The new Stanford d.school, or as it is known officially, The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, has been lucky to attract enormously skilled people who devote their time to teaching, administration, and fund-raising for no pay, or for a tiny fraction of what they can make in other jobs. In the Clicks-n-Bricks class that we are doing this term, for example, my co-teachers are Michael Dearing who was an Executive Vice-President at eBay for years and Perry Klebahn — who invented the modern snowshoe, built Atlas Snowshoes to design, make, and market it, sold the company, and then went on to be COO of Patagonia. (In addition, the second half of the class has involved heavy contributions from the amazing Debra Dunn, who was at HP for many years and held at least two different Executive Vice-President positions. And we also have two other incredibly skilled and dedicated designers on the team,d.school fellow Alex Ko and Ph.D student Liz Gerber.)
Back to Perry. I’ve worked on three different d.school classes with Perry, and just last week, worked with him on an executive program called Customer-Focused Innovation that I co-direct with Huggy Rao. This program is a joint venture between the d.school and the Graduate School of Business (I will write about on another post — it was an inspiring and exhausting experience, especially for the d.school hands-on design experience that Perry co-led). These classes and programs are among the most exciting, chaotic, and intense teaching experiences I’ve ever been part of — the design teams work under intense time pressure, toward uncertain goals, produce prototype solutions rather than just talking about what to do, and feel pressed to do creative work — which is then judged in public by panels of experts who are polite and constructive, but call it as they see it.
No matter how wild things get, Perry is always rock-solid, never losing his cool (even as those around him do, including me), constantly praising people and pushing them ever harder, and displaying massive knowledge about the intersection between human needs and the sometimes harsh realities of business. And throughout, he says remarkably little, while modeling the right behavior.
In classic Perry fashion, although I saw him constantly last week, and asked how he was doing many times, he was focused on the executive program and never mentioned a bit of personal news (which was rumored, but not confirmed) — because as always, Perry focuses on what matters most. I eventually learned that on November 10th, a press release went out announcing that Perry is the new CEO of Timbuk2. This company originally gained fame for making bike messenger bags and selling them to a broader set of customers, and now makes a wider line of products including laptop cases, backpacks, and accessories. Plus Timbuk2 is set-up so you can build your own custom bag either online or in person at their store in San Francisco — check it out if you want to design your own bag or want to see a great case study of mass customization in action.
Perry is still committed to the d.school and will still teach classes, but no doubt we will be seeing less of him. The people at Timbuk2 are mighty lucky to have him, as are Timbuk2 customers. Perry is a great leader and doer. I am constantly inspired by his action orientation, his coolness when all seems to be falling apart, and his remarkable ability to see and develop the best in every person around him. I write and talk about what it takes to turn knowledge into action, but Perry lives it!
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