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To compete successfully, today's business leaders must take an entrepreneurial approach to driving and sustaining growth. As global rivalry intensifies and product lifecycles shorten, growing companies must continually devise and execute strategies to move faster, operate more efficiently, and expand into new markets.

This general management program enables you to develop the strategic thought processes and skills necessary to successfully grow your business in today's dynamic global marketplace.

Program tuition includes private accommodations, all meals, and course materials.
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Program Overview

The Executive Program for Growing Companies offers a general management curriculum customized for organizations facing the opportunities and challenges of growth. While strategic leadership is the key theme of the program, the broad curriculum also covers all major functional business areas in depth. For example, finance sessions cover topics such as debt financing, leveraged buyouts, and initial public offerings; marketing sessions examine global market entry strategy, brand management, and customer relationship management; and human resource sessions explore management and measurement systems in growing firms. The program also incorporates leading research from Stanford's world-renowned Center for Entrepreneurial Studies.

SAMPLE SCHEDULE
Faculty Director
Other Faculty
George Foster
George Foster

Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Management; Director of the Executive Program for Growing Companies; Director of the Leadership for Growth (L4G) Program for Enterprise Ireland

George Foster's research and teaching includes entrepreneurship/early-stage companies; financial analysis, especially in commercial disputes; and sports business management. His recent research includes the role of financial and other systems in the growth and valuation of companies. He also is researching globalization challenges facing both sporting organizations and companies.

Jennifer L. Aaker

General Atlantic Professor of Marketing

Robert A. Burgelman

Edmund W. Littlefield Professor of Management; Executive Director of the Stanford Executive Program

Steven Callander

Associate Professor of Political Economy

Antonio Dávila

Professor of Entrepreneurship and Accounting and Control, IESE Business School, Universidad de Navarra; Head of IESE's Department of Entrepreneurship

James M. Lattin

Robert A. Magowan Professor of Marketing

Hau L. Lee

Thoma Professor of Operations, Information and Technology; Director of the Stanford Global Supply Chain Management Forum; Director of the Strategies and Leadership in Supply Chains Executive Program

Margaret A. Neale

Adams Distinguished Professor of Management; Director of the Managing Teams for Innovation and Success Executive Program Director of the Influence and Negotiation Strategies Executive Program; Codirector of the Executive Program for Women Leaders

Charles A. O'Reilly III

Frank E. Buck Professor of Management; Director of the Leading Change and Organizational Renewal Executive Program

George G. C. Parker

Dean Witter Distinguished Professor of Finance, Emeritus; Faculty Director of the Stanford Sloan Master's Program; Director of the Finance and Accounting for the Nonfinancial Executive Program

Jeffrey Pfeffer

Thomas D. Dee II Professor of Organizational Behavior

Joseph D. Piotroski

Associate Professor of Accounting

Hayagreeva Rao

Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human Resources; Director of the Managing Talent for Strategic Advantage Executive Program; Codirector of the Customer- Focused Innovation Executive Program

Condoleezza Rice

Denning Professor in Global Business and the Economy; Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Senior Fellow on Public Policy, Hoover Institution; Professor of Political Science, School of Humanities and Sciences; Denning Director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy

Sarah A. Soule

Morgridge Professor of Organizational Behavior; Professor of Sociology (by courtesy), School of Humanities and Sciences

Key Takeaways
  • Development of strategic competencies for leading and transforming growing companies
  • Interdisciplinary frameworks for managing growth across all functional areas
  • Tools to foster and sustain an entrepreneurial organizational culture
 
 
 
 
 
 

Highlighted Sessions

The Business Challenge Exercise
Before the program begins, participants are encouraged to submit a growth-related strategic challenge they are facing for discussion during the program. Under the guidance of a faculty mentor, groups of participants from non-competitive industries apply their experience and new learning to propose solutions to each business challenge.

Strategic Leadership of Growing Companies in Dynamic Environments
This session takes the perspective of the general manager and is concerned with strategic leadership of growing companies in highly dynamic environments. The major purpose of the session is to sharpen your capacity for strategic thinking and to provide frameworks to help company leaders set strategic direction and lead the strategy-making process in sometimes turbulent environments. The session uses lecture and discussion sessions to provide concepts and tools for strategic analysis. It uses case studies of the evolution of companies that grew from small startups to large established organizations to apply these concepts and tools in real settings and to show the role of strategic leadership in company evolutions.

