Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB) plans later this year to expand its Ignite program – an executive program designed to provide scientists, engineers, and graduate students with the business skills they need to launch successful entrepreneurial ventures – to Bangalore and Paris, the Financial Times reports.
Stanford Ignite debuted in California in 2006, where it is offered both full and part time. In France and India, it will be taught as part of a part-time, nine-week program, according to the FT.
Yossi Feinberg, a Stanford economics professor and the Stanford Ignite faculty professor, told the FT that the program is designed for professionals in their fields who lack managerial experience. “It’s remarkable how much innovation there is and how much is lost through the lack of business skills,” he said.
Stanford Ignite will target people who are interested in innovation, either in a start-up or within their own company, and help provide them with the tools they need to create a successful venture. It will reflect the curriculum of a traditional MBA, but with a focus on the topics most useful to entrepreneurs. “It’s accounting for entrepreneurs, it’s finance for entrepreneurs – they will not go to Wall Street.” Feinberg told the FT.
The India program, scheduled to being in August, will be taught on the Infosys campus in Bangalore. The France program will be part of a collaboration between Stanford and France’s premier science university, Ecole Polytechnique. Stanford professors will fly to each India and France as part of the Ignite program, but much of the teaching will be done remotely, according to the FT. The nine-week program will cost approximately $13,500, the FT adds.
The success of the California program has been assessed by the number of successful ventures it has helped create, and the India and France Ignite programs will be judged by the same measure, Feinberg told the FT.
Stanford already has plans to launch a third international Ignite program, in Beijing, China, in 2014, and is considering further expansion to countries like Chile, Brazil and Turkey, the FT reports.
