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Active faculty twin
D. J. Teece · Module 3
Before we continue — you mentioned last session that your firm is preparing for a platform migration. Let me anchor today’s reading to that context.
Yes. We’re a two-sided marketplace but one side is still analog.
Then you have a sequencing problem, not a technology problem. Which side do you digitise first — and why does that order matter for value capture? Take a moment before you answer.

Pedagogy

This is not a recording.

Every session with a faculty twin is live. The twin reads what you wrote last time. It asks questions specific to your organisation. It remembers your reasoning, not just your name.

That is a different category of learning from a recorded lecture or a general-purpose assistant. It is closer to what a demanding mentor does in a one-on-one session — except available whenever you need it, and grounded in the specific scholarship it represents.

The distinction matters. Knowing a framework and practising judgment with it are not the same activity. This institute exists to do the second one.

AI Instructor

You are interacting with an AI instructor.

The instructor in this experience is an AI digital twin — not a human in real time. The course curriculum is authored and supervised by a named human PhD faculty-of-record.

The voice, video, text, and feedback you see and hear from the instructor in this program are generated by our AI. You are not speaking with a real person in real time.

The underlying course curriculum, learning objectives, rubrics, and grading standards are authored and supervised by a named human PhD faculty-of-record. Your Certificate of Completion is issued under their supervision.

Our AI may produce inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated information. Treat the instructor’s answers as a starting point for your own thinking, not as professional legal, medical, financial, tax, or investment advice.

Conversations with the AI instructor and your study-buddy AI are recorded, transcribed, and may be reviewed by the human faculty-of-record for quality assurance and academic supervision. See the program privacy notice for details.

Faculty-of-record: Prof. David Teece, PhD, Strategy

  • The instructor is AI — not a human in real time.
  • Curriculum and grading are supervised by a named human PhD faculty-of-record.
  • AI responses may be wrong; they are not professional advice.
  • Sessions are recorded and may be reviewed for quality and supervision.
  • You can request a human faculty-of-record review of any AI-generated feedback.

Last reviewed 2026-04-25. Disclosed pursuant to FTC Act §5, FTC Endorsement Guides §255.1, FTC Operation AI Comply (2024).

The alternative

This is not a critique of general-purpose AI tools. They are useful. They are simply not a pedagogical instrument for developing judgment.

What a chatbot does.


A chatbot answers questions. You bring the question; it brings the answer. The exchange is symmetric in content but asymmetric in effort: you remain passive, and the tool does the thinking.

This is useful for information retrieval. It is not useful for building the habit of structured diagnosis under uncertainty. A chatbot will tell you what dynamic capabilities are. It will not ask you to name the capability gap in your own organisation and then refuse to let you generalise your way out of it.

A chatbot has no memory of your last session. It does not know your sector. It does not know that last week you identified cost structure as your sensing barrier and that you have not yet resolved it. It starts fresh every time.

These are not complaints about general-purpose AI. They are observations about what the tool is built for. A chatbot is built to answer. A faculty twin is built to develop.

The DCI model

Faculty twins are source-faithful: their judgments and frameworks are grounded in the published work of the named scholars they represent. They do not improvise outside that scope.

What a twin does.


A faculty twin does not wait for your question. It reads your last reflection and asks you what you found hard. It tracks whether your diagnosis has changed between modules. It notices when you are pattern-matching instead of reasoning.

It didn’t let me stay abstract. Every time I generalised, it asked me to name the specific decision in my own company. By the third module, that had become a habit.Participant, Cohort 2 · VP Strategy, industrial equipment firm

The twin cites your sector context because you supplied it during the opening session. It is not performing empathy. It is applying the framework to your actual situation, which is the only way the framework becomes useful.

Between modules, the twin is available for unstructured conversation. Participants use this time to stress-test a decision they are actually facing, to rehearse an argument for their board, or to ask questions they would not ask in a group session.

