WINDHOEK – The Stanford Seed Programme which is a high-touch learning experience aimed at empowering established business leaders, has commenced with recruitment for the Southern African region. The Southern African leg of the programme, which is a collaboration between the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the De Beers Group, has called for applications from Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. The application deadline is June 15, 2019, and those accepted will begin their programme in January 2020 when they will join other business leaders in East or West Africa.
Announcing the latest programme in Windhoek yesterday, Stanford’s Director for Global Operations, Jeffrey Prickett, noted that the programme has since inception trained 628 business leaders and 2378 managers from 19 countries and expects 20 companies each year from Namibia, Botswana and South Africa.
Successful applicants will undertake a 12-month intensive leadership programme that includes sessions on strategy and finance, business ethics, and design thinking, all taught by world-renowned Stanford faculty and local business practitioners. In addition, a series of four full-day workshops, delivered at the participating company and its management team, will take place at various intervals throughout the programme. The Seed programme is exclusively for business owners of for-profit companies or for-profit social enterprises with annual company revenues of US$150 000 to US$15 million.
By challenging business leaders to assess their company’s vision, to redefine strategies and to make ambitious changes to their businesses, transformation is realised even before completion of the training, according to Prickett. He explained that because business leaders gain critical tools to grow their companies and create jobs, they in turn will lead their respective regions to greater prosperity.
“Seeing this programme come to fruition as we had envisioned for Southern Africa, is remarkable. It has enabled us to collaborate with our producer countries towards repositioning enterprise development in our region,” commented Pat Dambe, Vice President of Corporate Affairs and Government Relations at De Beers Global Sightholder Sales.
Stanford University, founded in 1891 in Palo Alto, California (ISA) is one of the world’s leading teaching universities. Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Stanford graduates have founded established global entities such as Nike, eBay, Snapchat, Yahoo, Cisco and numerous others.