Teams deliver outcomes that inspire sponsors to say 

"WOW!"  not just  "Thanks."

Tapping a Network of World-Class Innovators

Companies that become industry affiliates for the course join a very special community. Stanford lies at the heart of a powerful network of the world's foremost thinkers and forward-looking organizations. Current and future leaders from around the globe gather together to pursue ground-breaking ideas. Corporate participants have opportunities to interact with a network of Stanford faculty, students, staff, alumni and design researchers who are collectively passionate about design innovation. In addition, companies can engage with faculty and students from partner international institutions, professional coaches from startups and corporate giants, Silicon Valley luminaries, and internationally acclaimed visitors.

Discovering Opportunities in Complex Challenges

Stanford's Global Engineering Design Innovation (GEDI) course draws corporate participation from a wide range of industries, markets, and geographical environments. Companies typically bring their most challenging problems, long-shot opportunities, and moonshot ideas for GEDI's high-performance teams to tackle. The course uniquely provides opportunities to:

• Search for breakthrough opportunities in new and/or undefined market segments

• Cultivate a deep understanding of evolving and emerging customer profiles

• Develop innovative new product concepts and service offerings

• Explore new integrated hardware-software-service solutions

• Get a head-start on early-stage technology development that can inform follow-on product evolution

• Bring research-informed best practices from Silicon Valley to industry

What Makes the Stanford GEDI Course Unique

Project-oriented capstone design courses are increasingly common at many engineering schools. The ME310 Global Engineering Design Innovation course stands out for many reasons. 

• Teams operate in a truly global context, partnering with international partner while working on projects often sponsored by global organizations.

• The 9-month schedule leaves time for the engineering effort needed to create multiple functioning prototypes with realistic technology subsystems critical to each design. 

• The course applies state-of-the-art early-stage processes for needfinding, technology landscape analysis, and user experience mapping.

• Teams propose what they should design based on research and need-finding, consistent with the broad initial project prompts.

• After extensive prototyping, re-framing, testing, and refinement, teams produce credible and functioning prototypes, with attention to future manufacturing considerations.

• Industry affiliates who support projects report that the documentation of the design process -- including alternatives explored and resources discovered -- is often more valuable in the long-term than the prototypes.

Leveraging the Stanford Network

Students and companies also benefit from regular access to Stanford's world-class faculty and the University's location at the heart of the Silicon Valley ecosystem of startups, global firms, entrepreneurs, and design firms. The Stanford community of academics, technical and business leaders, cutting-edge researchers, and alumni comes together to help support and inspire teams as they pursue their creative ideas for the benefit of project sponsors. As a result of its proximity, teams benefit directly from:

• Direct, frequent guidance from senior Stanford faculty

• Professional coaching from innovative industry practitioners

• Access to advanced technologies and emerging research

What the Course Produces

• Greater intelligence on customer needs in new and emerging market focus area(s)

• An iterative series of prototypes that may lead to patentable intellectual property

• Detailed quarterly design documentation that details project activities, findings, successes and failures 

• Indirect opportunities to tap cutting-edge Stanford research through the project team

• Embedded experiences for corporate liaisons throughout the project