Our Network
Our topic's role in business and academia has fostered a collegial, supportive, interdisciplinary culture that continues strongly today.
Our students and partners continue to tell us how much the stimulating intellectual environment and dedication to hands-on learning they've experiened in our program motivate their own thinking and efforts.
At Stanford ››
Long-range innovation and foresight strategy is as much art as science, a balance reflected in the background of our team. We attract experts with rigorous synthetic capabilities, deep business and industry knowledge, and proven skills in uncovering new possibilities in technology and other applications.
Dr. William Cockayne | Prof. Larry Leifer | Prof. Michael Shanks
Around the World ››
Our global partners are part of a distinctive community that is committed to developing a global perspective for tomorrow's leaders in foresight and innovation. They are responsible for action-oriented research projects that cultivate local efforts in entrepreneurship and growth.
Tamara Carleton, Ph.D. | Adam Gordon | Veroniqué Hillen | Andreas Larsson, Ph.D. | Jesus Navarro
Dr. William Cockayne
William Cockayne, Ph.D., is a technology innovator and leader. He has over two decades of global industry experience in creating, leading and managing market-focused businesses. He has served as an educator and researcher of disruptive innovation, entrepreneurial culture, and research networks at international institutions. Cockayne is also a Consulting Associate Professor at Stanford University, leading the Foresight and Innovation program and also teaching emerging technologies and innovation strategy within the School of Engineering.
He is currently the CEO and founder of Handstand International Solutions, Inc., where he leads a seasoned team of developers who developing new products for the mobile market. The team at Handstand is composed of key members of the Scout Electromedia, developers of the highly acclaimed modo. Cockayne, who was the co-founder and chief technoalogy officer of Scout, led the team as it pioneered consumer mobile, social media, mobile advertising, and barcodes on displays. He has also held senior roles in technology research and product development at SK Telecom Americas, DaimlerBenz, and Apple Computer.
He has introduced new curricula in high-technology entrepreneurship for the tier-one research universities across Switzerland and also in digital modeling, virtual environments, and simulation at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif. He holds multiple patents and has authored numerous publications, including the book Mobile Agents.
A regular speaker and advisor on topics of industrial research, product development and entrepreneurship, Cockayne holds a doctorate in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, along with a masters of science in Computer Science.
Prof. Larry Leifer
Rumor has it that Larry first arrived at Stanford, just in time, to register for autumn quarter '58 (class of '62). He was fresh off the high school baseball team and still wet from a summer's surfing at the Rincon and other Santa Barbara south coast wave places. A design-engineering career was vaguely foreshadowed by early experiences with model cars, trains, and airplanes complete with various explosive devices. There was also an introduction to the user experience with a classic 40lb balsa board (maybe 5 good people in the water). There had to be a better way, so he built his first foam and fiberglass board when there were 10 souls in the water. By the time he graduated with a BS in "General" Engineering he was on his 4th board (under 20lb) and a typical Rincon day (see also Steamer's Lane, Santa Cruz) would have upwards of 50 nominal delinquents in the water.
Things changed, a six-month adventure at Stanford in Florence transformed the quasi-beach boy into a nascent global-entrepreneur. On completing this bioengineering doctoral thesis (neurophysiology of voluntary movement) at Stanford (private pilot license included), he worked for NASA, founding a Human Information Processing Lab, and did three years at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, discovering the country, Europe, and a lovely spouse with whom he would come to nurture four children.
Open to interpretation, Larry is one of the few guys at Stanford who has already lived several lives. With a product design masters ('64), he subsequently taught in the program on returning to Stanford in '76. His experience in bioengineering at Stanford, NASA, and ETHZ is distantly embodied in today's Medical Device Design program. Conceiving and implementing the Smart-Product-Design Program was a precursor to embedded systems and ubiquitous Mechatronics, as we know them today. His founding of the Stanford-VA Rehabilitation Engineering Center is now embodied in the Biomechanics and Bioengineering programs.
As it became clear that the "Renaissance Man" of the 21st century would have to be a diverse "Renaissance Team," the Stanford Center for Design Research was born to the guiding question, "What do designers do when they do design, and how can we help them?" Thinking about design thinking is a line of research that Larry hopes will continue to mature and contribute importantly to Stanford’s understanding of innovation practice.
His experience as founding director of the Stanford Learning Lab (now Stanford Center for Innovations in Learning) and co-designer of Wallenberg Hall led him to see that design team performance is socially mediated by design learning, the space we work in, and the technology we use. As part of the senior team at the Stanford Center for Foresight and Innovation, Larry helps connect long-term strategic planning with immediate needs in user-centric design and teamwork.
Prof. Michael Shanks
Michael Shanks is the Omar and Althea Dwyer Hoskins Professor of Classical Archaeology at Stanford University, a Director of Stanford Humanities Lab, Director of Metamedia in Stanford Archaeology Center, and a founder of Stanford Strategy Studio.
