2008 program experience

Developed by Yale School of Management and AIGA, “Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders” uses case studies, lectures, guest speakers and study groups to give creative leaders a more complete understanding of business and design through the eyes of business executives (i.e., clients), giving participants a truly unique curriculum, tailored to their needs. The program is taught by a team of Yale School of Management faculty who are regarded as among the world’s most experienced business scholars and teachers. Participants will stay in a local hotel and will eat together on campus, offering both privacy and ready access to colleagues, as Yale’s guiding principle is that executives learn best from one another in an atmosphere that stimulates teamwork and collaboration.

“Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders” will:

• Prepare you for the C-level (chief executive officer, chief operating officer, chief marketing officer, et al.) conversations that are necessary to offer credible strategic communications advice to clients
• Improve your ability to understand market and organizational opportunities and challenges in an integrated fashion
• Give you experience in understanding complex organizational, positioning and strategy problems as they are seen by high-level clients, wrestling with some of the same data sources that your clients use to make strategic and organizational decisions
• Provide you with valuable insights to assist you in leading and managing your own organizations

I found the experience to be one of the most fulfilling and meaningful experiences of my professional and academic career. —Debbie Millman, 2003 participant

Curriculum

There will be six underlying modules to the AIGA Yale executive education program.

1. Strategy: In the strategy module, you will learn how to think strategically, drawing on critical frameworks to better analyze the environment and make more informed decisions about how to best align the organization with that external environment. Particular attention will be paid to how the increasing reliance on digital technology has shaped the environment in which many firms operate. This strategy module will provide the foundation for many of the other modules in the program.
2. Marketing: The marketing module is divided into three sessions. The first will provide a rigorous understanding of several of marketing’s key concepts: marketing segmentation, targeting and positioning. The second will elucidate how strong brands are defined, built and managed. The third will provide insight into managing customer profitability. As not all customers are equally profitable and as it typically costs more to acquire a new customer than retain a new one, this session focuses on customer management—measuring customer lifetime value and strategies for long-term customer relationship management.
3. Operations: Relying on simulations, cases and lecture, the operations module will help you understand how the structuring of tasks impacts organizational effectiveness. This module introduces some basic equations that even the “quantitatively faint of heart” will be able to understand and utilize to better appreciate factors influencing operational effectiveness. Illustrations are drawn not only from manufacturing firms but service businesses as well. Some of the basic topics include queuing, lean manufacturing and outsourcing. The final session of this module will provide an integration of operational and strategic considerations.
4. Financial: The financial accounting module will increase your ability to read and understand annual reports and, in the process, better communicate with those who conceive of an organization primarily as a financial instrument for generating greater cash flows. It will also show you how standard financial statements capture structural economic differences across firms and industries. Next, it will teach about the time value of money—how firms make decisions on the basis of cash flows rather than accounting income. Finally, it will provide you with a greater appreciation for how budgeting, performance evaluation, decision making and control can be intertwined in an organization. Particular attention will be given to how the use of some standard accounting measures can drive managers to suboptimal behavior in organizations.
5. Legal: The module on understanding the legal environment will demonstrate how firms can use intellectual property protection (i.e., copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets) to differentiate their products, create barriers to entry and generate licensing revenues. Implications of operating in a global environment for intellectual property protection will be discussed. This module will also teach more generally about strategic compliance management, whereby organizations can convert regulatory constraints into opportunities for creating and capturing value. Some examples include the reduction of product liability and environmental risks, an area in which designers can play a key role.
6. Leadership: Designers often have different leadership approaches and styles than their clients, and sometimes these differences in style can lead to miscommunications. In this module, we review diagnostic information collected about your leadership style, consider in a more systematic way how that might relate to some of your clients and discuss the implications for communication.

Following these six modules there will be approximately a half-day of material focused on trying to integrate many of the ideas and themes developed throughout the week. One of the sessions will present a particularly rich and complex case that will provide you with the opportunity to work through some of the interconnections among the ideas previously explored, taught by several of the faculty that you will have had during the week. A second session will discuss some of the organizational and social psychological issues involved in C-level communication.

Schedule

Expect an intensive learning experience and ongoing interaction with other participants. “Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders” is a full commitment. Do not plan to get outside work done while attending the program. Time not spent in the classroom is spent in discussion groups and preparation for classes.

The typical daily schedule is:

7:30–8:15 a.m. Breakfast
8:30–10:00 a.m. Workshop session
10:00–10:20 a.m. Coffee break
10:20–11:50 a.m. Workshop session
12:00–1:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00–4:00 p.m. Workshop sessions
4:00–5:30 p.m. Class preparation
5:45–6:30 p.m. Cocktail reception or social time
6:30–8:00 p.m. Dinner and guest speaker
8:00 p.m. Discussion groups