5 reasons to take your next step with THNK
It’s time for a fresh start here at THNK as we curate the latest cohort creative leaders for our Executive Program.
Designed for experienced leaders who are driven to do good work and accomplish big impact, this is a six month part-time program comprising of four weeklong intensive modules. Participants gain the vision, mindset, and skills to inspire others to act and make a difference.
Whether you’ve been following THNK for some time or you just learned about the program, here are five reasons you should apply for the next cohort:
1. You are a global citizen
Launching in September 2018, Amsterdam Class 14 features a globally diverse cohort typical of THNK, with participants joining us from 17 different countries. While the group includes our usual international mix of creative leaders hailing from North and South America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East, Class 14 features THNK’s first ever participants from Honduras, Iraq, Macedonia, and Uganda.
2. You want to develop an initiative
When you apply for THNK, we ask that participants have an initiative to advance through the program — be it entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial.
When considering applications, we look for individuals who have endeavors that are scaleable, innovative, and have a positive societal impact. Consider THNKer Joost de Kluijver, whose business Closing the Loop aims to ensure that e-waste such as old cellphones are collected and recycled responsibly in developing countries. Closing the Loop aims for profit, but also for ‘a world where waste is not wasted.’
During his time with THNK, Joost improved Closing the Loop’s position in the telecom industry, strengthened its role as a circular frontrunner and develop its business case, all while improving his management and leadership skills. Learn more about Joost’s story here.
3. You learn through experience
THNK is unlike any school you’ve attended before. With no lectures, no tests, and no formal grading system, experiential learning is central.
Participants discover a new perspective and gain empathy during an exercise called “Walk in the Shoes”. In order to deeply understand their users, we invite participants to immerse themselves in a new context and behave as the user. This immersion develops a deep understanding of the user’s frustrations, delights, beliefs, aspirations and gives informed intuition from embodied experience, far more than could be discovered through simple observation or surveys.
Participant Aleksas Drozdovskis took this a step further and filmed his experience while wearing our “Old Age Simulation Suit”, capturing his growing empathy as he walked the streets of Amsterdam in the shoes of his target user.
4. You want to make a positive societal impact
With a mission to develop and support creative leaders around the world to resolve large societal challenges, THNK includes positive societal impact directly in our programming.
Through the Executive Program, you will apply cutting-edge innovation tools to a real societal challenge. A learning-by-doing experience that allows participants to put their leadership into practice while working with peers, this aspect of the program gives THNKers the opportunity to come up with triple bottom line solutions that consider people, planet, and profit.
5. Find your tribe
In the first days of each class, what surprises our participants most is how quickly they form serious lifelong bonds with their classmates. That deep connection, often tough to find in adulthood, extends to the entire THNK community. When you join THNK, you join a curated global network acting with shared purpose.
This article was originally published on our blog.
To discover more reasons to apply for the Executive Program and to find out how you can become a part of this global community, visit the program page to find out if you qualify.
