Author: Laura Counts

Executives Converge on Campus to Talk Open Innovation

| by Laura Counts

More than 50 top executives from 30 companies that have experimented with opening their doors to innovation gathered on campus to discuss their experiences at the Berkeley Innovation Forum from Oct. 23 to Oct. 25.

The twice-yearly forum was created by Adjunct Professor Henry Chesbrough, PhD 97, eight years ago as a way to share the latest thinking on open innovation—Chesbrough’s pioneering concept that companies benefit more from seeking external ideas and sharing their research than by sealing themselves off from the global flow of information.

“The forum is a model for how companies can engage with the university for mutual benefit,” says Chesbrough, who serves as executive director of the Haas School's Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation. “There are companies that come because they are just beginning the process and want to learn more, while others are experts and want to train their own staff on the latest developments in open innovation.”

The fall meeting, which took place at the Berkeley Skydeck startup accelerator, included a talk by Professor David Teece, faculty director for the Institute for Business Innovation. The agenda also included a debate on innovation in China, a presentation by Haas undergraduates in Professor Solomon Darwin’s Open Innovation and Business Models course, and a forum for new members such as Mattel Inc.

“The forum provided a phenomenal opportunity to learn about new developments in open innovation, network with a think tank of peers, interact with students, and get a taste of Professor Henry Chesbrough’s latest innovation research,” says Olga Patel, Mattel's senior open innovation manager. “This is a magnificent aggregate of the knowledge base that is not easy to find.”

One of the keys to the Innovation Forum’s success, Chesbrough says, is that only executives from non-competing companies are selected to join, creating a relaxed and open atmosphere. Membership has grown to 35 companies from a wide range of industries, including Coca Cola, Clorox, Hewlett-Packard, DuPont, and firms from Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Companies pay $10,000 per year for membership.

While the primary purposes of the forum are to exchange ideas and share new research, Chesbrough says some concrete projects have come out of it over the years. For example, United Healthcare, Nike, and Best Buy decided to team up on a workplace health and wellness initiative following discussions at the forum, he says.

For more information on the Berkeley Innovation Forum, visit openinnovation.berkeley.edu/BIFpublic.html.

Adjunct Prof. Henry Chesbrough

Alum’s Election App Estimates Financial Impact on You, Your Community, the Nation

| by Laura Counts

While Americans have been known to vote against their economic self-interests, they can no longer plead ignorance: a Haas alum has made it as simple as a mouse click to find out exactly what each major presidential candidate means for our personal bottom lines—and those of our neighbors.

Politify, a streamlined web app created by Nikita Bier, BS/BA 12 (Bus./Poli. Sci.), and Jeremy Blalock, a UC Berkeley computer science and electrical engineering student, uses big data to cut through campaign rhetoric. Punch in your age, income, and number of dependents, and get an instant read on whether President Obama or President Romney would be better for your bank balance. You can customize your results with a few more data points, type in your zip code for a look at your neighborhood, and zoom out to get a national picture.

“Americans form political parties around social issues, but we took a look at the past few administrations and found that the president actually has very little impact on social issues,” says Bier. “The president is really good at one thing: fiscal policy. That is, taxes and spending. Since your financial status is directly linked to your well-being—quality of life, life expectancy, children’s education—we actually felt that it is everything.”

Bier and Blalock launched Politify as a personal tax calculator during primary season and then spent six months merging U.S. Census and IRS data with the two candidates’ published platforms, using standards developed by the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. They added the zip-code functionality when people told them they vote altruistically, rather than solely on self-interest. Since the election edition launched in August, Politify has generated more than 2.5 million forecasts for users, Bier says.

The app grew out of Bier’s senior thesis, which aimed to show how government policies have direct impacts on individual households. He grew interested in the subject after stints studying politics and tax systems in Paris and Copenhagen, where he noticed that European political parties were directly tied to class and employment. After he became interested in data visualization, he dropped the written thesis to build Politify.

Some of the results surprised Bier, who describes himself as a “radical moderate” and built the site to be nonpartisan. Politify concluded that Obama’s policies would directly benefit almost 70 percent of the country—although that depends on an individual's income level–and that Romney’s plan would add $566 billion to the deficit, compared with a $273 billion drop under Obama’s published plan.

