What is Stanford doing with the recent $105 million gift from Nike (NKE) founder Phil Knight?
It served as a down payment for our new campus, which is well under way and will open in the 2010-2011 school year. The campus will have eight buildings around three quadrangles with much more flexible space. We have multidisciplinary courses that draw on faculty not just from the business school but also from other schools at Stanford. Really, when you think about the way the world worksthe way businesses workMBAs don’t just work with other MBAs. They work with a wide range of people, so getting the opportunity as MBA students to work with ridiculously smart students from other parts of the university is a real advantage. In [a course like that], the traditional MBA-style classroomthe U-shaped tiered classroomisn’t what you need. You need flat space with tables where people can spread out and work on prototypes, where they can be really creative and collaborate. The goal of the new campus is to have more spaces like that that will support the types of innovations that we have launched
