The future global innovation leaders — ME310 Stanford — my journey
During the last 9 months my friends kept asking me different questions about my journey in ME310. What is ME310? And PDF? What are you doing? And mostly, why are you doing it? Why you are traveling so much?
What? Why? How?
So in this post I will share my thoughts and experience in this journey. I hope to say enough so you understand it. But not too much. I want to keep the magic in case you want to attend ME310.
How did I discover ME310?
ME310 is a radical course that has been taught at Stanford University since 1967. I found that it´s possible to attend it in Portugal, through Porto Design Factory. I had more or less 15 days until the deadline to submit the application.
What caught my attention were the following topics: “not a typical course”; the opportunity to “travel to Silicon Valley” (and other places in the world); student “international teams”.
In a quick reaction, I asked my wife her opinion about the course. She was by me in that moment and she quickly answered “This looks just like you. If you want to, go forward! Me and our daughter will take care of which other”.
Our daughter was just 9 months at the time.
What is ME310?
But first of all, what does ME310 mean? Nothing! It is a course code of Stanford. It stands for Mechanical Engineering 310. There are also other codes, 309 or 101, for example. Now you know the meaning of the mysterious name.
About ME310, from university to university the course has some little differences. I will only focus in how Porto does it.
ME310 Porto is an amazing full time post-graduation in product innovation, probably the best of it’s kind. It’s an interdisciplinary, project-based program. The projects are proposed by corporate partners and handled by international teams. The course is for graduate students (BA or MA) and has a duration of 9 months.
About the trips, the opportunity to go to Silicon Valley and to CERN is guaranteed. And if the project needs, there might be some other travelling, during this 9 months, in Europe or somewhere else.
Each team also receives a hefty project budget and dedicated lab space (commonly known as the “310 loft”).
Teams are typically comprised of three students from PDF. Each team collaborates with a similarly sized team from a global partner university.
The English is the language used for all kind of communication.
In the first edition of ME310 Porto, these were the business partners: CEI by ZIPOR, FORD Motor Company, IKEA Industry, Worten and BERG Cycles and these were the academic partners: Stanford University, Swinburne University of Technology, UNIMORE — Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia and Tokyo University of Technology.
Porto Design Factory and more information about the course, to decide in total conscience
Next step for me was to know more information about the course. How will be the 2nd edition for the course in Portugal?! For that I tried to book, an informal meeting with some teacher to give the answers that I needed.
So with an appointment booked, I appeared in the date/hour mentioned in PDF (Porto Design Factory). This has my first time in PDF, that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. That was the moment that a met Rui Coutinho (Fire Starter & Coordinator at PDF) a very accessible, enthusiast and energetic person. I asked him all the questions that were in my mind. He reply to all of them and explained more in detail how would the journey be. To help in the informal conversation he also invited some alumni from the 1st edition of the course.
Probably the only question that Rui made me in the conversation was: “If you enter the course, are you going to give up in the end of December?” I smiled to him and in an assertive way, I replied “No. If I enter to ME310, I will finish the course, for sure.”
The question that Rui made me makes sense, in his position I think I would do the same. Because managing 3 projects at same time wouldn’t be easy, those being the family, the full time job and the ME310.
A meeting in PDF could be handled anywhere from a sofa in a lobby, in a bean bag outside of the building, in the library or in a kitchen. And yes, for my surprise at the time, the appointment with Rui was in the kitchen. The soul of PDF is The Kitchen. That is considered “The Corner House”, where weekly community breakfasts, parties and meetups are organized.
It´s impossible after a conversation with Rui not to be “infected” with good vibrations and be excited, about the PDF educational project as a whole.
With my family support and this conversation I didn´t have any doubt about my decision to do ME310. So my next step was: submitting the application. Then I had an interview with the teachers of ME310 Porto, which I passed. After that came the moment to negotiate in the company where I had a full time position a timetable that would allow me some time during the day at PDF.
Fall Quarter
ME310 begins with a month of projects that are really distinct from each other. Different teams are created for each new challenge. These works as team building and gives us the opportunity to work with almost everyone in the class.

