Leadership, Design, and Innovation at KIVA

Students will travel to San Francisco, CA to KIVA’s headquarters.  KIVA is a non-profit organization that specializes in micro-lending, and has been featured on Oprah as well in Bill Clinton’s last book.   Students will be put into a real life business simulation in which they need to create an innovative solution for KIVA’s K-12 educational partnership program.  Students will be working in teams of five that will function as mini corporations.  They will be led through the Design Thinking Process, a process that has been pioneered by the Stanford D-School for Design, to create a unique and creative business solution for KIVA to implement in their K-12 division.   Each team will have a CEO as well as other team members in critical roles, and they will be working side by side with KIVA employees.   At the end of the week, they will pitch their solution to a panel of local educators, KIVA employees and other professionals in the Bay Area.  While this project is a simulation, they will be working on solutions that could potentially be developed further and implemented at KIVA.   During this project, we will introduce curriculum that is focused on leadership, design and tracking and influencing group process.   At night, students will be staying in accommodations together, and they will be cooking and spending time together.  While the project that they will be working on will be serious and real, we will have tons of fun and relax together after a hard day at work.  

Accommodations will not be five star, and we will be using public transportation.    It is possible that we will also get a chance to tour the D-School at Stanford as well as Jump Associates, a SF based consulting firm that specializes in strategy and innovation.