I have written before about the Customer-Focused Innovation executive program that Huggy Rao, Perry Klebhan, and I launched a few years back at Stanford — see here and here.
The concept behind this program is that executives learn about innovation and design thinking in two ways, by both learning "clean" academic models during cases studies, lectures, and discussion in the mornings led by the likes of Jennifer Aaker (pictured left), Robert Burgelman, Chip Heath, Jeff Pfeffer, and Charles O'Reilly, along with other of the very best classroom teachers at Stanford.
Then, we compliment that "clean models" taught and discussed in the morning with "dirty" hands on experiences with doing innovation in the afternoon. You can see Huggy and I talking about the program here on YouTube along with videos and pictures from the program. As with last year, to get the executives doing something right away and so they can start to get to know each other, the Sunday evening the program starts, Andy (Papa) Papathanassiou who is, among other things, the pit crew director for Hendricks' motor sports, will get executives working in teams in a competition to see who can change the tires fastest (see below).
For the afternoon exercise, in the past, we have worked with a large energy company to improve the quality of customer experience at their gas stations. Below are executives brainstorming ways to improve "the gas station experience" and sell customers more stuff from convenience stores. This was from the first year of the program, and the guy in the green sweater, Jeremy Gutsche (then a banking executive), went on to start Trendhunter, which is arguably the largest and most frequently updated site in the world that tracks modern trends.
For this year's CFI, which runs November 8-13, I think we have something even more exciting, as this excerpt from the Tesla/Stanford press release indicates:
Design expert Perry Klebahn, the inventor of the modern snowshoe and
an Associate Consulting Professor at the d.school, will be working
closely with participants on the Tesla project during the program.
Klebahn is founder and former CEO of Atlas Snowshoes, former COO of
Patagonia, and former CEO of Timbuk2.
Key features of the Stanford collaboration will have program participants conducting:
- Interviews of Tesla’s key management and dealership personnel
- Observation of real car buyers at Tesla and non-Tesla dealerships
- Ideation, design, prototyping and iteration of new vehicle purchase models
- Presentation of proposed models to Tesla management
Here is what the Tesla showroom looks like now, but the company is looking for ways to enhance the design and, especially, all aspects of the "car buying experience" as they move toward rolling out lower-priced and larger electric cars that will appeal to a broader market. (those sports cars are beautiful, however)
Huggy, Perry, and I hope that some of you and your colleagues might be interested in signing-up for the program. You can see the details here, but I should warn you that this is a pretty expensive program. Executive education is never cheap at Stanford, but to just break even and keep the group small, this program has especially steep labor costs. We limit the program to about 30 executives, because the logistics of running the hands-on part in afternoon are intensive. We provide a dedicated d.school coach for each team, Plus Perry and an a large d.school team do a host of things to keep things humming along. The advantage, however, is that while most executive education just presents "clean models" (as we do in the morning sessions in a case style class at the Stanford business school) ,it rarely includes the messy hands-on process of doing stuff, visiting a real organization, talking to customers, generating ideas, building prototype objects and experiences, getting initial feedback from customers, and ending with feedback from the executives — from Tesla in this case — who need those ideas immediately.
Of all the executive programs I teach in at Stanford, and I like them all, this one is the most challenging, most rewarding, and most work for everyone involved. It's an experience for people who want to jump in and do things, not for people who just want to sit on the sidelines and watch. I believe this is why the lonbg term impact is stronger than most programs. We see this in the emails, success stories, and yes, failure stories, we still get from former participants. So if you (and your company) has the money and time for an intense and enlightening week at Stanford, I hope you will sign-up. I realize that many companies are cutting costs these days, but I believe that investing in innovation is especially crucial these days because, no matter what industry you are in, odds are that you aren't going to survive and thrive by just becoming a smaller and more efficient — but otherwise perfect imitation — of what your organization was and did before the meltdown. Again, check-out Stanford website and see if this is right for you and your organization.
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