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During the pandemic, Professor Ed Freeman launched The Stakeholder Podcast on Apple Podcasts to bring the stakeholder model that pervades the Darden classroom to a global audience. With new episodes posted weekly, the podcast features business leaders, policymakers, academics, authors and even a few of your favorite Darden faculty members sharing lifetimes of experience managing, writing, working and creating value for stakeholders.
In a recent episode, Professor Freeman talks to Professor Jeanne Liedtka about her most recent book, Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey. Drawing on their experience as colleagues and collaborators, they find that the common denominator in design thinking and managing for stakeholders is people. “Particular people, not people in the abstract,” says Liedtka. “Design thinking won’t let you get away with treating shareholders unidimensionally.”
“Design thinking,” she holds, “is strategy! It speaks directly to leaders’ obligation to a higher purpose, to hold up a more powerful vision of the future.” It asks, “Are we better at connecting with the people we serve than the people we compete against?”
Reflecting on their long careers teaching in Darden’s unique classrooms, Liedtka and Freeman discuss the pandemic, the drawbacks of the traditional MBA, and why the University of Virginia’s design was the key to the success of its human-centered, needs-level educational strategy.
Liedtka is an expert on the hot topic of design thinking and how it can be used to fuel innovation and organic growth.
Liedtka’s most recent books are The Catalyst: How You Can Lead Extraordinary Growth (named one of Businessweek’s best innovation and design books of 2009), Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers (winner of the 1800 CEO READ best management book of 2011), The Physics of Business Growth (2012) and Solving Business Problems With Design: 10 Stories of What Works (2013). Her latest book, Design Thinking for the Greater Good, studies design-led innovation projects in government and social sectors.
B.S., Boston University; MBA, Harvard University; DBA, Boston University
Freeman is best known for his work on stakeholder theory and business ethics, in which he suggests that businesses build their strategy around their relationships with key stakeholders. His expertise also extends to areas such as leadership, corporate responsibility and business strategy. Since writing the award-winning book Strategic Management: A Stakeholder Approach in 1984, countless scholars, business leaders and students worldwide have cited Freeman’s work.
Freeman also wrote Managing for Stakeholders: Survival, Reputation and Success and Stakeholder Theory: The State of the Art.
B.A., Duke University; Ph.D., Washington University