He has worked on the archaeology of early farmers in northern Europe, Greek cities in the Mediterranean, has researched the design of beer cans, and the future of mobile media for Daimler Chrysler; currently he is exploring the Roman borders with Scotland, and investigating the Anglo-American antiquarian tradition as a key to a fresh view of the early history of science.
His archaeology lab at Stanford, Metamedia, is pioneering the use of Web 2.0 technologies to facilitate collaborative multidisciplinary research networks in design history, media materialities and long-term historical trends. This comes after a long collaboration with the European performance company Brith Gof and with performance artists in the Presence Project - arts practice in multimedia. As a Director of Stanford Humanities Lab, he is championing experimental research and development in transdisciplinary Arts and Humanities, building bridges to a bigger picture on our contemporary cultural condition. A key theme in his current lab projects is the future of The Archive.
A series of critical interventions in debates about the character of the archaeological past, including the books ReConstructing Archaeology (1987), Social Theory and Archaeology (1987), Experiencing the Past (1992), Art and the Early Greek State (1999) and Theatre/Archaeology (2001) have made him a key figure in contemporary archaeological thought. For Michael, archaeologists do not discover the past; they work on what remains. Archaeology, the discipline of things, design and making, is about our relationships with what is left of the past. This means we are all archaeologists now; cultural heritage lies at the core of who we think we are, and how we might respond to the challenges of today and tomorrow.
Tamara Carleton, Ph.D.
Tamara Carleton, Ph.D., is founder and president of Innovation Leadership Board LLC, an advisory firm specializing in the processes and structures that enable radical, technological innovation. In this role, Carleton works closely with organizations around the world to analyze, develop, and foster best practices in innovation. She possesses over a decade of industry experience in corporate strategy, technology development, and communication roles in organizations of all sizes. Her current clients span multiple industries and regions, and past clients include Microsoft, Herman Miller, NVIDIA, and Panasonic. At the core of Carleton’s expertise is her pioneering work in uncovering the innovation practices of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). She holds a doctorate in mechanical engineering (design research) from Stanford University and degrees from Syracuse University and The George Washington University.
Adam Gordon
Adam Gordon is the director of Adaptive Leadership Foresight UK, specializing in application of industry foresight methods and solutions. He is the author of Future Savvy (Amacom Press, 2009), and a Forbes Columnist. A journalist by first profession, he transitioned to business foresight via an MS (University of Houston) and MBA (INSEAD), and was a senior associate at the Washington D.C. futures consulting firm, Coates & Jarratt Inc. He is a visiting professor in industry foresight and management of innovation at various global business schools and has presented widely at industry-research events, such as the Foresight Analysts Network, DIUS (UK Govt Office of Science) conference, London; Generant Futur, Barcelona; Government Foresight and Future Governances conference, Korea; SA2030, Cape Town, European Futures Conference, Lucerne; Future Matters, Cardiff; The Luxury Marketing Council, Philadelphia; and the New York Public Library Lecture Series. Adam is an editorial board member of Foresight (International Institute of Forecasters) and of World Future Review: Journal of Strategic Foresight (World Future Society, Washington, D.C.).
Veroniqué Hillen
Hillen is in charge of the master “Intrapreneurs for Sustainability” at Ponts ParisTech. She teaches corporate strategy and eco innovation, both as a lecturer and an instructor of multidisciplinary teams. Her research focuses on strategic renewals of large companies and breakthrough sustainable innovation. She is a PhD candidate at Mines de Paris and has been a visiting scholar at the Center for Design Research at Stanford University. Contact Ms. Hillen at hillenv-at-enpc.fr.
Andreas Larsson, Ph.D.
Andreas Larsson is Associate Professor at the Department of Design Sciences at Lund University, where he is heading the Innovation Engineering group. His research agenda aims to create a rich blend of needs-motivated activities dealing, among other things, with cross-functional knowledge sharing, local and distributed teamwork, and participatory innovation. These interests can be summarized in the overarching aim to support product developing individuals, teams, and organizations in effectively and efficiently co-creating and sharing ideas and knowledge across a wide range of boundaries (i.e., teams, organizations, cultures, languages, time zones, etc.) in the pursuit of innovation. Contact Dr. Larsson at andreas.larsson-at-design.lth.se.
Jesus Navarro
Mr. Navarro is the Director of Corporate Developtment and Director of Strategy and Market Analysis Department of AIDIMA, in Paterna (Valencia) Spain. He is a leader in creating competitive intelligence systems (industry analysis, trends and foresight) and using the information generated in the process to develop sustainable, innovative business models. He does this work within the Valencian Region network of Technology Institutes ( www.redit.es ), which were created as extensions of multiple industrial clusters. He works with companies to promote strategic innovation in their business, in the region, and as part of the overall Spanish economy. Mr. Navarro has been a visiting scholar at Stanford University in the areas of foresight, innovation, and design research. Contact Mr. Navarro at jnavarro-at-aidima.es.