Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders

Presented by AIGA and Yale School of Management

After five successful years at Harvard Business School, “Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders” moved to the Yale School of Management to take advantage of the faculty and facilities at Yale. The 2008 program was held July 27–August 1.

The 2009 program will once again take place at the Yale School of Management, from July 26–July 31 and will follow a similar curriculum to the 2008 program. Enrollment in “Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders” is limited to a select group of senior executives who have high-level involvement in design and strategy projects. Application acceptance is subject to the approval of the Admissions Committee, which is comprised of both AIGA executives and Yale faculty members. To learn more about the 2009 program, contact Spencer Bruce, spencer_bruce[at]aiga[dot]org.

2008 program

Developed by Yale School of Management and AIGA, “Business Perspectives for Creative Leaders” used 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 was 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 stayed in a local hotel and ate 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.

Curriculum

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

1. Strategy: Participants learned 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.
2. Marketing: Divided into three sessions, the marketing module first provided a rigorous understanding of several of marketing’s key concepts: marketing segmentation, targeting and positioning. The second session elucidated how strong brands are defined, built and managed. The third session provided insight into managing customer profitability.
3. Operations: Relying on simulations, cases and lecture, the operations module helped participants understand how the structuring of tasks impacts organizational effectiveness.
4. Financial: The financial accounting module increased participants' 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.
5. Legal: The legal module demonstrated 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.
6. Leadership: Designers often have different leadership approaches and styles than their clients, and sometimes these differences in style can lead to miscommunication. In this module, diagnostic information was collected about participants' leadership style and considered in a more systematic way how that might relate to clients and discuss the implications for communication.

Following these six modules there was 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 presented a particularly rich and complex case that provided the opportunity to work through some of the interconnections among the ideas previously explored. A second session discussed some of the organizational and social psychological issues involved in C-level communication.

Registration fees

The registration fee for AIGA members was $8,000 (one-third due at time of acceptance into the program); for nonmembers: $8,295. A 10 percent group discount was available to two or more people applying from the same company at the same time.

The fee included tuition, course materials, on-campus accommodations and meals.

About the Yale School of Management

The mission of the Yale School of Management is to educate leaders for business and society. This mission reflects the vision and expectation that the creative leaders are inspiring pioneers who own and solve hard problems that matter. The Yale Management approach is designed to accomplish two goals: first, to instill a general competency in meeting the challenges of management; and second, to facilitate the creative leaders development of their own personal career aspirations. Instead of teaching management topics in separate, single-subject courses, Yale teaches core subjects in an integrated way, providing frameworks and concepts in a richer, more relevant context.

Non-discrimination policy

Yale is committed to a policy against discrimination based upon age, color, handicap or disability, ethnic or national origin, race, religion, religious creed, gender (including discrimination taking the form of sexual harassment), marital, parental or veteran status, sexual orientation, or the prejudice of clients. All employers using the school's placement services are required to abide by this policy.