The idea behind it is to make you meet the other students, how they work, how they react to an exercise, how they think, etc. In all this process, the teachers are nearby because they will make the match and track between the students and the corporate challenges. We, as students, don´t have the opportunity to choose the teammates or challenge that we would like to work on. It might happen that students end up working with people or a challenge that they don´t like. And that is good, because in professional life sometimes we have to work with people that we don´t like for some reason.

ME310 Sugar Global Kick Off Week
This past year (2016/2017) for the first time the ME310 Sugar Global Kick Off Week happen out of the Stanford University. PDF — Porto had the privilege to be the host of the event for 200 participants from all over the world.

Paper Bike Challenge
In ME310 some exercises may change from one year to another. But there is one that is an icon that everyone wants to participate: the Paper Bike Challenge (this challenge is integrated in the ME310 Sugar Global Kick Off Week). This is the first time that like a team students prototype ideas and begin to receive feedback to those. And this challenge ends with a real race. (Please note the paper bike teams do not carry over into the corporate project, new teams will be assigned.)



After the Paper Bike Race I had the opportunity to find who would be my teammates for this journey, from Portugal and from Australia. The briefing was also announced at the same time.
My global team was from Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne — Australia. The Multinational Corporate Sponsor was Sonae MC and the challenge was to find different ways of breaking space boundaries in their Continente stores creating a better shopping experience for customers.
And by the way, in this 2nd edition of ME310 Porto, had 4 teams, so 4 real problems to solve. The business partners were: SONAE MC, SPORTZONE, SILAMPOS and IKEA Industry and the academic partners were: Swinburne University of Technology, Warsaw University of Technology, University of Science and Technology of China.
How the work is organized during the weeks?
On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, students had the freedom to organize their work as needed, always with teachers nearby.
On Tuesdays and Thursdays, students had private meetings, teams with the teachers SGM (Small Group Meetings) and, sometimes, after all teams together with teachers LGM (Large Group Meetings). It´s all possible to happen in these days lectures, master classes, etc.
Every week on Tuesdays not only ME310 students but the PDF community gathers around the table at breakfast.
For more than one reason, the main day of the week is Thursdays. Each team gets alone time with teaching team, to go through their progress, problems, ideas and, in general, how things are. And in the final of the day students of ME310 had the SUDS (Slightly Unorganized Design Session), an informal event to get together, cook, share ideas and relax a little bit from the intense week.
A curiosity in PDF
The hugging point, it´s a circle on the floor marks the spot where people give and get hugs at the PDF.

Stanford/IDEO Design Innovation Process

This brief summary, explain very well the framework that we used during the project.
“Through the course of the project, students learn, apply, and experience the Stanford/IDEO Design Innovation Process. The process is based on needfinding, benchmarking, iterative prototyping and user testing to enable students to learn quickly about the field at hand and create innovative ideas. User insights are uncovered and creative solutions are developed, engaging a range of different design thinking tools and techniques. The end result is a detailed design solution that integrates desirability, viability and feasibility. “
http://sugar-network.org
“I like, I like, I wish”
Feedback is better received when using positive wording rather negative sentences.
All teams members, are invited to provide and receive both positive and constructive feedback in spoken format, using the “I like, I like, I wish” method.
For example: “I don´t like that color” only criticizes the other person´s choice. But if you say “I would like to see you use also blue” it means that you are building on top of previous ideas and you are adding value for the project.
Fall Quarter presentation
The Fall Quarter ends with a public presentation with all teams presenting how is each project going.
Winter Quarter: Prototypes and travels
Öbot Workshop @CERN 2017 — January 8–13
In January, students of ME310 from PDF, from Warsaw University of Technology and from Estonian Business School spent a week in IdeaSquare at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland) prototyping with electronics and robotics.
In the beginning of the week, all students were organized in multicultural teams with different backgrounds and receive the same challenge.
Everybody was helping each other during the week. So the results at the end of the week were fantastic.

