THE ORIGINS An Interview with Dick Hayne P’08, P’11, GP’26, GP’28, GP’29, GP’31, GP’33
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Chairman and CEO, Urban Outfitters Former Board Chair, Springside School and Springside Chestnut Hill Academy
: WHAT WERE THE ORIGINS OF THE CEL PROGRAM? WHY WAS IT CREATED?
DH: Priscilla Sands and I would sit down regularly and talk about school issues—what was going right and what we could do better. At one point I said to her, I really think we should have a course of study on entrepreneurism. I think it would be very beneficial for the students to learn about entrepreneurship and have an opportunity to start a business. I have learned more from having and growing a business than any other thing I've ever done, and I said I think that other people would have a similar reaction.
they made $10 or $12. From that, you can teach them just about anything there is to know about business. At first they’re going to think this is great, they just made $12. You can say, well, did you really make $12? Who bought the lemonade? Who bought the cups? And you can see their enthusiasm quickly turn to almost dejection when they find out they actually lost $12. But that is okay. They have to figure it out—how are they going to turn that $12 loss into a $12 gain? An awful lot of people don’t get to engage in this way of thinking, and I think it’s to their deficit. I give Priscilla an awful lot of credit because she took my idea, let it percolate for maybe a month,
Stanford d.school and design thinking, I realized, yes, there is a lot of application for a broader way of thinking about entrepreneurship. And so we discussed it in more detail and, credit to her, she did it. She came up with a program that combined what she was thinking with some of the things that I was thinking.
Q: HOW CLOSELY DOES DESIGN THINKING ALIGN WITH ENTREPRENEURSHIP? DH: I think it overlaps enormously. Design thinking is a very useful tool for going about solving problems, and that’s what we do every day as business people. When we’re confronted with
DESIGN THINKING IS A VERY USEFUL TOOL FOR GOING ABOUT SOLVING PROBLEMS, AND THAT’S WHAT WE DO EVERY DAY AS BUSINESS PEOPLE. It doesn’t matter if it’s some simple business like a lemonade stand and someone is eight years old. You learn an awful lot from the very beginning. With my own kids I saw how their eyes got big when
and, after I’d actually forgotten our discussion, she came back and said I’ve worked on it and here’s what I’ve come up with. What she then described was something more far reaching than what I had originally envisioned. She applied the idea of entrepreneurship across a much broader range of activities. At first I thought, well, that’s not really what I had in mind. I was more focused on the business end of it, but as she started describing the
problems, we can’t just throw up our hands; we have to dig down and think, how am I going to solve this? Design thinking actually works in real life. Businesses use it constantly, whether they know it or not. And, as I said, it’s quite effective.
Q: WERE THERE CHALLENGES IN GETTING PEOPLE’S BUY-IN AROUND CEL?
DH: Yes, there were a number of groups that had to be convinced. I can remember some board
DESIGN THINKING IN ACTION At the sophomore Capstone Showcase, a student displays his prototype for a project developed through the design thinking process.
CEL 10th Anniversary Book
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