Customer-Centric Strategy
Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business
The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University is a private, university-affiliated business school founded in 1974 and located on Rice's tree-lined residential campus in Houston, Texas. Named after Houston civic leader and financier Jesse H. Jones, the school was built on the conviction that rigorous academic research and real-world business practice are not in tension — they are complementary. Rice itself was founded in 1912 as a technically-oriented research university, and that DNA runs through the Jones School's emphasis on quantitative rigor, analytical decision-making, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Today the school draws on Rice's strengths in engineering, medicine, and data science to deliver business education that reflects how industries actually work, not just how textbooks describe them.Accreditations and RankingsAccreditations:AACSB accredited (triple-crown status not held; AMBA and EQUIS not listed among current accreditations)Rankings:Financial Times Full-Time MBA: Ranked in the global top 50 (2024)Bloomberg Businessweek MBA: Ranked among the top 25 U.S. business schools (2023)U.S. News & World Report Best Business Schools: Ranked #25 in the United States (2024)Poets & Quants Best Business Schools: Consistently ranked in the U.S. top 25 (2023)Rice University itself ranked #17 among national universities by U.S. News & World Report (2024), a standing that directly benefits the Jones School's academic credibility and research resourcesExecutive Education at a GlanceThe Jones School's executive education portfolio is purposefully focused rather than exhaustive, which means participants get faculty attention and program customization that larger, factory-scale providers struggle to match. The school offers both open-enrollment programs and custom corporate programs tailored to organizational needs, with particular depth in energy management, healthcare leadership, entrepreneurship and innovation, financial decision-making, and leadership development. Open programs typically run from two to five days for intensive formats, with some certificate and modular programs extending over several weeks. Pricing for open-enrollment programs generally ranges from approximately $2,000 to $6,000 depending on duration and topic, with custom engagements scoped separately. The school's Energy Finance and Executive Leadership offerings are among its most recognized open programs, drawing heavily from Houston's concentration of Fortune 500 energy and healthcare companies. Blended and online delivery options have expanded since 2020, though the school's residential experience on Rice's campus remains a core draw for participants who want genuine peer interaction.Campus and FacilitiesThe Jones School occupies McNair Hall, a purpose-built business school facility on Rice University's 300-acre Collegiate Gothic campus — a campus that Princeton Review has repeatedly recognized as one of the most beautiful in the United States. McNair Hall offers dedicated executive education classrooms, breakout spaces, and direct access to Rice's broader research and library infrastructure. But the campus is only part of the story: Houston itself is the learning environment. With more than 20 Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the metro area — including Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Phillips 66 — executive participants engage with case studies and guest speakers drawn from industries operating at genuine global scale, not illustrative examples reconstructed in a classroom.Faculty and ResearchThe Jones School faculty numbers approximately 75 full-time scholars, with expertise spanning finance, strategy, organizational behavior, accounting, marketing, and operations — many of whom hold joint appointments with Rice's schools of engineering, public policy, and medicine. The school's research centers include the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, one of the most active university-based entrepreneurship programs in the United States and a consistent top-ranked organizer of startup competitions. Faculty members regularly consult to energy majors, healthcare systems, and private equity firms based in Houston, meaning the gap between their published research and what they teach in an executive classroom tends to be narrow. Researchers at the Jones School have produced widely cited work in behavioral finance, corporate governance, and energy economics — areas with obvious relevance to the executive cohorts the school attracts.Student Body, Alumni, and Career OutcomesExecutive education cohorts at Jones reflect Houston's genuinely international business community, with participants drawn from energy, healthcare, technology, logistics, and financial services — industries that in Houston alone attract talent from across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The full Jones School alumni network spans more than 40,000 graduates globally, with particularly strong concentrations in Texas, the broader Gulf Coast, and in international energy hubs including London, Abu Dhabi, and Calgary. Major employers of Jones alumni include ExxonMobil, Shell, JP Morgan, McKinsey & Company, Deloitte, and MD Anderson Cancer Center — a combination that reflects Houston's unusual dual identity as both an energy capital and a world-leading medical hub. Executive participants consistently cite peer networking with Houston's senior business community as one of the most tangible career returns from their time at Jones.
