Stanford Graduate School of Business

Innovative Product Leadership: The Emerging Chief Product Officer

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Innovation

Application Deadline Approaching

Last date to apply: July 9, 2027 · Program starts on August 22, 2027

About Programme

Today’s chief product officers have more responsibilities, impact, and influence than ever before. With the product function growing in importance, product managers striving to reach the C-suite need to think and lead more strategically. Innovative Product Leadership: The Emerging Chief Product Officer helps prepare you for this highly demanding and desirable role.

This intensive, high impact, one-week interdisciplinary program is designed for senior-level product managers with their sights set on becoming a more strategic CPO. Explore which approaches and frameworks will help your organization create and launch new AI-powered products and services for external and internal customers to gain a competitive advantage. Discover how customer insights can inform product development. Learn how to communicate with purpose and exert influence without authority. And develop leadership skills that motivate cross-functional teams to drive product innovation.

Programme Content

Prepare for the chief product officer role with curriculum that blends AI-enabled strategy, customer empathy, communication, and leadership.

How do you bring customer-focused thinking to product development? How do you develop the right capabilities to deliver value to the customer? How do you influence without authority and motivate cross-functional teams? Innovative Product Leadership: The Emerging Chief Product Officer delivers an academically-rigorous and experiential curriculum to get you thinking and doing.

The program combines classroom lectures taught by world-renowned Stanford GSB faculty and Silicon Valley guest speakers. At the end of each day, you’ll also meet with faculty and peers to “connect the dots” and explore how new learnings can translate into specific action.

Below are just a few of the sessions you’ll attend as part of the program.

Research shows that people deliver more creative solutions when they are assigned a task that includes restrictions compared with a task in which they are given (fully) free reign. It turns out that, with creative tasks, structure helps. This finding also extends to tasks in which people are asked to ideate new products or develop concepts for marketing campaigns. We will discuss an approach to product ideation that introduces five templates or “recipes” that can help you structure your thinking and develop both incremental and disruptive ideas.

In this session, participants will be introduced to a number of novel frameworks to help them strategically create and launch new AI-enabled powered products and services. Participants will learn how to successfully design solutions for external and internal customers that create real value and support your organization’s digital transformation goals. Additionally, participants will learn how to holistically consider the necessary organizational and workflow changes to support long-term cost savings and increased profitability stemming from the growing AI opportunity. The session will include both real-life case studies and interactive discussion and problem-solving.

Applying brain-based insights to Customer Experience Design has become central to strategy in the last few years. We will discuss the reasons behind this development and how businesses can leverage rich customer insights to unearth new business opportunities, develop and sustain distinct competitive advantages, and, in the process, have a direct impact on top-line and bottom-line growth.

Throwing people together and calling them a “team” does not produce a team. Transforming a group of individuals into a high performing team is part of the fabric of leadership. Building on several decades of research, we explore the major challenges of teams who must innovate or solve problems. Teams have three major levers that can enhance a team’s capacity to innovate: team composition, member participation, and influence.

We will use the context of a team task to explore the ways in which team members can get their voice heard. In addition, we will identify actionable strategies for structuring teams to improve members’ ability to hear and incorporate divergent and minority opinions as they face the challenge of innovation.

Research shows that we don’t make decisions based solely on what we know. We make decisions based on what we know and what we feel. In the age of data overwhelm, whoever can craft their message as a story, and capture the emotions of their listener, has an advantage. We will discuss some of the core principles and applicable storytelling techniques that will make all your communications more impactful.

Programme Objective

Learn AI-enabled product management strategies, innovative approaches, and bold leadership required in the C-suite.
Influence product decision-making with the customer at the center.
Execute organizational and workflow changes in product management to effectively adopt AI.
Drive long-term cost savings and increased profitability from AI-enabled opportunities.
Enhance your internal and external communication skills.
Build leadership skills to manage and motivate cross-functional teams.

Programme Audience

Experienced product managers and aspiring chief product officers who are motivated to lead and ignite change in their organizations — from any industry and country
Senior-level product managers with at least eight years of product management experience — from any size or stage company
Technically-minded product managers seeking business expertise to take on more senior-level strategic roles in their organization

Other programs in this subject area you might find useful

Same topic, Similar duration - Broader exploration across all institutes

Contact us for the further details

Speak with an Advisor

  1. Pedagogy (case method, experiential learning, coaching, simulations)
  2. Testimonials
  3. Programme Benefits
  4. Brochure

Prashansa Uttam

Programme Advisor

+91 9403890085[email protected]Mon – Fri, 9am – 5pm IST

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Executive Education Office

Christine Coli
+1 (650) 723-3341
NA
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu
Stanford, USA

Tell us about your program enquiry

Fill out the form below and our team will get back to you within 24 hours.

Innovative Product Leadership: The Emerging Chief Product Officer | Stanford GSB