Approximately 1/3 of the students headed to Bangalore, 1/3 to Singapore and 1/3 to Copenhagen.

Addressing a variety of MBA program goals of critical thinking, analytical decision-making, integration in a global context, communication, ethics and social responsibility, the following are the objectives of the Global Immersion:

• Foster the application of frameworks to which students have been exposed so far in the MBA program to critically address management problems in global contexts
• Facilitate the integration of contextual factors to enable students analyze situations and derive solutions to management problems in a variety of global settings
• Expand student learning through the provision of improved international, small class experiences that offer more advanced cooperation with international partners and allow global community immersion
• Help develop increased intercultural understanding and communications skills by allowing students to work alongside new, expanded groups of international peers that encourage them to challenge their boundaries even further.
• Create learning opportunities for students to be exposed to, and learn from, leading performance in other countries and think about how such leading performance can be created in different contexts

Steve Alisharan and I led the Copenhagen Global Immersion along with our colleagues at the Copenhagen Business School.  This was a two week experience — the first week was about getting an introduction to Danish business generally through a road trip to 6 businesses in Jutland and the second week was a Business Challenge — where students teamed up with Copenhagen Business School (CBS) students and tackled the real challenges of 10 Copenhagen businesses.  Will do a blog on each of these weeks.

As an introduction to the whole experience, we started with a day at the Copenhagen Design Museum http://designmuseum.dk/en – a fabulous introduction to 20th century design in Denmark and how it shaped the businesses of today.  We then heard from CBS business historian Martin Iversen who told us a set of fascinating stories about the three entrepreneurs who over the course of history shaped Danish business.

More to come…

The course (a Sauder Directed Study) is being led along strategic design principles, which include:

• Co-creation of the project and its outcomes with the students and stakeholders. Involvement in the project of key stakeholders, including researchers in wireless charging technologies at UBC, the UBC Research and Partnerships Office, the School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture, TransLink, the Chief Engineer of the City of Vancouver, and BC Hydro.
• Strategic design processes and techniques will be used throughout the project. The prime outcome of the course work will be a report which will be an important reference document for the City of Vancouver’s Engineering Department as they develop their plan to deploy electric vehicle charging infrastructure throughout the city. The report will also contain business model and competitive intelligence information of value to UBC researchers. The report will also form the basis of the Vancouver contribute to the annual WCCP research report – this year on co-creating urban sustainability.

These insights will be of particular value for three research-related activities currently underway:

1. The first of these is the Campus-City Collaborative (C3), a research partnership among the City of Vancouver and the six post-secondary institutions in the city (including UBC). One of the issues of great interest to C3 is the value and applicability of the design studio research methodology to the City’s research challenges.
2. The research methodology and outcomes will also be of value to the World Class Cities Partnership (WCCP), a small international network of cities that work closely with the universities located within them. Vancouver and UBC are part of this network, and the course at UBC is running concurrently with similar courses at four other universities (University College Dublin, HafenCity University in Hamburg, the Autonomous University of Barcelona and Northeastern University in Boston).
3. Finally, an important part of the C3 collaboration is considering how universities can deploy their technology expertise in support of cities; this project provides an excellent test case of one way this might be achieved. Initial Question/Challenge: Implications for implementation Wireless Electric Vehicle Charging in the City of Vancouver Learning.  However, in the course of the project (not surprisingly) this question has been refined.  Stay tuned for the next blog.

Objectives: Over the course, students will:

o Evaluate co-creation and strategic design techniques

o Develop collaborative and facilitation skills around the co-creation process

o Build relationships with domestic and international program partners

o Contribute to WCCP annual research report.

Please visit the job information via the link below if you are qualified and interested in applying:

Research Assistants- Oil Spills Lit Review

Click to enlarge

I met Dirk Beveridge in a bar in Rhode Island.  No surprise, as most of my best professional relationships have started in bars.  (Note that I use the word “relationship” intentionally – doing great things starts with the relationship first – details second.  And bars tend to bring out our authentic selves, which helps us build authentic relationships.)

