economics from Princeton and a bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley. He has been married for 18 years and has four children, two adopted from Congo.
Contact Us
Have questions about our intensives? Contact the Crowell School of Business at business@biola.edu or call (562) 903-4770.