Columbia Business School x DIGPrograms & Workshops
Turning a founder talk into a leadership lab
A guest founder talk, rebuilt as a ninety-minute live lab: Columbia MBA students worked DIG's real challenges and handed back ideas the founder hadn't considered.
Every student finds a card on their desk, face down. At the front of the room, DIG founder Adam Eskin and CMO Jessica Serrano start telling the company's story. As the cards turn over, each reveals a lens: an element to track, a question to hold onto while the founders talk. There are thirty-plus of these "Arrivals" prompts around the room, and within a minute nobody is just listening.
The ceiling on a good founder talk
Columbia Business School's Food Entrepreneurship program is one of the most sought-after courses in the MBA curriculum, and guest founders are part of the draw: successful operators in the room, telling students how it went. The program team could see the ceiling, though. However candid the founder, students were watching decisions from a distance. With Adam and Jessica scheduled to speak, the team was open to trying something else.
The brief turned into a question worth asking in both directions: what could students learn from DIG, and what could DIG learn from students?
Ninety minutes as DIG's innovation team
Instead of a talk, we proposed a lab. After the opening story, students become DIG's innovation team: groups working two challenges the company was genuinely wrestling with: a new compact restaurant format, and a ready-to-serve product line. Neither had an answer yet.
Each team got three tools, built to compress weeks of strategy work into minutes:
- DIG GPT. A custom AI built on DIG's brand history, market data, and competitive landscape. It came with a proper New York personality, and it wasn't playing around.
- Exec huddles. Rapid-fire one-on-ones with Adam and Jessica. Any team could call one; they only paid off if you arrived with the right questions.
- The Canvas. A real-time strategy board where each team built the vision they'd have to defend.
Mid-session, the ground moved: resources changed, new constraints arrived, and tidy plans had to adapt. Then the finish: Adam and Jessica reviewed every canvas live, with no softening. What would work, what wouldn't, and why.
The lab · ninety minutes
- ArrivalsA face-down card on every desk, each one a lens to hold while the founders talk
- The storyAdam and Jessica tell DIG's story
- The innovation teamGroups take on two live challenges with DIG GPT, exec huddles and the Canvas
- The ground movesResources change and new constraints arrive mid-session
- The reviewThe founders go through every canvas live
What shifted
The session became the most highly-rated in Columbia's Food Entrepreneurship curriculum, for the second consecutive semester. The result we keep retelling runs the other way, though: some of what went up on those canvases were ideas DIG hadn't considered.
Students got direct feedback from the people who'd have to live with the decisions, and DIG left with fresh perspective on two live challenges. The change with the longest tail sits with Columbia: the program team now has a model they're applying to other guest sessions.
Most programs already have the hard part: founders and operators willing to give their time. The lab format puts them to work. If you run a business school course or an academy with guest speakers people already love, we'll show you the format live.
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