Stanford Executive Education: Managing Teams for Innovation and Success

What’s the smartest way to build an effective team? How can you ensure that dissenting opinions will be heard? How do you make teamwork exhilarating rather than exasperating? Stanford's Managing Teams for Innovation and Success combines a rigorous curriculum, team-based simulations, and design thinking principles to bring greater innovation and success to your teams—and your organization.

Program tuition includes private accommodations, all meals, and course materials.

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Overview

Teamwork. Team dynamics. Team effort. Managing Teams for Innovation and Success takes a strategic, global approach to every aspect of teams—creating, managing, and leading them. Great teams can stimulate creativity and innovation, make an organization more adaptive to market forces, and drive breakthrough results. But building and developing successful teams is complex. Managing Teams for Innovation and Success provides strategies, skills, and hands-on simulations to challenge your assumptions and transform your teams.

In six highly intensive and experiential days, you’ll work with world-renowned Graduate School of Business faculty to explore evidenced-based research and discover the counter-intuitive findings of team building. You'll explore how to leverage diversity, stimulate engagement, influence without authority, harness collective intelligence, and implement change. You'll use design thinking principles to foster team innovation.

SAMPLE SCHEDULE

Faculty Director

Other Faculty

Margaret A. Neale

The Adams Distinguished Professor of Management at Stanford Graduate School of Business, is known worldwide for her research into distributed team and learning environments. Her research interests include decision making, distributed collaboration, team-based learning, negotiation, and team performance. She is coauthor of Negotiating Rationally (Free Press, 1992). She is the Director of the Influence and Negotiation Strategies Executive Program, Director of the Managing Teams for Innovation and Success Executive Program and Codirector of the Executive Program for Women Leaders.

Brian S. Lowery

Professor of Organizational Behavior; Graduate School of Business Trust Faculty Fellow for 2014-2015

Gregory B. Northcraft

Professor, School of Labor and Employment Relations and Harry Gray Professor of Executive Leadership, Department of Business Administration, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources; Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences; Academic Director, Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship Certificate; Director of the Managing Talent for Strategic Advantage Executive Program; Codirector of the Customer-Focused Innovation Executive Program

Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior; Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences; Hank McKinnell-Pfizer Inc. Faculty Fellow for 2014-2015

Larissa Z. Tiedens

Jonathan B. Lovelace Professor of Organizational Behavior; Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs; Director of the Executive Program in Leadership: The Effective Use of Power

Video Introduction

Managing Teams for Innovation and Success Program

"This program is a real action to achieving the mission of Stanford GSB to develop innovative, principled and insightful leaders who change the world! The diversity of the group was a rich resource."
— Henk de Jager, Deputy Vice-Chancellor: Academic Central University of Technology, Free State, South Africa MTIS 2013

Key Benefits

Managing Teams for Innovation and Success will help you:

Create, motivate, and lead more effectively local, global, and virtual teams
Accelerate team innovation using design thinking principles
Develop strategies for building high-performance teams and eliminate obstacles to effective teamwork
Define and communicate manager and team member roles
Learn methodologies to manage the complexities of group dynamics, including decision making, power, and conflict

Program Highlights

THE DYNAMICS OF DIVERSITY IN TEAMS
You will explore the informational and problem-solving advantages that diversity brings to teams, and how to identify and address the primary impediments to effective information sharing and interaction that can prevent those advantages from being realized.

DESIGN THINKING TO DRIVE INNOVATION
These sessions provide a provocative, experiential, and practical approach to leading innovation. The focus is on developing innovators (vs. innovations), so your primary work will be to develop the capacity to innovate in your team. The first session exposes you to the principles of human-centered design and leads to a conversation about disrupting the managerial status quo, amplifying your organization's strengths, and addressing some key weaknesses. In the second session, you'll use a design thinking framework to tackle a hands-on team innovation challenge from start to finish.

