Back in 2006, my colleague Huggy Rao and I launched an executive education program at Stanford called “Customer-focused Innovation.” Mornings consisted of lectures and case studies in a traditional classroom in the Stanford Business School; this was the “clean models” part of the program. In the afternoons, we moved the group to the (then) new Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, or “Stanford d.school,” for the “hands on” part. That midday transition could be jarring. The d.school was in a crowded, messy, and rather run-down double-wide trailer in those days. And then there was the fieldwork. That first year, the d.school team (led by Perry Klebahn) sent the executives out to observe and interview customers in BP gas stations. Their assignment was to prototype solutions to problems they heard about, revise them in response to user feedback, and then present them to a demanding group of BP executives.
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To read the original article: Eight Essentials for Scaling Up Without Screwing Up - Robert I. Sutton - Harvard Business Review
