Founding Member of Stanford Design School to Speak at MSU

The Jake Jabs College of Business & Entrepreneurship (JJCBE) is pleased to announce that Dr. James Patell from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d-School) will be speaking on campus on Thursday, September 18th at 6:30 pm in the Strand Union Building (SUB) in room 233.

The talk, “Building to Learn: How Design Thinking Can Help Bring Change,” is free and open to the public with free parking anywhere on MSU’s campus after 6:00pm.

Dr. Patell is the Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management at the Graduate School of Business and one of the seven founding core faculty of the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d-School). Within the d-School, he co-teaches Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability with Professor David Beach.

In this course, student teams from across Stanford’s academic disciplines collaboratively design product prototypes, distribution systems, and business plans for entrepreneurial ventures that address poverty in developing countries. The course has been the subject of segments on CNN’s “The Next List” and most recently featured in the “Extreme by Design” documentary film that aired on PBS.

His talk will highlight the lessons learned from creating and teaching design thinking courses for developing products and services that serve the needs of the world’s poor. In particular, how Stanford students and on the ground entrepreneurs have developed low-cost and innovative ways to address issues ranging from crop irrigation in Myanmar and India, reducing infant mortality from low-birth weight, jaundice, asthma, and pneumonia, to income-generating and sustainable flooring solutions in Rwanda.

Dr. Patell is also a director of D-Rev, a non-profit technology incubator whose mission is to improve the health and incomes of people living on less than $4 per day. He has served as a director of Reliant Building Products, Inc., of Grove Worldwide, and of the Center for the Quality of Management-West, and as an advisor to the Corporate Design Foundation and to Vykor, Inc. He was a founding director of Ignite Innovations and of the Management Institute for Environment and Business. He served as director of Stanford’s MBA Program from 1986-1988 and served as co-director of the Product Realization Network, a cooperative research and educational program involving the Business and Engineering School, together with industrial partners.

“We’re thrilled to have Dr. Patell in Bozeman and the chance for students and the community to learn more on how design thinking and entrepreneurship can help solve problems in tough situations around the globe”, said Dr. Kregg Aytes, dean of the JJCBE. “This is a rare opportunity for our campus and community to see how real change can happen when creativity and innovation is applied to those in need.”

Interested entrepreneurs, nonprofits, faculty, and students are encouraged to attend the talk on Thursday evening and learn more about Dr. Patell’s work and the power of design thinking.