Leadership lab

Lectures: 1 2-hour session, 5 day-long sessions, 1 half-day session

This five-day leadership workshop focuses on how leaders lead innovations that generate both social responsibility and business success. The course is organized around three core activities: observation, sense-making, and creating.

Observation: Students spend a full day inside the Boston office of the user centered design company IDEO working on reinventing the Boston T.Next, small student teams visit some of the most interesting companies in the area of sustainability and corporate social innovation including Ben & Jerry's, KLD, Plug Power, PwC, UN Global Compact, and Schlumberger SEED. The task is to shadow, observe, and interview leaders who work at the frontline of socially responsible business innovation about their challenges, strategies, and practices.

Sense-making:The next day participants reconvene at MIT to share their stories and make sense of their observations during the company visits. The sense-making day also includes presentations and discussions with Joseph Rinkevich of MBDC (McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry) and Joseph Jaworski of the Global Institute for Responsible Leadership about designing and creating ventures that create economic, social, and ecological value.

Creating: The final part of the Lab focuses on developing ideas for change and prototyping them. The teams can focus on changes in the School or projects related to the company visits. The self-organized teams use the IDEO process of rapid prototyping to create socially responsible innovations that serve the need of a local community.Each team presents its accomplishments on the final day of the Lab.

Claus Otto Scharmer, MIT

Peter Senge, MIT
Eric Saperstein, IDEO
Simone Crook, Schlumberger SEED
Joseph Rinkevich, McDonough Braungart DesignChemistry, LLC
Joseph Jaworski, Global Institute for ResponsibleLeadership
Jeremy Hockenstein, DigitalDivideData

IDEO, Boston
Ben & Jerry's, Burlington, VT
KLD Socially Responsible Investing, Boston,
McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, Charlottesville, VA
Plug Power, Latham, NY
PwC, Sustainable Business Solutions, New York, NY
Schlumberger, SEED, New York, NY
UN Global Compact, New York, NY
Walden Asset Management, Boston, MA

This course is designed to create a deep understanding of leadership at the cognitive, the experiential, and the action level. Active involvement in class exercises is very important. Full attendance on all five days is required.

This is a pass/fail course. In order to pass, a student must be present for the entire workshop. In addition, each student must (1) participate and facilitate results in a self-organized team project, (2) co-author a reflection paper about the company visited, and (3) write a personal reflection paper on some key lessons and observations within two weeks of the end of the course. The reflection paper should be 2 to 4 pages in length. Students who sit in on part of the workshop, or who skip days or parts of days, will not get credit.

The course is limited to 35 participants. If you confirm your participation and do not attend class, you will have prevented another student from participating. If you cannot fulfill this professional commitment, give immediate notice of cancellation.

The Lab includes a full day in the Boston studio of IDEO, the design company. The task is to reinvent the Boston T in a single day. A group of experienced IDEO consultants explains and demonstrates the IDEO process of user-centered design and rapid prototyping. The key principles of this process will be applied to the topic of social responsibility in the remainder of the Lab.

On the following Friday, the class splits into small teams of five or fewer to spend a day inside one of the following organizations and companies:

Ben & Jerry's, Burlington, VT, KLD Socially ResponsibleInvesting, Boston, McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry, Charlottesville, VA,
Plug Power, Latham, NY, PwC, New York, NY, UN Global Compact, New York, NY, Schlumberger, SEED, New York, NY, Walden Asset Management, Boston, MA,

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