Sidebar: Hey, I Have an Idea!

On an overcast day in January, in a damp courtyard on the campus of Stanford University, business-school students are kicking their legs, doing cartwheels, and shouting out names. "Charlotte!" bellows a woman in brown pants and a red sweater, as she kicks her legs cancan-style in the air. The woman is part of a large circle, and, one at a time, every other student in that circle also shouts, "Charlotte!" and mimics her leg movements. Just moments ago, the students were clicking their heels together in the air and yelling, "Pau!" And before that, they were gripping their hands above their heads, swiveling their hips, and howling, "Jean!"

No, the next generation of the world's business elite hasn't lost its collective mind. These students are engaging in a creativity exercise known as a "lightning circle." In a curriculum filled with lessons on marketing and strategy and finance, one very different course has been thriving at the Stanford Graduate School of Business for the past 21 years. Michael Ray, the course's creator and teacher, speaks without irony about people's "inner child," regularly leads in-class meditation exercises, and requires students to bring colored pencils or crayons to every session-so that they can doodle in their journals. But don't be misled by the offbeat methods of BUS G341 ("Personal Creativity in Business"). Its alumni include some of the best-known figures in Silicon Valley -- such as Jim Collins, author of the best-selling book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (HarperCollins, October 1994) and of "Built to Flip," a recent Fast Company cover story (March 2000) -- many of whom, years after they've graduated from the GSB, still use techniques and guiding principles that they learned in the course to address day-to-day challenges and, sometimes, to make major life decisions.

"The course has changed a lot of lives," says Jeff Skoll, 35, VP of strategic planning at eBay and a 1995 graduate of the GSB. "It teaches people to look inside themselves. And that's a pretty special ability for a professor to teach.

"In the last class of the semester," Skoll continues, "Michael told us to think of something that we wanted to remember, write it down, and put it in our wallet. I wrote, 'Remember what you want to do and that time is limited.' Five years later, I still have that piece of paper in my wallet. It's frayed, and the ink has faded, but the message puts me back on track every time I look at it."

Heidi Roizen, 42, managing director at Softbank Venture Capital LLC and one of Silicon Valley's best-connected entrepreneurs, looks back fondly on her days in Ray's class. "It was fun to go to a class where you would sit quietly in the dark or draw pictures for two hours," says the 1983 GSB graduate. "It was very different from all of my other classes.

"One week," she continues, "we learned how, when you're analyzing a situation, you eventually get to a point at which you ask yourself, 'Is it a yes, or is it a no?' And you just know the answer. There have been so many times in my life when I've found myself overanalyzing an issue, and I've stepped back and said, 'Is it a yes, or is it a no?' I rely on that technique a lot."