2025:Training/Stakeholder Meeting
What is a Stakeholder Meeting?
Over the last few years, we began to notice that successful Fellows were bringing together people at their schools who they identified in their Landscape Canvas research. Some of these people knew one another already (usually the ones who were already self-identified as part of the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem); others didn't, but perhaps were identified by the Fellows as someone who was in the ecosystem and was in a role that could be even more supportive of student creativity, innovation, entrepreneurship or design thinking. By holding such meetings, Fellows found new allies and supporters. They helped catalyze new collaborations between others. They learned new things about their ecosystem and the potential to expand their impact collectively. Fellows, and their sponsors, also became known as a central point of contact for the innovation and entrepreneurship (I&E) ecosystem at their school.
Rather than leave these potential outcomes to chance, we introduced the Stakeholder Meeting, asking all new candidates to hold such a meeting early in their involvement with the Fellows program. Please set your date now, even if circumstances change and you have to be flexible with schedules. This will allow you to communicate the date, time and location to people you meet as part of your outreach of the coming weeks.
Who should we invite?
Campus I&E leaders, including administration, faculty and student leaders. Many of the stakeholders will be from distinctly different departmental/college silos. Include your faculty champion(s) and all Fellows currently at your school. The Fellows and your faculty champions are instrumental to continued success and this is a great way to illustrate that continuity.
Set the Date
Add the tentative details of your stakeholder meeting on your Team Workspace mural. We are asking you to only schedule one stakeholder meeting per campus, ideally around week 6 of training (or later). After this meeting, we will ask you to submit artifacts to us (such as photos, screen shots, attendee lists, agendas and outcomes; no videos needed).
What happens in a Stakeholder Meeting?
We are not prescriptive about the exact agenda and format. We believe you have a strong sense for how to facilitate an impactful conversation. As we mentioned previously, you may want to incorporate three key components:
- Reveal the results of your research. What is your view of the landscape, including all the components that serve the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem? Chances are, most in the audience will not be aware of the full breadth of offerings. Make sure you distill what you believe are the key insights and takeaways about ways to enhance the ecosystem. Share your hypothesis for enhancements to the ecosystem and whether or not your hypothesis were validated. If ready, share the YouTube video you've created in Session 6. Leave plenty of time for discussion, questions and comments.
- The other important aspect of this meeting is to simply bring together the campus I&E community. Innovation and entrepreneurship come from interdisciplinary collaboration. If done right, many of the stakeholders will be from distinctly different departmental/college silos. By networking them together, you greatly improve the chances for student and faculty coordination and collaboration over time. You'll come to understand who is already connected to whom. And, you may catalyze some new connections between potential collaborators. Finally, it'll be valuable for them to meet the Fellows team at your school and see you as a key resource.
- Include your faculty champion and all Fellows currently at your school. By this we mean, don't just leave this responsibility to you and the candidates currently in training. The Fellows and your faculty champion are instrumental to continued success and this is a great way to illustrate that continuity.
Make it fun
Think about making the event a great experience for all involved. Space matters. If the space isn't inspiring, use images and artifacts to inspire participants. As people arrive and during portions of the event when people are networking, play carefully selected background music … not too loud, but just right to set the mood and tone. Here's a Spotify UIF Chill Playlist for some ideas. A small budget for snacks or pizza is always helpful to encourage socialization, but if you're lacking a budget, it’s not the end of the world. People are there for a shared purpose. So, be creative and make it meaningful! Post photos and comments about the event in the forum.
The rest of this page has useful tools as you navigate relationships with stakeholders on campus. They cover topics as diverse as negotiation, carrying yourself powerfully, to great leadership requiring vulnerability.
Power and Influence
As a student sanctioned by members of your institution to study and articulate the assets and gaps you perceive within the I&E ecosystem at your school, you hold a certain power to help influence change. Through the Fellows training, you are exposed to knowledge of best practices on other campuses and an unparalleled network of student change agents. You stand ready to have influence over the outcome of your I&E ecosystem, as well as influence over key people on campus. This section is designed to arm you with the knowledge that enables you to intentionally navigate relationships with equals, as well as with institutional leaders.
Advice from a successful Faculty Champion
The following two pages are recommended reading from a very successful Faculty Champion who believes in the power of student-led change. His experience in leadership within the military and in business school enables him to mentor several Fellows in the art of understanding the way people can and do exert power. When conscientiously aware of how people are interacting with you, and how best to interact with certain people, we have the ability to go beyond institutional resistance or feelings of your campus not liking ideas being shared. We have the ability to build a coalition of support, and expand our base of power, by leveraging Fellows, and also student leaders across the institution.
Leadership: enhancing the lessons of experience, Richard Hughes, et al. Chapter 4: Power and Influence, Page 138-139.
Negotiation
Great leaders prepare well in advance of arriving at the negotiating table. Read this excellent article from Harvard Business Review, called 3-D Negotiation: Playing the Whole Game.
Advice from a successful University Innovation Fellow
The following video comes to you from a current Fellow, Ben Matthews (University of Virginia) who writes: "We've been trying to encourage movement from Stage 3: "I'm great (and you're not)" to Stage 4 and 5 "We're great" and "Life is great" which we are finding more and more is important in making a huge impact [across the entire campus] like we are trying to do with #uifresh."
As coalition builders, we hope you will be leveraging your referential power to lead by example and inspire other student leaders to work alongside you to strengthen the overall ecosystem. Hopefully, your stakeholder meeting is the first of many in a series of bringing people together. Ben and his colleagues convened a series of very successful all-student-leader luncheons on campus. These meetings were designed to pull people in beyond just the 4 or 5 UIFs to have everyone share perspectives and data about the I&E ecosystem, and think about solutions.
They used the PDF below as a means to frame the conversation, engage participants in breakout groups and design potential solutions. These solutions were very similar, if not the same as what the original four UIFs had conceived in training, except for one important difference. By going through this process with the larger group, they got buy-in, additional rich feedback, perspective and volunteers to help make the vision a reality. In a sense, they deployed the consultation strategy outlined in the PDF below. How are you going to build a broader coalition on campus to drive big outcomes and influence change?
Leadership Requires Human Connection
Leadership requires human connection, which comes from our ability to empathize, belong and love. Watch Brene Brown's TED talk, "The Power of Vulnerability."
Are you an introvert?
That's great! Introverts wield just as much power as extroverts. Watch below:
- Start Here
- Submitting Assignments
- Roadmap
- Leadership Circle
- Ask Us Anything
- Community Agreements
- Stakeholder Meeting
- Silicon Valley Meetup
- Video Conferencing
- Interviewing Guidelines
- Ideation
- Prototype and Test
- Resources and Stories (Design Thinking)
- Resources and Stories (Mindsets)
- Lean Startup Resources
- Design Thinking vs Lean Startup
- Creating Wiki Pages
- Faculty Innovation Fellows
