Driving Innovation and Growth in Silicon Valley
The innovation imperative is one of the top issues for today’s organizations, and also one of their toughest challenges. The need to continually develop and execute on innovative ideas, products, business models, and ventures is real, but few organizations acknowledge they have successfully equipped their leaders to meet this challenge.
While acquiring and hiring innovation are options, we challenge that creativity and ideas abound in most organizations. The difficulty is not just generating the ideas – the challenge is executing on innovation: testing ideas, finding market fit, and scaling strategies for growth.
This is the topic we tackle in our intensive, weeklong immersive program in the heart of Silicon Valley:
Innovation, Execution, and Growth: Driving Innovation and Growth
Overview
Driving Innovation and Growth is a weeklong, focused deep dive for leaders within an enterprise. We combine practical, hands-on experience from leading entrepreneurs and innovators, academics, seasoned corporate innovation practitioners and experts within the heart of Silicon Valley to help enterprise leaders address these innovation challenges. The program offers a multi-prong approach including:
- Core program content, which is split between curriculum and the project
- Coaching
- Ecosystem experience, which includes targeted company visits
- Community building
Driving Innovation and Growth is different as we are an executive education program inside Silicon Valley (not a campus) focused on teaching innovation and growth skills (not touring companies) by leveraging decades of experience and expertise in the midst of our ecosystem.
The program is not just about ideas, it is testing and scaling these ideas in the marketplace to drive growth and competitive advantage to your organization. It takes place within GrowthX, which is an ecosystem that fosters entrepreneurialism through capital, consulting, acceleration and education.
Participants work on a focused project with hands-on support and coaching from the program team and entrepreneurs in residence at GrowthX Academy and the GrowthX fund. Our hands-on coaching ensures participants are mentored throughout the course of the week, as well as in two individual coaching sessions following the program.
Benefits and Impact
By the end of the weeklong program, participants will understand the innovation challenge and be better able to lead growth initiatives inside their organizations.
Benefits include:
- Discover the cutting-edge marketing innovation strategies to grow your market
- Learn whether and when you can achieve product-market fit with less capital
- Acquire design thinking skills around customer journeys and creative thinking
- Improve your innovation efforts by learning how the market development process creates a learning organization to develop market traction
- Take practical growth frameworks, tools and templates and creative methods for thinking back to work to be applied immediately to your project or products
- Learn from successful entrepreneurs and leaders in Silicon Valley that have and are disrupting markets
- Understand how to overcome challenges to innovating within the enterprise and get on a firmer innovation pathway
- Immerse yourself in the most dynamic community-based learning experience in Silicon Valley and SOMA, San Francisco
- Be part of Silicon Valley’s innovation spirit, including visits to surrounding leading growth enterprises
About the Program
Driving Innovation and Growth offers a multi-prong approach including the core program content of curriculum and project, coaching, the ecosystem experience, and community building.
CURRICULUM
The program is divided into two main areas: internal innovation and growth and market acceleration. Key modules include the following:
Internal innovation and growth:
- Strategy, innovation and growth through uncertainty
- Value creation and Value propositions
- Models of innovation
- Business model innovation
- Overview of design thinking and UX
- Overcoming the challenges of corporate innovation: Pathways to enterprise innovation
- Getting ideas through internal blockers
- Building a culture of experimentation
Market Acceleration Program (MXP):
- The market milestones to product-market fit
- The customer buying process and experience
- Market acceleration strategy
- The integrated marketing and sales funnel
- Designing the marketing and sales technology stack
- Customer acquisition framework: Building your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
- Conversational framework: Market messaging and outreach
- Market results: Management and optimization
PROJECT
Each participant must bring an idea for a product, unit, or solution they want to grow in the market. These can be an existing or in progress innovation or innovative idea or a new possible product line or venture. Some time is dedicated in the first part of the program to idea generation and testing.
We pair each participant with a project team, who will work with them on refining the idea, testing the idea, establishing market readiness and assessing for potential fit, defining realistic market milestones, and preparing for possible pathway launch and execution. By the end of the week, participants should have a developed roadmap for their innovative idea including tangible tests, which will be reviewed in the week-end presentations our panel of coaches judges.
COACHING
Participants get matched with one of the core faculty members for one-on-one coaching, as well as the ability to receive coaching and working relationship with entrepreneurs of companies within the GrowthX fund, our large mentor network including leading VCs and startup executives, and recent alumni of the GrowthX academy. The coaching includes:
- Clarifying key growth and innovation approaches
- Encouraging growth mindsets and experimentation
- Help map the market development process to your project
- Illustrate funnel dynamics and how to manage them
- Break down key methodology steps around design strategies
ECOSYSTEM EXPERIENCE & COMMUNITY BUILDING
Network with top innovators at Silicon Valley’s most innovative companies.
Immerse yourself in the GrowthX community based education approach. You’ll be gaining insights and knowledge from the brightest minds in the industry, and making lifelong connections. The GrowthX community consists of over 150 portfolio companies, current students and alumni of GrowthX Academy, over 150 mentors, founders and their teams, investors and our campus which houses over 200 startups and 3000 people working at the center of the tech community.
About the Team
GrowthX Corporate Academy is one of the only innovation programs to combine thought leaders from multiple aspects of corporate executive education within an entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our core faculty team are business school professors, serial entrepreneurs, corporate innovation leaders, successful founders, and entrepreneur educators coming together for a focused week of enterprise-focused innovation and growth training.
Core Faculty:
Who Attends?
This program is for leaders who want to move beyond idea generation and better understand the drivers of innovation and growth, and how they can lead them in their organization.
Participants should be leaders or managers with responsibility for a unit, functional area or team. Participants do not have to have a specific innovation role, but applicants should have responsibility for new growth initiatives or products.
Program Dates and Logistics
| Dates: | Program runs from February 12 to February 16, 2018 Fees include program content and materials, all teaching and networking sessions, daily lunches and happy hours, and two program dinners. Note participants are responsible for arranging their own housing, but the program manager will assist with local recommendations. |
| Location: | SOMA (San Francisco) |
| Costs: | $6,595 |
Contact Us and Apply
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