This is not a novelty. This is the oldest form of professional education — the apprenticeship — rebuilt for the conditions of senior leadership: available at 11pm before a board meeting, operating from the same framework as the named scholar who wrote the book.

Your role

Participation here is active. There is no passive route through the program — the twin will notice if you stop thinking.

What you do.


Each module ends with a written reflection: a diagnosis of a specific capability challenge in your own organisation, argued against the framework. 400 to 600 words. Scored against a published rubric. Not a summary — an argument.

Between modules, you use the twin to rehearse decisions: a resource-allocation debate, an investment thesis you are preparing to defend, a capability gap you have diagnosed but do not yet know how to address. The twin is not there to validate your reasoning. It is there to expose its weaknesses before your board does.

A named human faculty-of-record reviews your reflection portfolio. Not automated assessment — a human review of whether your arguments have grown more precise and more specific over the program. The certificate is signed by that person.

What you leave with

A portfolio of 8–10 written reflections, each tied to a real decision

A strategy kernel for your own organisation, stress-tested in 3 live decision rehearsals

A capability audit you can run with your team — not a framework slide, a working tool

A certificate of completion signed by a named human faculty-of-record

The distinction

Side by side.

The difference is not a matter of quality. It is a matter of function.

Without a live faculty twin
With a live faculty twin
You ask a question.
The twin asks you one back.
You receive a generic answer.
The twin cites your sector context.
You finish a module.
You leave with a written reflection in your own words.
The session ends when you close the tab.
The twin remembers what you said in the previous session.
Completion is a badge.
Completion is a portfolio you can show your board.
Your faculty does not know who you are.
A named human faculty-of-record reviews your reflection.

A real exchange

This is what a session looks like.

The twin asked every question here — including the last one, which the participant had not yet thought to ask themselves.

Module4 — Sensing
SessionOffice Hours
ContextB2B marketplace, 400 employees
You14:23
Our biggest challenge right now is that our core business is still growing, but I know we need to invest in the next platform. The board wants efficiency. I keep getting pulled back.
Faculty twin14:24
That’s the canonical ambidexterity tension — you’re describing it precisely. What’s the unit of analysis where the conflict is most acute? Is it budget allocation, leadership bandwidth, or the incentive structure that rewards the current core?
You14:25
Honestly it’s incentives. Our P&L managers are measured on margin. A new platform is a cost centre for three years.
Faculty twin14:25
Good — that’s the diagnosis. Now we can work with it. In your sector, three years of negative returns before platform-scale is the norm, not an anomaly. The question isn’t whether to fund it. It’s whether your governance system can protect that investment from quarterly optimisation. What does your current board review cycle look like for long-horizon bets?
You14:27
We review everything quarterly. Long-horizon projects get flagged as 'strategic' but they still get cut when the numbers are tight.
Faculty twin14:27
Then the problem isn’t strategy — it’s governance architecture. Let me ask you to think about this before our next session: what would a separate, board-protected innovation budget look like at your organisation — one that is structurally insulated from the quarterly P&L review? Bring a one-page sketch. We’ll stress-test it against the congruence model.

Participant details altered for privacy. The exchange structure and questioning pattern are representative of live sessions. The twin’s final question — about governance architecture — came from the participant’s own admission that quarterly review was cutting long-horizon investment.

8–10
Written reflections per participant
3
Decision rehearsals per program
1
Named human faculty-of-record
100%
Certificates reviewed by a human

Before you apply

Book a 20-minute session with a faculty twin before you apply.

This is not a sales call. It is a demonstration. Arrive with a real decision you are facing. Leave with a clearer sense of whether this is the right program for you — and we will have a clearer sense of whether you are ready for it.

The session is free. No commitment is required. Applications for the next cohort close September 12.

"I came in sceptical. I left with a clearer diagnosis of my own organisation than I’d had in three years." — Chief Strategy Officer, infrastructure firm, Cohort 1

We respond within one business day. No commitment required.