Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Winter

Apply the "Lean Startup" principles; "business model canvas," "customer development" and "Agile Engineering" to prototype, test, and iterate your idea while discovering if you have a profitable business model. This is the class adopted by the NSF and NIH as the Innovation Corps. Apply and work in teams. Info sessions held in November and December. Team applications required in December. Proposals can be software, hardware, or service of any kind. Projects are experiential and require incrementally building the product while talking to customers/partners each week. Prerequisite: interest and passion in exploring whether a technology idea can become a real company. Limited enrollment.

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Units: 3

Quarter Offered: Winter

We examine how leaders tackle significant events that occur in high-growth entrepreneurial companies. Students will adapt frameworks and concepts “principles” to their own core values to help prepare their minds for the difficult entrepreneurial situations that they will encounter in their lives – in whatever their chosen career. Students work in teams, using team projects as the basis for class discussion. Each class will typically include a case vignette based on an alumni company, with a distinguished guest speaker. The speaker will discuss not only the business rationale for the decisions taken but also how their principles affected the decision. The class will then apply those principles from the case to one of the team projects. Instructors will facilitate students adapting these principles to their individual styles, providing a foundation for principle-based entrepreneurial leadership. When a company is in its formative years, the entrepreneur is laying down the DNA of the organization. We believe this DNA should be encoded intentionally, with the entrepreneur’s principles as a guide. The teaching team will bring its wealth of experience in both entrepreneurship and VC investing to examine the principles from both of those perspectives. During this course, students will develop an appreciation for how authentic cultures scale and that principles pay. Topics include operational dilemmas, organization building, and investor decisions. Limited enrollment. Admission by application. For graduate and undergraduate students, with a preference for those who have completed one project-based entrepreneurial course or have previous entrepreneurial experience.

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Winter

This class will introduce you to core marketing concepts you need to know to bring a new product or service to market and build for its success. It is geared to both entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs alike who have a passion for innovation. Course themes include: Identifying markets and opportunities, defining the offering and customer experience, creating demand, generating revenue, and measuring success. The team-based final focuses on developing a go-to-market strategy based on concepts from the course. Throughout the term you’ll have a chance to learn about managing self, building culture and teams, and opportunity to strategically think about your contribution as entrepreneur or intrapreuneur to your organization, community or society at large. This course is highly experiential and project based. Limited enrollment.

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Units: 3-4

Quarter Offered: Winter

This ambitious course focuses on factors for unlocking innovation and entrepreneurship in prison. In partnership with The Last Mile at San Quentin State Prison, students will learn the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to frame and reframe problems, challenge assumptions, generate innovative ideas, and tell compelling stories to communicate their ideas. Students will work collaboratively with the men at San Quentin on a project related to incarceration. Tuesday sessions are experiential workshops and Thursdays are a required lab for team work. Enrollment is limited, and requires an application and interview.

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Winter

d.Leadership is a course that teaches the coaching and leadership skills needed to drive good design process in groups. d.leaders will work on real projects driving design projects within organizations and gain real world skills as they experiment with their leadership style. Take this course if you are inspired by past design classes and want skills to lead design projects beyond Stanford. Preference given to students who have taken other Design Group or d.school classes. Admission by application.

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Units: 1

Quarter Offered: Winter

Description: This seminar explores a wide range of topics related to entrepreneurial leadership through class discussions, case studies, field trips, and guest speakers. It is part of the DFJ Entrepreneurial Leaders Fellowship, which requires an application during Fall quarter.

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Units: 4

Quarter Offered: Winter

d.Leadership is a course that teaches the coaching and leadership skills needed to drive good design process in groups. d.leaders will work on real projects driving design projects within organizations and gain real world skills as they experiment with their leadership style. Take this course if you are inspired by past design classes and want skills to lead design projects beyond Stanford. Preference given to students who have taken other Design Group or d.school classes. Admission by application.

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