Dirk was on a quest – to find storytellers for his inaugural story summit for the wholesale-distribution industry in Chicago.  He’s a big man – in heart, stature, vision and passion.  Dirk seeks to inspire his colleagues to open themselves up to change – for the better.  To give themselves permission to dream. To help them enable their people to embrace and engage with opportunities for the future.  To lift and shift an entire industry into a new era of creative prosperity.  Just a small quest …

So at the bar, we got to talking.  Amidst the food, booze and noise, Moura and I tried to explain the work we’re doing at the Sauder d.studio (no small feat, since we struggle to do this coherently in the light of day!)  Dirk was intrigued and we agreed to a follow-up conversation in the next week.  When we re-connected, we explored options for having one of us join him as a storyteller at UnleashWD - his event in Chicago.  It turned out that Moura wasn’t available – and I didn’t feel that we had a big enough story to tell from our d.studio work yet.  But Dirk was dogged.  He quizzed me about my background and became intrigued by the work I’ve been doing with story, based on my documentary days, graduate studies, consulting and design practice.  We agreed that I’d come to Chicago and share my story about my story work – how leaders can move beyond simply story-telling to story-sharing.  How they might start to invite, harvest, explore and leverage the stories of employees and stakeholders as foundational research that becomes a springboard for innovation.

So off I went to Chicago in November (that’s a story for another post).  For now, I’ll just say that UnleashWD was a phenomenal event for me, as a catalyst to clarify, frame and share my experiences and expertise. And (I believe) it was pivotal for those in the wholesale-distribution industry who attended, as inspiration to begin to consider new possibilities for decaying business models.

A video of my story will be available in the new year. In the meantime, the above photo is a graphic recordings of my session (the left hand side).  You can also find out more about the event here:  http://unleashwd.com

According to the cards, mine is “distillation”.  I’m not sure I’d call that my super-power, though I do consider it a strength.  Distillation is a skill I developed during my two decades of documentary and media work.  I had to learn how to take a complex, living, breathing situation and find the heart of the story – then distill all the information, materials and incredible footage we captured into a concise, engaging package. Imagine crafting an hour-long program from 1000 hours of footage.  As those who write for a living will tell you, it’s much harder to write one page than ten.

These days, instead of writing 48 minute scripts, I’m publishing stories in short, tight, bursts – through tweets, timelines and blog posts.  And I have to say that I am loving the constraints of having to work in just a few characters or lines.  It forces me to clarify my thoughts, nail the nugget I need to share, and select words that convey exactly the essence and meaning I desire.

The art of distillation is a key skill to develop for storytelling – and storysharing.  Story-tellers need to know their message clearly and stick to the storyline.  They need to cut absolutely everything from their stories that doesn’t move the plot or character forward.  Storytellers should be able to sum up the heart of their stories in one line – like an elevator pitch.  Story-sharers spend time analyzing and synthesizing the stories they hear, exploring them for new insight and ideas. So, they need to be able to identify the true essence of a story as they listen to others tell their (sometimes wandering) tales.

To help people strengthen their distillation abilities, we developed a technique called Eyephone in the d.studio.  It’s listed here with our other techniques.  Try it out – and see how much rich your story can become – by writing less.

Here are the ones who completely captivated me.

Carne Ross - Former UK diplomat who had to resign after discovering that there were, in fact, no weapons of mass destruction.  Now leading a not-for-profit that helps developing countries learn to navigate so-called “first world” political and economic systems.  The Independent Diplomat

Jeff Lieberman - Artist, roboticist, romantic, philosopher.  Mused on the importance of living in the now, while seducing us with phenomenal high speed, high definition video images.  His LinkedIn profile states simply – I have no intention of getting a job ever.  Love it.  http://bea.st

Lara Lee -  Insightful former Harley Davidson exec.  Riffed on the five fears that stop us from creating and innovating in organizations.  Now Chief Innovation and Operating Officer at Continuum.

Tony Hsieh - Founder of Zappos online shoes.  Now pouring ALL his profits into a project to renew and rebuild downtown Los Vegas.  Crazy brilliant. Wish he’d rain some of that cash onto Vancouver!

Sherry Turkle - Less technology, more humanity.  ”You can’t have participatory change without conversation.”

You can see videos of all the storytellers on the BiF site.

From what we observed, they’re teaching traditional design skills first – then exploring how to apply them to business problems.  This seemed a little disjointed at first glance – hard to say how it ultimately integrates with the rest of the business curriculum.

