Case Study: Increasing the Bone Marrow Registry

One lesson taught by Stanford GSB Professor Jennifer Aaker is to include the opposite of every idea proposed in a brainstorming session. This tool vastly expands the number ideas, both excellent and terrible in equal proportion. This thinking led one former student to launch a social media campaign to register 20,000 South Asian bone marrow donors to find a match for a friend with leukemia. The result not only increased disease awareness and found a donor, but it also provided an excellent example of successful social networking, factoring in the strength of a specific goal, the power of reversing the rules, the necessity of creating a campaign that allows for no-fuss collaboration, and the need to tell a good story.