Dark Horse Prototype — January 15–22
Dark Horse Prototype introduces a means of preventing premature convergence on an idea, so we spent the week trying to think outside the box and out of the constraints of our brief in attempt to find a crazy solution, and push the limits of our creative problem solving skills.
This week was also one of the few chances for our global team to work together in the same place, at the same time. Because one of the challenges of this course is to work across distance and even different time zones, in our case 9 hours.
After one week of heavy prototyping, our global team left Silicon Valley with fresh ideas and with a new dynamic of teamwork. We then continued to work in our project remotely. Creating different prototypes, always with the focus to have a final one to present at the beginning of June again in Silicon Valley.
London — February 23
Before the travel to Australia, one day trip to visit two stores in London: Made & Hamleys.
Melbourne — Australia — February 24 — March 14
During 2 weeks the team got together again, this time in Australia to work intensely in the project.
At this point, we started to converge from all of our progress and ideas developed so far, as we started to really deconstructing the shopping experience and focusing on the essential points we needed to test in order to be as effective as possible during our time together as a team. In order to achieve this, we started by doing several brainstorming sessions and then we conducted some prototypes and experiments.
Working hard during the week, playing hard during the weekend was our motto while in Australia.



The Winter Quarter also ends with a public presentation with all teams presenting how is each project going.
Spring Quarter, back to Silicon Valley
In the Spring Quarter is time to make it real, to make it happen.
April, May … but June is the month, time to get back to Stanford. All ME310 teams had brilliant presentations at EXPO. If you want to see our presentation, to know more about our solution of project, please see the video: https://goo.gl/J5UmMH. It was our last opportunity to leave a Portuguese footprint in Silicon Valley.
I had the opportunity to stay some extra days I visited D.School and met David Kelley (and now I have my copy of “Creative Confidence” autographed), also visited IDEO the renowned global design company in San Francisco and the exceptional Singularity University.
Everything ends up back in Porto, in an Open Days with Industry at PDF. It´s a public event with lots of press coverage (TV, radios, newspapers), some special visitors from Government and from IPP community.
In the first day of the event, PDF launched a special book, where their First 1000 Days of History were pictured, an amazing work compiled by Daniela Monteiro. I am proud of being part of this History!
Feel free to visit PDF and enjoy some coffee while you can find out more details about some backstage stories.
Losses and gains in this journey
In life, every time you invest your time and effort in something, you are losing something in some way.
Losses
I slept less than usually, for sure.
In 6 months, I was 6 weeks out of the country. A long period to not be nearby family, especially when you have a daughter with just a few months, the notion of time is different, you feel that you are losing, so much of her evolution.
During my second travel to US in June, I lost a special person to me, my grandmother Francelina. I didn’t had, the opportunity to say goodbye to her face to face.
Gains (for life)
“I like, I like, I wish” — this method is really powerful, believe me. I love it.
“Build to think, don’t think to build.” this mindset, really add value for the projects.
During this journey, I was enabled to develop even more these 10 skills:
#1 Complex Problem Solving
#2 Critical Thinking
#3 Creativity
#4 People Management
#5 Coordinating with Others
#6 Emotional Intelligence
#7 Judgement and Decision Making
#8 Service Orientation
#9 Negotiation
#10 Cognitive Flexibility
Do you already understand why ME310 PORTO is not a typical course? Now I think that you would do better, it’s a once in a lifetime experience! So if you have the opportunity to attend, enjoy it (like I did it). And yes, I totally recommended the course.
A Special Thanks:
[TEAM] Bilal Babadagi, Hannah Burrell, José Reis, Joana Moreira and Lucy Cilia.
[PDF] Rui Coutinho, Lauri Repokari, Jussi Hannunla, Diogo Pinto, Manuel Soares, Laura Ferreira, Tomás Gambôa, Natália Guimarães, Ivo Coutinho, Daniela Monteiro, Jorge Resende, Horário Marques and Flávio Ramos.
[DFM] Maria Camacho, Christine Thong and John Eggleston.
Without these persons this journey wasn´t the same.
And with Love to,
Filipa (my wife) and Maria Inês (my daughter).
Relevant links:
ME310 Porto — https://goo.gl/aXSnqs
Facebook ME310 Porto — https://goo.gl/26uQHT
1000 DAYS OF RESTLESSNESS — a brief history of Porto Design Factory (so far…) https://goo.gl/atTdv8
Design Factory Global Network: https://goo.gl/jpgw93
Sugar network: https://goo.gl/jkjPfA
Global KickOff 2017: ME310/SUGAR (video): https://goo.gl/3y7dpt
SUGAR Network — Dark Horse Prototype 2017- California Edition at SAP (video): https://goo.gl/bMzv6m