LEVERAGING COMPOSITIONAL ADVANTAGE: SOLVE THE MURDER MYSTERY
Take part in a live simulation that challenges your strategic abilities to leverage teamwork and information sharing to accomplish a stated goal. The team discussion will be captured on video allowing groups to analyze their own performance during the debrief session.

MANAGING TEAM INTERACTIONS: SYNERGY AND PROCESS LOSS
In this session we will use the context of a group decision-making task to explore the ways in which team members can get their voices heard. In addition, we will identify strategies for structuring teams to improve members' ability to hear and incorporate divergent and minority opinions.

VIRTUAL TEAMS
Virtual teams are one of the most difficult types of teams. Members often exist in different geographic locations, work in different time zones, and often never even meet face-to-face. In this session, you will work through an interactive exercise to explore the specific challenges of virtual teams, and then identify and discuss the best solutions from research and practice to make virtual teamwork a success.

Who Should Attend?

Managing Teams for Innovation and Success is essential for today’s business leaders who must rely on teams to drive success in their companies. It’s specifically designed for:

Executives or senior managers who are responsible for the performance of teams, task forces, or autonomous work groups
Team leaders and members—from any industry, any organization, and any country

SAMPLE Participant Mix

Among several programs I attended, Stanford MTIS is by far the best and unique. The program features counter intuitive insights,energetic presentations,diverse activities,and great networking. The group is gently but masterfully managed that there is practically no chance to leave Stanford without having shared activities with every participant. The team spirit of the group is incomparable.

– Fedor Ovchinnikov

Founder & Owner
Center for Intercultural Communication L.L.C.

Great program! The combination of such a diverse group of business leaders and thought-provoking teaching techniques have made this an intellectually stimulating experience. This program will be a powerful tool for encouraging teamwork in my company.

– Erik Bowers

Senior Manager
Harman/Becker Automotive System

The diversity of attendees was excellent. The value and methodology for team building was very useful. This course will help me improve performance and achieve goals in my organization.

– Tim Edwards

Product Manager
TRUMPF, Inc.

The examples used during daily exercises were real corporate issues that showed actual examples of failures and successes. The faculty was excellent and the staff was thorough. This program reinforced for me that Stanford has one of the best business schools for executive education in the world.

– Dexter van Scroggins

Technical Manager
Honeywell Commercial Aviation Systems

I gained an awareness of different management tools and group motivational issues, coupled with dynamic and active operational processes to enhance productivity.

– Joanne de Asis

Chairman
Globe Capitol Partners

This program offered a thorough investigation of the team concept. The high degree of interaction between industry colleagues and faculty was excellent.

– Jorgen Kelkjaer

Director
Novo Nordisk Engineering A/S

Facilities

Stanford University

The Stanford campus is world renowned for its natural beauty, Spanish mission-style architecture, and temperate climate. With more than 8,180 acres (3,310 hectares), Stanford's campus ranks as one of the largest in the United States. Participants in Stanford's Executive Programs become part of a quintessential university setting, residing together, walking or biking to classes, and enjoying access to Stanford University facilities.

The Knight Management Center

Opened in spring 2011, the Knight Management Center has transformed the Stanford Graduate School of Business into a vibrant and unified indoor-outdoor, living and learning community. Participants will take classes at this new state-of-the-art campus, which features tiered classrooms with extensive floor-to-ceiling glass, the latest in audiovisual technology, numerous breakout and study rooms, outdoor seating areas to encourage informal discussion, and an open collaboration lab that employs hands-on and design thinking techniques.

Schwab Residential Center

Designed by renowned Mexican architect, Ricardo Legorreta, the Schwab Residential Center gives residents ample privacy while promoting collegial interaction through shared lounges, outdoor meeting areas, a library, and an exercise room.

Contact

Donna Obeid

Associate Director, Programs and Marketing

Phone: +1.650.497.5662
Email: donnao@stanford.edu

The Stanford Difference

The Place: Immerse yourself in innovation.
The Experience: Transform your thinking, your career, your company.
The Approach: Challenge yourself with research-based learning and real-world experience.