Stanford Graduate School of Business

Change lives. Change organizations. Change
the World. When we say change lives, change organizations
and change the world, we really mean it. Stanford GSB equips students to do that.
You first have to start by changing yourself. Students are naturally encouraged to innovate.
We tend to attract students, we tend to attract faculty who are not fearful of making mistakes.
The fear is much more on missing out on opportunities. The extreme commitment to “I came to change
the world, I’m going to change the world” what does that mean? My comfort zone ceases
to exist. GSB encourages you to take risks.
It broadens your perspectives on how to influence, how to lead.
I learned to be a critical, analytical thinker. Understand the global context of management.
The research in governance that we’re doing, that shows up in SEC discussions, is used
by companies in deciding how they design their compensation programs, how they want to structure
their board of directors. This is not a school where we’re simply training leaders for the
domestic economy. At the GSB I can use virtually the whole world
while standing at this place. Film directors, bankers and private equity
consultants. Renowned leaders from around the world, Nobel
Prize winners. It’s really a transformational experience.
Change lives. Change organizations.
Change the world. I just expected going to a top business school,
everyone was going to be super competitive with each other. It’s not like that at all.
Going through the leadership curriculum has really helped build my confidence and my ability
to manage a high performing team. I graduated from uh, Stanford Business School
in 2002. Authentic leadership, and especially the way it’s used at Stanford, being self
reflective, self aware and mission driven. That ability to, to see myself and be true
to myself, truly like the couple of years I spent at Stanford Business School uh, have
helped shape what I do as a global leader. Change lives.
Change organizations. Change the world.
If there was no Stanford Graduate School of Business, there would be no Nike. It was in
the Entrepreneurship class that French Ellenberger taught that I wrote the paper that really
became the blueprint for Nike. The opening of the Knight Management Center
represents a giant leap forward for the Graduate School of Business. Through curriculum reform
we now provide a very unique Management Education experience. It is experiential, it’s transformative,
it’s individualized, personalized, and now we have the physical facility to put that
in. The Knight Center really demonstrates teaching
and living responsibly with concerns for sustainable design.
This place is so much more than a physical facility. So here I’m standing on the edge
of a town square next to the Arbuckle Café that abuts a community court, you can walk
by 10:00 at night and you’ll see students inventing the future in front of your eyes.
Everything on campus is within walking distance of everything else. The University as a whole
is a giant resource to the students. The physical space grounds us enabling the
ideas that are generating here to go way beyond the walls of the Knight Management Center.
I’m really interested in entrepreneurship and innovation.
Energy and clean tech space. We’re working on tourism and (illegible)
Private equity. Combining business and medicine.
Stanford GSB believes in the individual’s ability to affect change.
Make a difference in the lives of, you know, hundreds, millions of people.
The corner stone of our new campus reads, “Dedicated to the things that haven’t happened
yet, and the people who will dream them up.” And I think that in a nutshell captures, uh,
the essence of the GSB. Pursue your dream.
Dream on a world scale. I can do whatever I put my mind to.
Change lives. Change organizations.
And change the world.

Written by Raul Dinwiddie