Winning Through Innovation
Why do industry leaders often lose their innovative edge, and how can they retain it? Based on research and consulting over the past ten years, it appears that short-term success may actually increase the chances of long-term failure. To avoid this “success syndrome” managers must be effective at managing incremental change and leading revolutionary or discontinuous change.

The purpose of this session is to explore how managers can balance this tension and use the cultures in their organizations as a potential competitive advantage. The emphasis will be on thinking about culture as a social control system defined by norms that are linked to critical strategic objectives and can be managed through executive leadership. This session will develop a framework for diagnosing and understanding both the statics and dynamics of organizational change. This framework will highlight the complementary (or contradictory) roles of formal and social control systems in generating innovation and change.

Building Sustainable High-Growth New Ventures: Lessons from Around the Globe
There are multiple avenues to building a sustainable high-growth new venture (be it a new company or a new area for an existing company). We will first overview these multiple ways as a set of general categories, then we will illustrate several of these "growth avenues," in regards to the start-up phase of a new venture and the sizable shifts a company typically makes to keep the "growth engine" going.

Who Should Attend?

This program is designed for two primary audiences: CEOs and top executives in smaller companies and division or business unit leaders within larger organizations. Applicants should have at least 10 years of management experience.
SAMPLE Participant Mix
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The program has been very helpful to me in framing dialogs with the rest of our management team to think through the various options and actions strategically, and optimally. As a result, instead of simply stating a strategic goal, we are identifying the key success factors that will ensure that we actually achieve the goal.
– Robert L. Dunn, CMA
Chief Financial Officer
Mocana Corporation
EPGC was one of the best experiences I've had. The class sessions were great, the professors very knowledgeable and talented and the class was full of brilliant people, many successful serial entrepreneurs indeed… Currently I'm doing business with two different classmates and I have projects for the near future with at least other two.
– Fermin Ezquer-Matallana
Executive Director/Owner
Think Creative Biznets
I gained specific tools for sharpening my organization's strategic focus. Robert Burgelman's presentations alone and their impact on my thought processes were worth the price of the program. The quality of the program in all areas―faculty, lectures, accommodations, food, staff, etc.―far exceeded my expectations. I will definitely consider these 14 days one of the best investments I have ever made!
– Timothy W. Attebery
Chief Executive Officer
South Carolina Heart Center, P.A.
EPGC provides insight into management of people through culture rather than through control mechanisms. For two weeks, we studied a superb array of cases of how other companies succeeded or failed and why. The Stanford faculty is not only on the cutting edge of new learnings but has the teaching skill to impart that learning to me and my colleagues.
– Stephen Schneider
President and COO
Alexza Molecular Delivery Corporation
The strategic frameworks were very timely and I will be able to use them to improve the execution of our strategy at Memec. In general, EPGC stimulated many new ideas and methodologies that will prove useful for both leadership and management upon my return to the office.
– Greg Provenzano
CEO Americas
Memec
Excellent! The insight of leading management theories combined with practical cases was very helpful. The interaction among the participants was invaluable.
– Eugene H. S. Wong
Principal Head of Singapore
Crimson Ventures
Stanford's Executive Program for Growing Companies has been an empowering experience. The excellent faculty and curriculum, quality minds from varying disciplines and countries, and the business networks will benefit me for the future. The program overall has been rejuvenating, enlightening, and invigorating.
– Bill Ten Pas
Vice President
ODS Health Plans
 
 

Facilities

 
 
 
 
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Stanford University
The Stanford campus is world renowned for its natural beauty, Spanish mission-style architecture, and temperate climate. With more than 8,180 acres (3,310 hectares), Stanford's campus ranks as one of the largest in the United States. Participants in Stanford's Executive Programs become part of a quintessential university setting, residing together, walking or biking to classes, and enjoying access to Stanford University facilities.
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The Knight Management Center
Opened in spring 2011, the Knight Management Center has transformed the Stanford Graduate School of Business into a vibrant and unified indoor-outdoor, living and learning community. Participants will take classes at this new state-of-the-art campus, which features tiered classrooms with extensive floor-to-ceiling glass, the latest in audiovisual technology, numerous breakout and study rooms, outdoor seating areas to encourage informal discussion, and an open collaboration lab that employs hands-on and design thinking techniques.
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Schwab Residential Center
Designed by renowned Mexican architect, Ricardo Legorreta, the Schwab Residential Center gives residents ample privacy while promoting collegial interaction through shared lounges, outdoor meeting areas, a library, and an exercise room.

CONTACT

Dan Epelmen
Director, Programs and Marketing
Phone: +1 650.725.7169
Email: [email protected]