PBS Documentary To Feature Stanford’s Extreme Design MBAs

‘WE WERE GREATER THAN THE SUM OF OUR PARTS’

Pavkov returned to her former career path as an investor. She’s now vice president of Jasper Ridge Partners, an investment management firm based in Menlo Park, CA. While her day-to-day life doesn’t entail visiting hospitals in developing countries or constructing prototypes out of cardboard, she regularly uses two key class concepts learned at the d. school: “Empathy building, so knowing who your customer is and what their aspirations are and really building an empathy for their life and tailoring a solution or product around that … Number two is really going back to that interdisciplinary thinking and collaboration. My partners had skill sets and individual personalities that were so different than mine, but we were greater than the sum of our parts. So now I look for people who have skills that complement mine,” she says. Pavkov’s also looking for ways to help her investment firm support social entrepreneurs.

Other students have gone on to create bona fide businesses out of their class projects. Success stories include Embrace, an affordable $200 infant warmer, and d.light, a solar-powered lantern that costs less than $10. Even for those who don’t bring their products to market, there are still important takeaways. “I want students to come out of here with the attitude that they can get dropped down into a messy, often heartrendingly difficult situation, and they can figure out a way to make it better, and they can do that on demand,” Patell says.

DON’T MISS: Top Entrepreneur Paul Polack on Social Enterprise or The Top 20 B-Schools for Entrepreneurship

 

 

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