“We were motivated to inform people, above all, and we achieved that mission,” Bier says. “This started as a crazy drawing on a napkin last year, and we now have a sophisticated data set of the entire U.S. economy. We are working now to reposition this beyond a seasonal tool, since it can be used to analyze any policy.”

Politify has been raking in awards and national media recognition. It won first place and $20,000 last spring in the Big Ideas@Berkeley innovation competition, and took first place last month in the Civic Data Challenge, sponsored by the National Conference on Citizenship with the Knight Foundation. The Sunlight Foundation also awarded the startup $15,000.

Bier and Blalock, whose effort has been joined by several Berkeley students, credit the Haas School's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship for ongoing mentoring. Berkeley public policy professor and former labor secretary Robert Reich and economics professor Emmanuel Saez are also serving as advisers.

Center for Executive Education to Become Nonprofit

| by Laura Counts

The UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education (CEE), based at the Haas School, is seeking UC Regents approval to restructure as a nonprofit organization in order to become more flexible, grow faster, and meet financial goals.

The UC Regents will vote at its November meeting next week on the Haas School's proposal to create a separate 501c3 nonprofit organization that will operate CEE. Under the new structure, the unit’s revenue will continue to flow to the Haas School. 

Revenue from CEE supports academic areas and operations of the Haas School, including playing a key role in recruiting and retention of faculty members.  

"CEE has become a significant source of revenue for the school, one that needs to be rapidly expanded if the school is to meet its future budget targets," says Dean Rich Lyons. "Restructuring CEE is a logical next step to enable it to grow faster and better serve our executive education clients in an increasingly competitive landscape."

Operating as a nonprofit would give CEE more flexibility to achieve its revenue goals, which currently call for reaching $50 million annually within seven years. That would generate $7.5 million to $10 million a year for Haas and $3.5 million for the UC Berkeley campus.

The new structure will lead to more nimble and incentive-based operations, with much greater flexibility in everything from program delivery to back-office processes.  

CEE, which is now a self-supporting unit and receives no state funding, currently serves the worldwide executive education market.  It provides Haas with opportunities to teach its distinctive curricular offerings to leading businesses and develop strong ties between its faculty and business practitioners.

Other business schools including University of Virginia, University of North Carolina, Indiana University and Duke, have taken a similar path in running their executive education operations as nonprofit entities.

 

Cars, Weapons, Power, or Factories: New Haas Case Focuses on a Cleantech Startup’s Big Choice

| by Laura Counts

A new Berkeley-Haas case study delves into the decision-making process of a clean energy startup as it makes a “life-or-death” decision: which market to enter first.

The case, “Alphabet Energy: Thermoelectrics and Market Energy,” appears in the fall 2012 edition of California Management Review, the Haas School’s quarterly peer-reviewed journal. Beverly Alexander, co-director of the Haas School's Cleantech to Market Program, co-wrote the case with five MBA students: Adam Boscoe, Mason Cabot, Philip Dawsey, Luc Emmanuel Barreau, and Russell Griffith, all MBA 12.

The case is the latest in the new Berkeley-Haas Case Series, written by Haas faculty to promote the school’s teaching mission. Abbreviated versions of some cases also appear in the Financial Times.

The case begins as Alphabet Energy founder and CEO Matt Scullin, who earned his doctorate in materials science and physics at UC Berkeley, ponders the next step for his prototype of a thermoelectric device that can turn wasted heat into electricity on the cheap. The market is potentially huge: 60 percent of the energy generated in the U.S. is wasted as unutilized heat. Harvesting even a small fraction of it means lower costs and big efficiency gains.

Scullin had licensed a solid-state, silicon-based device developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that can be produced at about one-tenth the cost of current thermoelectric devices, making widespread adoption attractive for the first time. His research had shown that customers would demand a quick payback to take the plunge.

Scullin narrowed the application to four potential industries: automotive, aerospace and defense, power generation, and manufacturing. All have large upsides but involve significant hurdles. Scullin was not sure whether Alphabet had the resources to pursue more than one, and the decision could make or break the young company.

