Transforming the Case Study: live innovation sessions with Columbia Business School

"How might we transform founder talks into hands-on leadership laboratories?"

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This question sparked our collaboration with Columbia Business School's Food Entrepreneurship program—one of the most sought-after courses in their MBA curriculum.

While traditional guest speaker formats offer valuable insights, we saw an opportunity to create something more dynamic: an experience that would match the intensity and complexity of real-world leadership.

The Reinvention

Enter DIG's founder Adam Eskin and CMO Jessica Serrano, and a radical proposition: What if instead of talking about entrepreneurship, we created a live laboratory for it? What if students didn't just learn about scaling a restaurant brand—they lived it?

We transformed the standard "founder story" into an immersive journey where MBA students become DIG's innovation team, facing the exact challenges keeping Adam and Jessica up at night. The twist? They're not just playing pretend. The problems are real. The pressure is real. And sometimes, their solutions are better than the ones DIG actually implemented.

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Inside the Experience

The session opens with mystery. Each student finds a card on their desk, face down. "Don't turn it over," they're told. As Adam and DIG CMO Jessica Serrano begin sharing DIG's journey, they discover their cards contain unique lenses through which to view the story—specific elements to track, questions to consider, patterns to uncover.

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Then comes the pivot: "Congratulations, you're now DIG's innovation team."

The room splits into zones, each tackling a different growth challenge focused on two real DIG initiatives: a new compact restaurant format; and a ready-to-serve product line).

Teams get access to tools straight out of a growth thriller:

• DIG GPT: An AI oracle with deep knowledge of the brand's history and market data (but with a quirky NYC chef persona that keeps things interesting)
• Exec Team 1:1s: Rapid fire huddles with Adam and Jessica that provide critical insights—but only if you ask the right questions
• The Canvas: A real-time strategy board where teams build and defend their vision

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But just when teams think they've got it figured out, chaos strikes. We throw in something unexpected.

Market conditions shift. Resources vanish. New competitors emerge.

Because - guess what - that's how the world works. Now they're not just strategizing—they're surviving.

Once teams have completed their one page canvas and visual concept, its over to Adam and Jessica for a live teardown and review of teams' work. And they don't hold back. You can feel the cogs turning, the 'aha' moments registering, the learnings clicking into place - right there and then.

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Why it works

This isn't just another "experiential learning" gimmick. It's a fundamental rethinking of how future leaders engage with real business challenges:

1. True Tension: The problems are real, the pressure authentic, and the solutions need to work in the real world
2. Multiple Modalities: Students move between founder insights, team collaboration, data analysis, and crisis management
3. Productive Discomfort: The experience pushes students out of passive learning into active problem-solving
4. Immediate Impact: DIG gains fresh perspectives on actual challenges, while students develop practical skills they can use immediately

The Results

• Most highly-rated session in Columbia's Food Entrepreneurship curriculum (for the second consecutive semester)
• Created a new model for founder engagement in business education
• Demonstrated how education can move beyond "teaching" to "doing"
• A fresh way for MBA students to show their skills, and for DIG to spot talent

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The Bigger Question

This experiment raises a provocative question for business education:

- What if every guest speaker session was reimagined as a live laboratory?

- What if instead of learning about business, students actually did business—with real stakes, real pressure, and real impact?

The answer, based on our experience with DIG and Columbia, is clear: The future of business education isn't in the lecture hall. It's in the lab. And it's already here.