2026 Summer Institute

Exponential Resilience

Higher education is changing faster than current institutions were built to handle — but that speed also creates extraordinary opportunities for innovative organizations. Emerging technologies, new workforce needs, and AI-native students are rewriting the rules. The question isn't whether your organization will be affected. It's whether you'll be the one setting the pace.

AFIT's 2026 learning theme, "Exponential Resilience," will arm your institution with a mindset, framework, tools, and team-based discipline to turn rapid change into a working advantage.

Building on the field data your team gathers in the prerequisite ExO Launchpad series, the Summer Institute will bring your team together for an intensive, hands-on experience grounded in the Exponential Organizations (ExO) model — the shared DNA behind the world's most agile, adaptive, and high-impact organizations. Your team won't just learn the model. You'll apply it — working with AI-augmented tools to leave with a draft initiative ready to enter early testing.

Building Your Core & Edge Initiatives

At the heart of the ExO approach is an awareness that change efforts succeed when the organization’s "immune response to change" is anticipated and managed. One key way to manage immune response is to innovate on two parallel tracks:

• CORE Initiatives: These initiatives protect and extend the existing business model, today, often by addressing cost structure, revenue generation or both within 12 months.

• EDGE Initiatives: These initiatives create the opportunities of tomorrow by inventing business models that generate new revenue streams within 24 months while aligning the organization with its new and better future.

By sending at least two teams, each with a distinct focus (and time horizon), the organization is reassured that leaders are taking care of today and tomorrow. 

This program will provide your team with the insights, strategies, and tools to:

• Decode the ExO principles: Understand the strategic principles that allow organizations to achieve outsized impact by attracting, managing, and leveraging untapped abundance to change the lives of the people they serve.

• Draft a CORE or EDGE initiative: Move from insight to action by developing a draft innovation proposal based on perception of employer needs, student realities, and an untapped abundance in your community, ready to enter early testing.

• Test before you invest: Apply a structured experimentation framework to validate desirability before committing resources, replacing "build it and they will come" with disciplined customer discovery.

• Understand the organizational immune system: Learn why organizations resist the very changes they need, and learn strategies for leading adaptive change without triggering organizational antibodies.

• Learn from case study organizations: Learn from organizations across sectors that are putting ExO CORE and EDGE initiatives into action. Hear how Central New Mexico Community College launched a groundbreaking quantum technician training program—with an option to experience it firsthand with a visit to the Quantum Learning Lab (sign up required — see Quantum Field Trip tab). 

• Explore ExO Labs: Choose from a series of immersive sessions where you’ll gain fresh perspective on how organizations are leveraging emerging technologies to scale impact and build momentum. You’ll also hear from a leader at Quantinuum on how to interpret quantum signals and prepare your organization for the exponential era.

• Build your exponential playbook: Leave with a draft ExO initiative, a tested methodology, and a cross-organizational network of peers working the same challenges — ready to continue the work when you return to campus.

This isn't just professional development — it's a working session where your team produces a real initiative for your organization to start testing. The Summer Institute is designed so that what you build here travels home with you — including your ExO Mindset!

And then...

We’ll reconvene on November 18, 2026 for a free, virtual ExO Results Exchange on Zoom—to share what you tested, what worked (and what didn’t), and how you’ll build on that momentum to drive what’s next. 

Who's Invited:

• AFIT Member CEOs, Reps, and team members

• Invited guests

Building Your ‘Transformation Team’

Who Should I Include?

As you build your Transformation Team, please be sure to include these points of view:

• CEO - a collaborative team member, serving in the role of team champion, working group member, or a hybrid of both (see below for additional information about the CEO role)

• AFIT Rep - the internal champion working as an integral team member to translate executive strategy into action 

• Customer Champion - someone with direct knowledge and experience with a target EMPLOYER segment

• Hacker - your one-person department of crazy but weirdly workable ideas in the employer's domain

• Hustler - master of pulling together partnerships and joint ventures

• User Experience - someone with mastery of the STUDENT's motives and lived experience; role of the family; innovative wraparound services; master of student engagement and retention

• Business-Financial - someone who forecasts numbers and owns a P&L

• Tech Whisperer – The person who’s fluent in your tools and LLM of choice, and can calmly troubleshoot under pressure

What Size Should My Team Be?

Your Transformation Team can include as many working groups as you’d like.

Each working group consists of 4–6 people collaborating on a single CORE or EDGE initiative.

For the strongest experience, we recommend bringing at least two working groups:

• CORE — strengthening what matters most today
• EDGE — exploring what’s next

This balance allows your team to both optimize the present and invent the future.

Team Tables:

Each working group will be seated at its own table.

In alignment with this year’s learning design, tables will be intentionally spaced (not connected) to create clear separation between groups and support focused, high-impact collaboration, unless otherwise requested.

You’re encouraged to personalize your table(s)—bring elements that reflect your organization’s Massive Transformative Purpose and spark creativity, energy, and team identity.

• Table sizes: 
  • 60" round: up to 6 people
  • 72" round: up to 10 people

As CEO, what is my role?

Here are some guidelines and paths as you choose your level of involvement.

Suggestions:

• Champion - in this path, between June and November, you help your working groups of 4-6 people set direction, resource them, track progress with check-ins, and remove roadblocks. At ExO Launchpad, you would attend the sessions, then help the working groups remove roadblocks to their fieldwork (e.g., introduce them to companies with workplace challenges). At Summer Institute, you would find yourself in the role of attentive observer, responding to your working groups, but holding back from directing them. Your other role could be networking with other CEOs and Reps across the AFIT community.

• Working Group Member - in this path, between June and November, you work within a group, participating in all aspects of the process, from ExO Launchpad through ExO Member Showcase. At Summer Institute, you would work within one of your working groups as a contributor. The balance in this role is to participate in a way that supports innovation within the working groups. 

• Hybrid - in this path, you would participate as a working group member during ExO Launchpad and Summer Institute, then switch hats to Champion between August and November.

The question to consider is, “How can I best support my teams to make progress toward our desired future?” Champion, team member or both?

We’re here to help you choose the right path for your institution. Please reach out to afit@ralstonconsulting.com, or talk directly with Ann Ralston - https://bit.ly/bookAnn .

Learn More

Explore the Summer Institute Learning Design: watch video » | passcode: GdGT6Xv? 

Download slides »

Cancellation Policy: If you cancel on or before May 31, you will be charged a $50/person cancellation fee. If you cancel between June 1-June 30, you will receive a 50% refund. No refunds will be awarded after July 1.

Substitutions are not subject to a cancellation fee. If you need to cancel or substitute a team member, please contact Paul Klute at Paul.Klute@afithighered.com or 785-691-9965.