The case includes a step-by-step analysis of each industry, taking into account market size, development time and engineering costs, gross margins, and even company culture—such as whether an association with cars and motorcycles was more positive for employees than weapons components.

The fall 2012 edition of California Management Review also includes articles on whether “flattened firms” have delivered on their promises, how large food companies communicate amid the public debate on health and obesity, and the overuse of sustainability in corporate messaging.

California Management Review Website

Job Opportunities Abound for Full-time MBA Class of 2012

| by Laura Counts

Nearly 96 percent of the full-time Berkeley MBA class of 2012 had received job offers three months after graduation, thanks to economic conditions and personalized career services, according to Berkeley MBA Career Management.

Three months after graduation, 95.9 percent of the class of 2012 had received job offers, compared with 92.0 percent for the class of 2011 at the same time a year earlier.

When they graduated in May, 85.8 percent of the class of 2012 had received offers, significantly higher than the 76.5 percent of 2011 MBA students who had job offers at their graduation.

“The economy has already recovered for MBAs. It never fell as far as it did for the nation overall,” says Lisa Feldman, executive director of MBA Career Management. “I credit this improvement in offers to our fantastic Career Management team.”

This year, the Haas School’s Career Management staff launched a personalization initiative focused on getting to know every single student and his or her unique needs.

“One thing we did was put everyone’s face on the wall. That was part of a broader program to make sure we proactively provide services to every student customized to what we knew about them,” explains Feldman. “Our staff would meet around these pictures and share stories about each student so that we all could contribute to their job searches.”

“As a result, I think more students could succeed in finding their dream jobs,” Feldman adds.

Job acceptance rates also increased year over year. Three months after graduation, 92.7 percent of the class of 2012 had accepted job offers, up from 90.2 percent for the class of 2011.

Similar to last year, consulting, technology, and finance were the leading industries that offered jobs to Berkeley MBA students in 2012. In addition to students who went to work at startups, eight graduates from the class of 2012 founded their own companies.

The starting salary for 2012 graduates averaged $116,045, up 1.5 percent from a year earlier. The mean signing bonus for the class of 2012 totaled $25,467, compared with $22,344 for the class of 2012. 

Students Chill in Cheit With New A/C

| by Laura Counts

Just in time for another heat wave, the Haas School has completed its air conditioning project in Cheit Hall.

As the thermometer reached the high 70s in Berkeley today, the new A/C delivered a refreshingly cool reprieve to students and faculty in Cheit Hall.

"I have actually noticed it is definitely a little bit cooler," said Nick Gothe, BS 13, who had a class in Cheit Hall Monday morning. "It's still a little stuffy,  but it's not nearly as bad as in the summer. It was a good idea to add [the air conditioning]."

The Cheit air conditioning project is part of the school's strategic plan to "Transform the Haas Campus." In December, Haas will break ground on another project in its strategic plan that involves remodeling the Haas courtyard. The goal is to make the courtyard a more inviting and useable hub where students, faculty, and visitors from across campus and beyond can mingle, socialize, and share ideas.

Updates and information on these projects will be available on the Haas School Strategic Plan website: haas.berkeley.edu/strategicplan/strategicfocus/transform/index.html. The school also will be emailing brief weekly construction updates to faculty, staff, and students. Questions or concerns can be emailed to [email protected].

Haas Students, Cal Campus Gear Up for Election Day

| by Laura Counts

Will President Barack Obama win a second term or will Mitt Romney take the presidency? Will Democrats take back the House or Republicans seize the Senate? Will California voters support Governor Brown's tax increase?

As pundits sound off on these burning questions, Haas students can take advantage of several opportunities between now and Nov. 6 to learn about the elections from UC Berkeley experts or join classmates in supporting candidates and propositions.

On election night, Haas students will be able to watch up-to-the-minute returns in the Bank of America Forum, where TVs will be tuned into CNN.  Political junkies also are invited to gather at the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies (IGS) Matsui Center, 109 Moses Hall, to watch election-night returns.

