Stanford Emergence
I joined forces with a number of colleagues at Stanford as Founding Emergence Fellow to launch Emergence, a new initiative catalyzing tech entrepreneurship for sustainability and societal health. We started bringing together a community of researchers, entrepreneurs, faculty, investors, and other leaders to accelerate the emergence of new technologies and ventures driven by purpose and a sense of urgency in addressing some of the most pressing challenges that humanity is faced with, such as climate change, inequality, and pandemics.
As part of this initiative, my team and I created an accelerator program and an annual Emergence community convening, an invite-only conference to discuss how to better inspire, educate, and support students, researchers, and faculty to translate their research into impact addressing global and systemic challenges in the areas of climate change, inequity and societal health through innovation and entrepreneurship.
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Last but not least, my colleagues and I created a few curricular innovations. We launched and taught a new course on biodesign and entrepreneurship for societal health, expanding and building on a previous Stanford Emergence course focused on biodesign & entrepreneurship for the environment, launched earlier.​
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Fast Company covered some of the ideas I have championed on how universities, startups, and large companies can help tackle the biggest challenges humanity faces. This is just a brief snapshot of my ongoing work – if you’d like to explore further or discuss your own ideas, I’d be delighted to connect.
Human-Centered Technology Entrepreneurship
Design thinking, also known as human-centered design, is an innovation and problem-solving methodology used to explore real-world issues and experiment with solutions that integrate what is desirable from a human point of view, with what is technically feasible and financially viable.​ As a fellow, I researched, prototyped and lectured about design thinking applied to the intersection of technology entrepreneurship and society.
I also co-created the EU Knowledge Alliance "Smartup" to bring Stanford's entrepreneurial university model and Silicon Valley's best practices to Europe. I also designed and led an executive program for the Smartup partners that took place at the Stanford d.school, the Stanford Graduate School of Business, VC firms and funds of funds based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Innovation.
Rethinking the way people create new technology products, ventures, business strategies, organizations and policies, among others, helps innovation flourish in thoughtful and responsible ways. Based on this idea, I explored how design thinking can be applied holistically to different aspects of technology and social systems in entrepreneurial settings. By working with extremely multidisciplinary teams and partner organizations, I helped design, prototype and test new technologies and business models, experimented with agile interfaces for innovation, re-imagined cities, industries, policies, habits and narratives, and explored human-centered AI.
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Making European Universities More Entrepreneurial
Most European universities are not (yet) producing significant volumes of entrepreneurial outputs. However, Europe is increasingly in need of innovation and jobs creation. To tackle this problem, I co-created an EU Knowledge Alliance and a master's program aimed at spurring entrepreneurship and innovation in European universities through experiential learning, Silicon Valley's best practices, Stanford's entrepreneurial university model, and the engagement of local ecosystems.
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My collaborators and I built a European network of universities, companies and foundations from nine EU member states, and Stanford as the only extra-EU partner. Together, we designed and piloted Europe's first experiential Master's program in Entrepreneurship whose students' core deliverable is creating a technology venture. We also built digital tools supporting students throughout their venture creation and learning process.
My main contributions were: creating the partnership between Stanford, the European Commission (which funds the Alliance), and the University of Milan Bicocca (which leads the network); embedding design thinking and Silicon Valley innovation and entrepreneurship practices at the core of SMARTUP; leading the Stanford executive program for the SMARTUP European faculty and executives; leading the overall program's design; leading the Stanford working packages of the EU Knowledge Alliance; and lecturing and mentoring our graduate students in Europe.
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