Stanford Innovation Lab With Tina Seelig

In the final episode of our “Entrepreneurship and Ethics” miniseries, Stanford professor Tom Byers asks two leading venture capitalists — Floodgate co-founding partner Ann Miura-Ko and NEA managing general partner Scott Sandell — how the VC community can incentivize ethical leadership in the companies they fund and manage.

What if entrepreneurship education placed ethics at the same level of importance as fundraising and product-market fit? In the fourth episode of our “Entrepreneurship and Ethics” miniseries, Stanford professor Tom Byers speaks with fellow entrepreneurship educators Laura Dunham (University of St. Thomas) and Jon Fjeld (Duke University) about how they’re elevating the role of applied ethics in entrepreneurship education.

In the third episode of his “Entrepreneurship and Ethics” miniseries, Stanford professor Tom Byers speaks with fellow professors John Mitchell, chair of Stanford’s Computer Science department, and Mildred Cho, associate director of Stanford’s Center for Biomedical Ethics. Mitchell and Cho discuss emerging ethical questions posed by advances in computer science and biomedical research, and explore how efforts in their respective fields can inform ethics training for entrepreneurs and innovators of all stripes.

In the second episode of our “Entrepreneurship and Ethics” miniseries, Stanford professor Tom Byers connects with Theranos whistleblower Erika Cheung. Together, they explore how she found the courage to speak up, and why she’s starting a nonprofit organization focused on creating ethical toolkits for entrepreneurs.

In the first episode of our “Entrepreneurship and Ethics” miniseries, Stanford professor Tom Byers speaks with Stanford lecturer Jack Fuchs and Jazz Pharmaceuticals CEO Bruce Cozadd about how strong principles can help a leader navigate a crisis. Fuchs discusses his “Principled Entrepreneurial Decisions” course, and Cozadd walks through a case study he first presented in that class, focusing on how he leaned on his principles when his company hit a wall during the 2008 economic crash.

We all hear that having professional mentors is critical to career success. So how do you identify a mentor and sustain the relationship? In this episode, Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, and guests Tania Abedian Coke, founder of TellUs, and Lauren Ottinger of Intercom say successful mentorships are characterized by gratitude and reciprocity. It helps to seek a mentor one or two steps ahead of you in their career.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...the best skills and qualities you bring to a team! In this episode, Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, and guests Steve Garrity of Hearsay Systems and Juliet Rothenberg of DeepMind talk superpowers. We all have them—we just have to identify them and apply them to the right problems. Your superpower may not be the same thing as your passion (hint: what’s easy to you, but hard to everyone else?), but it can be just as valuable in your career.

When it comes to building teams, it’s all about the blend. You need optimists and realists, dreamers and doers, yes-idents and CE-nos. In this episode, Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, and guests Justin Rosenstein of Asana and Elizabeth Weil of 137 Ventures compare notes on finding the right balance of backgrounds and personalities. It’s not enough to say you want diverse perspectives--you have to make it safe for people to be who they really are at work.

Negotiation—whether it’s over a job offer or a merger—is a dance. Each partner must be attentive to the other, and they’ve got to agree on style and tempo. In this episode, Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, and guests Andrew Scheuermann, CEO and cofounder of Arch Systems, and Jessica Verrilli, general partner at GV, explain what makes a negotiation successful. The best negotiations stem from openness and mutual trust between the two parties, and it helps to know exactly what you want it, and say it clearly.

Employers aren’t expecting perfection. They want authentic candidates who are excited about the company’s mission and brimming with curiosity about the role. In this episode, Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, Tess Hatch of Bessemer Venture Partners, and Josh Reeves, CEO and founder of Gusto, explain how to convey those qualities in the interview—without coming off like a braggart, a know-it-all, or a Debbie Downer. And they remind you not to panic too much about the job search. When you’re early in your career, any step is a step in the right direction.

You can’t win at office politics, but you can get better at playing the game. In this episode of LEAP!, Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, along with Kit Rogers of Rambus Cryptography Research and Lauren Isford of Facebook share how they’ve navigated the intricate systems of power that shape every workplace. It’s a lot like team sports: you’ve got to know when to pass the ball and let someone else shine—and when to take your own shot.

You can’t do it all, no matter what our crazed culture tells you—and there’s no shame in walking away from a commitment that isn’t working out, as long as you do it thoughtfully, respectfully, and with plenty of advance warning. In the first episode of the LEAP! podcast, Tina Seelig, Professor of the Practice in Stanford’s Department of Management Science & Engineering, and guests Konstantine Buhler of Meritech Capital Partners and John Melas-Kyriazi of Spark Capital embrace the negative, exploring when, why, and how to say no. Life is full of great opportunities, but they’re not all for you.

Join Stanford Professor of the Practice Tina Seelig on a deep-dive into how to launch your career. Tina and Stanford alumni will discuss what skills have helped them thrive, and what they wish they’d learned while they were in school. Each episode explores a particular topic, including politics in the workplace, how to negotiate, and working on a team. Be sure to subscribe to get new episodes when the series launches.

Why look at old things in new ways? Rich Cox, Lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, joins host Tina Seelig to share and discuss the listener submissions to the Stanford Innovation Lab: Innovation Challenge. People, young and old, from around the world submitted their ideas for how to create value from unmatched socks. From coffee filters to dating sites to diapers for the developing world, hear how our listeners stepped up to the challenge and created value from something we usually throw away.

Do you need more friction in your life? Stanford Professors Bob Sutton and Tina Seelig continue their lively discussion about the need for friction in the creative process. They share insights from research and their personal experiences about the best times to debate, when to accept a decision and move on, and tips for how to coax more innovative thinking from a team.

Is "friction" within a team positive or negative? Stanford organizational expert and bestselling author Bob Sutton joins Tina Seelig to discuss his fascination with the tensions within teams and businesses. They also explore how much positive and negative reinforcement leaders should give to elicit the best and most creative results from others, and how to teach these skills.

Imagine learning to code with no internet connection. Or creating a business plan from behind bars. Beverly Parenti, co-founder of The Last Mile, joins Tina to share the challenging journey of bringing innovation and technology training to prisoners. Can constraints fuel creativity? When does structure provide stability and opportunity? Tina and Beverly reflect on this rewarding work and how it shapes the way they appreciate other ventures.

In this episode, host Tina Seelig challenges you to apply the lessons on brainstorming that were shared in the last three episodes of Stanford Innovation Lab. She reveals an assignment that requires you to look at something old in a brand new way. The most innovative ideas will be showcased on the final episode of the season, and all those who are mentioned will receive a special prize…. One thing’s for sure: You’ll have to think on your feet for this one!

Let go of judgment in order to leap to your boldest and most innovative ideas. Emily Ma, from Alphabet’s X, joins host Tina Seelig to discuss how unlikely combinations of ideas can lead to breakthrough solutions to the thorniest problems… And, how to you take advantage of bathroom breaks to reset the agenda. This is the final of three episodes with Emily on brainstorming. Next up, Tina challenges you to test your own creativity in a very special episode.

What can MadLibs teach you about brainstorming? Emily Ma, from Alphabet’s X, joins host Tina Seelig to discuss how simple word choices in brainstorming profoundly influences what ideas are generated. They discuss what questions you can ask to squeeze out more diverse ideas, and how do you keep your team from falling back into incremental solutions. Emily also shares her strategy for color-coded voting at the end of a brainstorm that helps teams move from exploration to exploitation. This is the second of three episodes with Emily on brainstorming.