Take a fresh approach to problem solving, design thinking, and leadership.

This full-time Master of Arts in Digital Management from Hyper Island is an advanced, full-time programme for professionals and graduates to reach the cutting edge of digital. It has been designed with industry experts to enable students to develop the skills, understanding and advanced strategic understanding required in business today.

You will cover a broad range of topics, including business transformation, change management, digital technologies, innovation, research, service design and strategy. You will leave Hyper Island empowered to go beyond conventional thinking, and be able to use collaboration and creativity to build value-based solutions to evolving industry challenges.

The programme has been designed for current and future needs of a growing digital industry. Equipped with the skills they need and a robust tool-kit that they can use at work, our graduates leave unafraid to innovate and change the rules to make them and their businesses able to adapt and constantly manage change to remain relevant and successful.

Live project briefs form the core of each project. These are developed in collaboration with our network of industry partners, who in the past have included brands such as adidas, BBC, Greenpeace, Google, IBM, IDEO, Skype, Vans and Unilever as well as creative digital agencies AKQA, ustwo and SapientNitro.

This programme explores a wide range of business, technical and creative topics:

• Business strategy, development and transformation
• Change management, transformational leadership and group dynamics
• Creativity, idea generation and concept development
• Designing for the consumer, user-centred design and service design
• Digital Technologies, prototyping and development
• Entrepreneurship and innovation to create change
• Project management strategies for effective team collaboration

Hyper Island designs learning experiences that challenge individuals to grow and stay competitive in an increasingly digitized world. Our range of immersive programmes seeks to equip you with the necessary knowledge and skills to lead the change and begin a journey of lifelong learning.

We have six key guiding principles that unite, define, and guide the Hyper Island experience:

Our guiding principles

Lifelong Learning
At Hyper Island learning isn’t contained in a classroom or a course. Learning is a way of life: being constantly engaged, passionate, trusting and curious about the changing world.

Real World Ready
We collaborate with thought leaders and experts to anticipate industry needs in a world where innovation drives disruption. We may not be able predict the future, but we can support individuals and companies to be ready when it comes.

Lead the Change
We are active participants in the great tides of transformative technology. Tomorrow’s leaders will be those who embrace change, adapt swiftly to new paradigms and lead by action. We seek to inspire, equip, and support these new leaders.

Seize your Potential
Hyper Island empowers participation by challenging people to set ambitious goals and giving them authority over their own learning, and power to realise their own potential.

Team is Everything
Collaboration, inclusion and transparency are crucial to growth. Through constant feedback and deep reflection, individuals gain deeper self-awareness, enabling them to become more effective team members and leaders.

Change the World
We haven’t met a status quo we didn’t challenge. Together we can change the world by igniting a passion for lifelong learning.

It was a great way to step away from the daily hustle and immerse myself in creative and innovation processes. It introduced me to new techniques and approaches that will greatly impact my team’s work.
— Past participant of Hyper Island innovation program

This full-time Master of Arts in Digital Management is comprised of five projects delivered in the school and an industry research project, which can be completed anywhere in the world. Here’s what you will be doing:

• Hyper Island Way Week: A deep dive into building your team and creating a group culture. You will learn and practise Hyper Island methodology and tools that will support you throughout the programme.
• Creativity Week: You will jump straight into your first live brief. In order to properly prepare you for this first challenge, you will work with idea-generation techniques and research methods with support from industry coaches.
• Design Thinking: As companies move towards customer centricity as core objectives for their business, an understanding of design is more important than ever. Design is purposeful, and the design process supports you in reaching clear goals. This project will focus on investigating tools and processes that support your design thinking. You’ll also experience how to use approaches to define problems and find solutions that create value for people and organisations – researching audiences, user journeys, and business needs – moving from strategic thinking to creative execution. 20 credits (10 ECTS credits)
• Digital Technologies: New digital technologies offer access to new opportunities and can enable change. The methods, tools and platforms for designing, prototyping, developing and distributing technical solutions are evolving rapidly, as is their complexity. In this part of the programme, you will develop your critical understanding of the opportunities, challenges and complexities of the use of digital technologies for organisations, clients, consumers and society. You will learn to recognise digital technologies as an enabler for change, understand the potential disruptive impacts of current and future digital technologies upon society, critically examine the ethics of digital solutions, data and personal privacy, and consider the economic value of technology. 20 credits (10 ECTS credits)
• Business Transformation: As digital technologies continue to disrupt every element of our lives and business, the effect that they have on the business world is massive. The birth and death rate of companies increases as old, established, slow corporations are ousted by young, agile startups. In this highly-connected, ever-changing world, what do businesses need to do to survive and thrive? In this project you’ll explore the interplay between businesses, their customers and their markets, and focus on the changes that businesses need to make in order to create and sustain value for all stakeholders. 20 credits (10 ECTS credits)
• Managing Projects and Teams: Understanding how to run projects at an individual and team level is a crucial transferable skill. Assuming you have great design, strong insights, a good business case, and enough money, how do you put together the right team? How to manage time and communicate within your team? How can you work effectively with colleagues in different countries and time zones? This project takes place throughout the on-campus part of the programme and is built on your project and professional work. 20 credits (10 ECTS credits)
• Innovation: The aim of this project is to explore what innovation is, how startups innovate, how traditional companies can learn from startups. You will gain practical experience of creating innovation by developing your own ideas and proposals, working in teams to devise and refine your ideas. You will explore how entrepreneurs and business leaders define and implement innovation and learn techniques that will help you to initiate positive change in organisations or develop ideas that could turn into new business ventures. 20 credits (10 ECTS credits)

As part of the Innovation project, you will do a short specialist project, which will act as a catalyst for your Industry Research Project. 20 credits (10 ECTS credits)

• Industry Research Project: This is your opportunity to design your own project based in the workplace. Do research, state assumptions and formulate hypotheses, test them, make conclusions, engage with other professionals, create something original and innovative, leave your mark on the industry. This is a period of work practice, informed by deep research. You will find problems, test solutions, build prototypes, and make conclusions. The area of research and practice is up to you to define. It’s an industry research project, which means that it must take place in a real company, in some kind of workplace. You must do a significant amount of investigation, both desk-based, and through first-hand experience. You will be supported by a supervisor during this project to help you shape your work. 60 credits (30 ECTS credits)

Total programme: 180 credits (90 ECTS credits)

Hyper Island methodology that focuses on how you learn and the what you learnt. We introduce new ways of thinking and learning for participants to develop into lifelong learners. At Hyper Island, following our distinctive methodology: You will practice learning-by-doing as an active learning tool including self-leadership. You will learn to create and run effective teams, navigate group dynamics and develop your skills in project management. All course content is designed to meet the needs of industry and is delivered by professionals at the forefront of their field. You will respond to a client brief working in teams to prototype and pitch your solutions.

The full-time Master of Arts programme lasts 11 months. The on-campus part of the programme runs for 24 weeks in Manchester from January to June, followed by an 18-week Industry Research Project from July to November, which can be done anywhere in the world.