Obama supporters, meanwhile, will be able to jump on a free shuttle from Cal to an election-night party and concert in San Francisco hosted by Hungry for Obama, a nationwide dinner-party chain launched by Haas student Brad Wolfe, MBA 13, to raise funds and support for President Obama.

Hungry for Obama volunteer-hosted dinners will continue in the Berkeley area until Election Day, and participation is open to all. “People have made really great food and are talking about why the election matters to them,” says Wolfe. For more information, visit HungryforObama.com.

On the other side of the aisle, the Berkeley College Republicans will be hosting an election-night viewing party in Berkeley for current and interested club members (details TBA). For more information, visit BerkeleyCollegeRepublicans.com. Before election night, the club will be walking precincts and phone banking for California Assembly candidate Peter Tateishi and U.S. Rep. Dan Lungren in Sacramento on Saturday, Nov. 3.

Cal Berkeley Democrats will be canvassing for President Obama in Reno from Oct. 26 to 28. Volunteers are encouraged to sign up early, as space as limited.

Both campus clubs will co-host a public viewing of the third and final presidential debate on Oct. 22 at the Institute of Governmental Studies' Matsui Center.

Other campus events related to the elections include :

  • Election 2012: What Do the Experts Expect?
    (Panel Discussion)
    Oct. 29, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
    Institute of Governmental Studies Library, 109 Moses Hall

  • Electoral Politics in an Era of Political Polarization
    Henry Brady, Dean, Goldman School of Public Policy
    Nov. 1, 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
    International House, 2299 Piedmont Ave.

  • Election-Eve Update: Field Poll Director Mark DiCamillo
    Last-minute numbers on voter turnout, Governor Jerry Brown's tax initiative, and more
    Institute of Governmental Studies
    Nov. 5, 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
    Institute of Governmental Studies Library, 109 Moses Hall

  • 2012 Presidential Election Recap (Panel)
    Ron Elving, NPR Washington Editor
    Michelle Quinn, Politico Technology Reporter
    David Kennedy, Stanford Pulitzer Prize-winning Historian
    Bruce Cain, Stanford Political Scientist
    Lisa Garcia Bedolla, UC Berkeley Political Science and Education Associate Professor and author of Mobilizing Inclusion
    Nov. 16, 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
    Sutardja Dai Hall

The Institute of Governmental Studies also has published an online election guide to the state's 11 ballot measures at californiachoices.org/ballot-measures-2012-11. And Berkeley faculty are weighing in on the elections regularly through the Berkeley Blog at blogs.berkeley.edu.

 

Big Data Conference at Haas to Feature Top CIOs, Nov. 1

| by Laura Counts

Maximizing the use of big data will be the focus of a one-day conference at the Haas school on Nov. 1 hosted by the Fisher CIO Leadership Program.

The conference will feature talks by some of the biggest players in the IT sector, who will explain how they are using big data to improve their companies' operations. Among them:

  •  Kim Stevenson, Chief Investment Officer, Intel
    "Uncovering the Hidden Business Potential Through Big Data and Analytics"
  • Bill Ruh, VP, GE Global Software Center
    "The Industrial Internet"
  • Anjul Bhambhri, VP of Big Data, IBM
    "Smarter Decision Making – Leverage Big Data to Gain New Actionable
  • Hugh Williams, VP Experience, Search & Platforms, eBay
    “Big Data at Ebay"
  • Geoffrey Moore, Author, Crossing the Chasm
    "Big Data: Great Idea─What Are You Going to Do About It?" 
  • David Henke, SVP, LinkedIn
    “Making Big Data Work for LinkedIn Members and Partners”

In addition, Bask Iyer, CIO of Juniper Networks, will lead a panel discussion with speakers from morning talks and Oliver Halter, technology consulting principal at PricewaterhouseCoopers, will lead a panel discussion with afternoon speakers.

Big data also will be the focus of the second annual Haas Technology Challenge Case Competition from Nov. 1 to Nov. 3. The invitation-only competition, organized by students in the Haas Technology Club, will pit teams from 10 top business schools against each other as they solve a case involving General Electric, the competition's lead sponsor. The Fisher Center for Management and Technology and Adobe Systems are also co-sponsors.