Next Available Cohort
Choose your preferred start date
All-inclusive program fee
Duration
4 days
Format
in-person
Topic
Strategy
Language
English
About This Program
Why Rice University Jones Graduate School of Business?
Rice University's Jones School sits inside one of America's most selective research universities — and it shows. With deep roots in energy, technology, and entrepreneurship, and a campus planted in the heart of Houston, the country's fourth-largest city and undisputed global energy capital, Jones offers executive participants something most business schools simply cannot manufacture: direct proximity to the industries reshaping the world economy, taught by faculty who consult to the companies driving that change.
Your Profile
- C-suite executives who are responsible for strategic planning and implementation in their organizations
- Mid-level managers who are on the path to senior leadership roles and want to deepen their strategic thinking and execution skills
- Business unit heads responsible for driving growth and performance in their respective areas
- Chief Strategy Officers and professionals in strategic planning, corporate development, and business analysis roles
- Human Resources leaders who aim to align employee performance with strategic goals and develop accountability partnerships
- Sales and marketing executives looking to enhance their understanding of customer-centric strategies and improve sales growth
- Entrepreneurs and business owners seeking to scale their businesses by implementing robust, science-based strategy
- Board members, private equity advisors, and CEOs of family-offices who seek to nourish and grow portfolio companies
Benefits
- An evaluation of your company's strategy based on the strategy gaps
- Understand the difference between customer focus and customer appeasement
- Use accountability partnerships to increase your employees' output and ability to implement your company's strategy
- Provide your sales team with a resonating value proposition to monetize strategy
- Inculcate humility, listening and critical thinking to become a strategy leading executive
What You'll Learn
- Day One - Gap 1 (Strategy Thinking Gap): Explore and explode common myths about legacy strategy planning, understand and measure strategy gaps using failure and success case studies, learn the four most critical strategy thinking mistakes and solutions (salience, intuitive leaps, mythical numbers, staying put, more-is-better fallacy), and distinguish among problem-solving, strategy planning, and strategy implementation.
- Day One - Gap 2 (Strategy Alignment Gap): Understand the difference between actual and perceived alignment, gaining strategy alignment (perceived and actual), learn how legacy planning using mission/vision, SWOT and industry analysis increases the strategy alignment gap, learn how above-average companies lead strategy with science and customer focus, and importance of focus and customer-based strategy.
- Day Two - Gap 3 (Strategy Formulation Gap): Customer focus versus customer appeasement, the downside of customer listening, developing your company's customer value equation using science, developing your strategy positioning statement, common pitfalls in becoming customer focused, and using customer value equation to prioritize initiatives.
- Day Two - Gap 4 (Strategy Implementation Gap): Leading implementation with accountability partnerships, enhancing employee satisfaction with accountability partnerships, pitfalls of communication, persuasion and motivation as employee management tools, and learn to more clearly link customer value and employee engagement to drive sales growth.
- Day Three - Gap 5 & 6 (Strategy Monetization / Embedding Gap): Crafting resonating value propositions based on customer value equation, communicating excellence based on achievement (not on promise), and developing strategy systems with permanence and lasting impact.
- Day Three - Interactive Workshop: Develop and use your company's customer value equation, engage employees through accountability partnerships, grow sales by developing and communicating resonating focus, close the gap between perceived and actual alignment, and unlearn 'legacy' habits in strategy planning.
- Day Four - Self-Growth (Becoming a Strategy Centric Executive): Embracing humility, listening, and trust to become an effective strategy-centric executive; self-evaluation in pairs to understand your own areas of growth.
- Day Four - CEO Forum: 3-4 CEOs will describe the journey to success; participants will have the opportunity to network and ask questions.
Frequently Asked Questions
How to Apply
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Review the entry requirements listed on this page. Most executive programs require 8–15 years of professional experience.
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Prepare your application
Gather your CV, reference letters, and any required test scores. Many EMBA programs waive standardised tests for senior candidates.
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