We were particularly keen to see how they’re connecting with their local business community; what kind of collaborations they have.  Surprisingly, this seems to be limited to student projects – mostly service and information design.  They’re also working primarily with MBA’s and Execs – no undergrads.

Our key takeaway (apart from being stunned at how hard it is to get a taxi in Cleveland) was that we’re right up there at the head of the pack in teaching strategic design.  And that we need to do a better job of marketing our process, expertise and work.

Next stop – Rhode Island!

Last week saw the final presentations from the four teams of students — and great, professional presentations they were.  Both Angele and I were amazed at the improvement from the previous project.  Here are some notes on the ideas from the various teams.

The Climate Smart Team

The team worked with Elizabeth Sheehan, CEO of Climate Smart and her colleagues to imagine a whole new clientele for Climate Smart Business — students in the post-secondary sector.  The team investigated whether there is demand for a Climate Smart program for students;  they explored what that might look like through a survey of students, interviews with stakeholders and imagining how such a program might be marketed — especially with business students.  They imagined an information session, an application process and then possibly on-line training for a first workshop to address basic skills and knowledge about sustainability, what carbon emissions are and the way ClimateSmart helps companies to reduce their carbon footprint.  They then imagined a project that could be co-created between students and businesses.  These experiences might culminate in some sort of certification for students in addition to their degree.

See http://bit.ly/WvEEWF for more info.

The Met Fine Team

This team worked with Metropolitan Fine Printers and Scott Gray — the VP of Branding.  Their goal was to collaborate with Scott and identify an area of opportunity which could help the company enhance their position as a green leader in the industry.  Through a focus group with marketing managers and specific, in-depth interviews, the team identified 4 specific take-aways:

• Sustainability is an expectation, not a Point of Differentiation.
• Sustainability is a “product”, not a “process”
• QPS:  quality, price & sustainability relationship
• Customer Service is King

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxVUh_oWyXE&feature=youtu.be

The Van Houtte Cafe Team

The Van Houtte team worked with Morten Schroder, VP Operations;  they discovered that Morten is a strong advocate within Van Houtte for Climate Smart initiatives.  So they decided to build on that idea and they set a goal of reducing the carbon footprint of Van Houtte’s clients (and by extension the Van Houtte business) while adding value to the company.  Like all teams, they used a variety of strategic design techniques to go through the ASK phase of the process.  For example, to do some in-depth observation they shadowed several of the Van Houtte drivers to find out what happens in the client relationship.  This gave them ideas around promoting climate smart-ness in the businesses such as:  create a line of sustainability mugs to extend the drivers’ scope of influence (the mugs are branded with sustainability messages); develop a sustainability starter kit;  create a sustainability brunch series; and, invite more participation in the Climate Smart training program.

The Pacific Arbour Team

This team worked with Karim Winsor, Director of Development at Pacific Arbour Retirement Homes.  Karim had a specific idea that appealed to the team:  carbon food-printing.  This meant investigating the greenhouse gas emissions generated by purchasing food from their suppliers.  So the team investigated the possibility of measuring the footprint by collecting data from the purchasing invoices and using a food-print calculator.  The team discovered that food-prints are hard to measure accurately because there are multiple variables.  The team also visited and interviewed Chef Joseph to better understand the Pacific Arbour kitchen and food buying operations. Finally, they learned from an industry leader, Trevor Bird of Fable Kitchen.  The team’s recommendations ranged from the suggestion of buying a cardboard box compressor (to reduce the number of recycling trips per week) to more fully utilizing the Pacific Arbour greenhouse to develop a “Chef’s Summit” including the suggestion of joining the green table network.  They also made several “long-term” recommendations around finding related companies in Climate Smart that are interested in food-printing and in spreading best practices amongst the various retirement residences.

Just a note that COMM 388:  Design Strategies for Business Innovation is a 3 credit course (3 studio hours/week) so the students necessarily have to “scope” their projects to fit the time available.  Which is good practice in itself.

We had our first class this past week and as usual we throw them into the deep end with a project called “Business in a Back-Pack” which essential means (in pairs) dumping out back-packs and purses — and using their wits, talents and the contents of the back-pack — they create a business in about 45 minutes.  Then they have 2 minutes to pitch the ideas to the class.  It gets them going fast.

Here are some photos from the class.  Am going to look for some students to blog each week to keep the blog site active and to get me into some more strategic blogging.  Stay tuned.