Transformational Leadership -
Frances Frei
When SAS was losing money fast and the old playbook no longer worked, CEO Jan Carlzon didn't wait for certainty. Instead, he pushed decision-making down to the front line and trusted his teams to figure out the rest. That same tension defines leadership today: when mandates outpace strategy, hesitating at the top stalls the whole organization. In this foundational session, Professor Frances Frei will put you in Carlzon's shoes to see how trust, transparency, and clear communication mobilize teams and restore confidence when the old rules no longer apply.
The Trusted Leader -
Frances Frei
Strong strategy and technical skill can get a plan built, but they can't get people to follow it. Growth and performance depend on something else entirely: whether your people believe you care, reason well, and mean what you say. In this highly interactive session, Professor Frances Frei expands on the ideas in her popular TED talk and book, Unleashed, to share intuitive frameworks for building and rebuilding trust under pressure. You'll identify how you may be undermining trust in key stakeholder relationships, how to avoid future shortfalls, and how to build a more inclusive and innovative environment by championing difference.
Finance for Business Leaders -
Mihir Desai
Financial fluency isn't just for finance leaders anymore. It's a core skill for anyone making strategic decisions. Professor Mihir Desai builds that fluency through the Case of the Unidentified Industries, a hands-on exercise where you'll use nothing but a balance sheet to identify what kind of business you're looking at. You'll leave with the tools to read a company's financial story quickly, and the confidence to work with financial concepts on your own.
Leadership Journeys -
Tom DeLong
Leadership can ask more of you than you think you have to give, especially when the stakes feel impossibly high and the right call isn't obvious. Professor Tom DeLong explores this through Kwame Owusu-Kesse's early days as CEO of the Harlem Children's Zone, when a single decision promised to reshape both his organization and himself. You'll examine his fears and challenges, and then turn your attention to your own. You’ll leave with a stronger sense of how purpose, gratitude, and grace can carry you forward – even under pressure that won't let up.
Leading Teams Through AI Transformation -
Melissa Valentine
AI makes it easy to do more work and to do it faster, but is “more and faster” your AI strategy? As teams face pressure to use AI at all costs, leaders must develop the muscle to create real, better value using AI. This is the core challenge Professor Melissa Valentine studies as the director of Stanford’s AI + Organizations Lab. In this session, she shares practical lessons from her research on building an AI-ready workforce—showing you how to redefine customer value, close measurement loops, and build true organizational expertise.
Integrated Marketing Strategies -
Das Narayandas
Starbucks Korea released an AI-driven marketing and merchandise campaign on May 18, 2026. Within hours, the campaign was pulled, the CEO was fired, and videos of angry customers smashing Starbucks cups had gone viral. How did everything go so wrong? In this class, Professor Narayandas will show you how to evaluate opportunities to use AI in marketing and customer-facing functions, identify the risks of adding AI to human-centric processes, and analyze accountability and decision rights in AI-augmented workflows.
Operational Transparency -
Ryan Buell
Much of the hardest work on a team happens where no one can see it, and that invisibility carries a real cost: less appreciation, less insight, and less trust. Professor Ryan Buell explores this through Tessei, the JR-East subsidiary that turned around a struggling operation not by adding resources, but by making its hidden work visible. You'll step into the shoes of Tessei's leader at a defining moment, then leave with a framework for surfacing your own team's hidden work – including the quiet effort of learning new tools like AI – and building the capability, motivation, and license people need to do it well.
Better, Simpler Strategy -
Felix Overholzer-Gee
Creating value has never been simple, and AI raises the stakes on getting it right. Professor Felix Oberholzer-Gee introduces the value stick through the case of Uber: a framework built on two forces, customers' willingness to pay and contractors' willingness to sell. You'll see why simply layering AI onto existing products leaves real value on the table and leave with a sharper way to grow both your people and the bottom line.