Summer Institutes Home
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Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship
Dates: June 20 - July 16, 2010
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Danny C. Lin |
Field of Study: Electrical Engineering
Stanford University
Why were you interested in participating in the SIE?
I was interested in participating in the SIE because I wanted to practice working with people from multiple disciplines and observe the differences in how we act, learn, make decisions, and interact. Also, I was excited about the opportunity to take classes from amazing professors from the business school. My primary goal for the team project was to create a group environment that is fun, respectful, beneficial, and productive. My secondary goal was to share one of my previously prepared ideas with the class and strive to turn it into something real.
Were your expectations for the program met?
My expectations for the classmates and the professors were definitely met; the professors were outstanding and very approachable, and the classmates were all great contributors in their own way. I was very happy after the program for accomplishing my primary goal, and have been able to reproduce the result in another project during the second-half of the summer outside of SIE. I believe the SIE team experience has equipped me and my teammates with team-building soft-skills that will be beneficial throughout life. Working in such a synergetic team, my secondary goal proved to be irrelevant since I would be happy to work on any idea with them.
What are you doing now?
During the second half of the summer I opened a high-class bed-and-breakfast in Taiwan (beautiful.yilanbnb.tw). It was a fun yet very arduous process. I think the soft-skills developed in SIE definitely came in handy since the process requires getting a lot of different people to work together (try getting two middle-aged men to stop blaming each other for a mistake that would cost one of them $1800). The “go-and-do-it” attitude passed on from our MBA mentor also proved to be very beneficial.
How will your experience in the SIE help you in future endeavors?
SIE is made up of people from all over Stanford and other great schools (we had people from MIT and even New Zealand). If you want to experience working with people from disciplines you would never have imagined, SIE is perhaps one of the only places in the world that offers that kind of experience of this magnitude. SIE will not prepare you with everything you need to know for the rest of your career, but it will definitely open your eyes in every aspect and expand your horizon. After it opens the door and shows you all the things you can still learn and improve on, you will be able to grow in multiple dimensions while working on any future endeavor.
In your opinion, what was the most valuable aspect of the SIE?
To me the most valuable experience is working with people from multiple disciplines, and making sure that everyone is having fun, respecting each other, learning, and contributing; the ability to integrate and attract proves to be invaluable in this world, and every single member in the team developed that skill during the project. Also on the top of the list is the “go-and-do-it” attitude; to an entrepreneur nothing is more valuable than that advice. Regardless of whether you want to be an entrepreneur one day, or become an inspiring all-rounded leader in your field, SIE is the program for you.
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Aimee Slobin
Assistant Director, Programs and Marketing
Office of Executive Education
Stanford Graduate School of Business
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Phone: 650.724.4336
Toll Free: 866.542.2205 (US and Canada)
Fax: 650.723.3950
Email: slobin_aimee@gsb.stanford.edu |
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