Stanford Graduate School of Business

The Innovative Technology Leader

Stanford Graduate School of Business

Design Thinking

Application Deadline Approaching

Last date to apply: May 7, 2027 · Program starts on June 20, 2027

About Programme

We are living through a tremendous inflection point in history. Explore rapidly accelerating trends in innovation and technology and their implications for you as a technology leader. Recognize and seize your opportunity to write the playbook for the new normal.

Strategy. Innovation. Leadership. Today’s technology leaders need skills in all three areas. With change as a constant, the key to success is learning how to keep pace on a global scale, to innovate, and to nurture and develop value-creating ideas across your organization

In one week, you’ll work with Stanford GSB faculty and peers from around the globe to learn how to anticipate and respond to the complex and rapidly changing issues in the world of information technology. Experience design thinking as you apply this human-centered, prototype-driven process to your own business practice and personal leadership style.

Uncover the subtle and often-unseen dynamics underlying technology trends. Learn how to recognize the key drivers of innovation and understand the critical role of effective leadership.

Tailored to the complex and changing role of the technology leader, this unique program combines faculty-led learning, Silicon Valley speakers, and applied design thinking to teach strategy, innovation, and leadership.

Programme Content

How can you create a culture of innovation to drive growth and performance? How can design thinking add value to information technology? What strategies and tactics are needed to move your organization forward?

The Innovative Technology Leader will help you both anticipate and respond to the complex and rapidly changing issues in the world of information technology.

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

Organizations need effective solutions to be prepared for potential opportunities and threats; as a result, the need for exemplary leadership has never been more important than it is today.

It is now undeniable that most human decisions and behaviors are shaped non-consciously. Designing effective solutions for organizations requires a deeper understanding of human behavior, leveraging the growing insights into the workings of the human brain, with special emphasis on the emotional brain.

In these sessions, we will unravel the workings of the emotional brain and leverage this understanding to design effective solutions for the organization, for leaders within organizations, and for key stakeholders, including customers.

Scaling is a necessary skill for leaders of small startups, teams, departments, and large organizations. This session helps you address two challenges of scaling excellence: getting people to do more, and getting them to do it better.

One problem that many managers face is how to scale change in attitudes – to increase desired behaviors or practices and to decrease undesired behaviors or practices. Through discussions, we will help you to understand how scaling excellence is all about building a mindset rather than merely creating a short-lived footprint. This session will provide you with the skills to scale behavioral change.

Explore how, as a leader of your organization, you can balance the tension between the short term and the long term. We will focus on the use of culture as a potential source of competitive advantage — or disadvantage.

Our emphasis will be on providing you with a framework and a set of tools for thinking about culture as a social control system, especially in the face of disruptive change. Building on a congruence framework, you will also explore how leaders can use organizational culture as a powerful social control system within business units.

In these sessions, we will apply brain-based insights to Customer Experience Design. We will discuss the reason 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.

During these sessions, we’ll also leverage examples of how billion-dollar companies have been formed by removing pain points and adding pleasure points to different phases of the customer journey.

Get a firsthand experience of the key tenets of design thinking, and find out how you can incorporate them into your work. Using design thinking as a framework, you will tackle a hands-on innovation challenge that will allow you to explore the principles of human-centered design, including empathy, rapid prototyping, collaboration, iteration, and feedback.

You will also engage in a conversation about disrupting the managerial status quo, amplifying your organization’s strengths and addressing some critical obstacles.

Programme Objective

Explore how current technology trends in cloud computing, mobile devices, social media tools, and other areas are driving global growth.
Leverage technology changes for competitive advantage in an uncertain future.
Observe and understand the needs of users and customers through design thinking principles.
Strategize about how to create a culture to support innovation.
Recognize ways to build personal power and influence in your organization.

Programme Audience

Senior-level technology executives with at least 10 to 15 years of management experience
Executives with responsibility for building and deploying technology to serve their enterprises
Examples of appropriate titles: chief information officer, chief technology officer, chief marketing officer, vice president of information technology, and vice president of product development

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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

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

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The Innovative Technology Leader | Stanford GSB