The charm of a campus

The businessman in me completely understood salesforce’s decision to cancel its planned Mission Bay campus. The teenager in me was disappointed.

I love visiting picturesque campuses. I suspect I will be visiting my son’s New College campus on gorgeous Sarasota Bay a few times when he enrolls this Fall. Over the years, I have had the good fortune to visit Cornell, Harvard, Oxford, Pepperdine, INSEAD and other nice university campuses. And even more impressive corporate campuses – Nike, Beaverton with its superb Tiger Woods conference center, GE’s Global Research Center in Niskayuna, Steelcase with its custom Chihuly in Grand Rapids, Accenture in St. Charles, Infosys in Bangalore, SAP in Walldorf and many more.

Last week, I presented at the Stanford Business School. But even nicer was staying and dining at the Schwab Center opposite. While the guest rooms are somewhat spartan (but still 4X bigger than the rooms at St. Charles!), the courtyard (in photo) and other aspects of Ricardo Legoretta’s architecture are immensely inspiring. Great setting for an innovation class.

Marc Benioff has fine taste. I have a feeling he wants to visit a few more campuses before he settles on design for his company’s. It will  be on my bucket list to present there in a few years.