Attendees at the Fisher Center Big Data Conference are invited to attend the last day of the Technology Case Competition Nov. 3 with no additional fee. More information on the competition is available at haastechchallenge.org.

The Fisher Center's Big Data Conference on Nov. 1 will run from 8 a.m. to 5:45 p.m. in the Wells Fargo Room and be followed by a wine and hors d'oeuvres reception. The event is sponsored by TEKsystems.

Early-bird registration for the big data conference will be available until Oct. 26. For more information, visit fisheritcenter.haas.berkeley.edu/Big_Data/. To register, visit eventbrite.com/event/4439065364#<http://www.eventbrite.com/event/4439065364%23.

 

Haas to Host World’s Top Young Entrepreneurs at Intel Global Challenge

| by Laura Counts

From advanced polymers to mobile football game guides to smart grid platforms, technology ideas from some of the world's top young entrepreneurs will vie for $100,000 in prizes at the eighth annual Intel Global Challenge at UC Berkeley in November.

Twenty-eight teams from 18 countries will compete for five prizes ranging from $2,500 to $50,000. The winners will be recognized at the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum Nov. 8, which will be open to the public and include short presentations from the top eight finalists and a keynote address by Benjamin Gulak, the 23-year-old founder and CEO of BPG Werks, which makes an all-electric bike and a stand-up all-terrain vehicle called the DTV Shredder.

Online registration is available for the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum, which will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Haas School in the Bank of America Forum and Andersen Auditorium.

"This is an amazing event where brilliant young entrepreneurs from all over the world come to UC Berkeley and show us the exciting, innovative ways they will improve our lives," says Andre Marquis, executive director of the Haas School's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship. "We thank the Intel Foundation for sparking such great innovation."

The competition is hosted by the Lester Center and sponsored by Intel, whose CEO, Paul Otellini, MBA 74, is a Haas alumnus. The competing teams are invited to spend one day at Intel to meet staff and to share their ideas at a poster session.

Eight finalists will compete for the $50,000 grand prize as well as three $15,000 first prizes awarded in the categories of New Technology for New Users, Social Innovation, and Computing 2020. More than 20 venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and technology experts will serve as judges over a two-day period, when semifinalists and finalists will be selected.

This year’s competition will include a new Social Media Challenge, where the team that receives the most Facebook "Likes" will win $2,500. Audience members will also have an opportunity to cast their vote for their favorite finalist team at Thursday’s public event for the $2,500 Audience Favorite Award.

The teams are drawn from 15 regional competitions held throughout the world, including BIT Russia, Intel Challenge Latin America, Intel Business Challenge Europe, and the Next Big Idea, India, among others. This year, the country of Tunisia is represented for the first time by a team that has developed a platform for energy companies to improve customer interactions through the better use of data.

Two UC Berkeley teams are competing this year. Nanoly Bioscience, which includes alumna Nanxi Liu, BS 12, is developing a polymer shield that eliminates refrigeration requirements for vaccines, allowing them to be shipped anywhere in the world. The team was a semifinalist in the 2012 UC Berkeley Startup Competition, in which it won the Elevator Pitch Award, and Global Social Venture Competition

Intellievents, which includes Mark Elbadramany, MBA 13 , has created a mobile app that streamlines the process of attending large events (such as a concert or sports event) while providing event organizers valuable information about their customers. Intellievents was a semifinalist in the UC Berkeley Startup Competition and is based at the UC Berkeley Startup Accelerator@Skydeck, an incubator that helps launch campus startups.

Other teams from around the world have developed everything from a platform to find and organize images stored on the cloud to a biomedical device that reduces the side effects of cancer treatment.

After arriving in Berkeley Nov. 5, the teams will have the opportunity to meet with Haas mentors, faculty, and MBA students; hear from guest speakers; interact with potential investors; and obtain feedback from industry experts throughout the four days of the competition.

Courtyard Renovation to Begin in December After Finals

| by Laura Counts

The renovation of the Haas courtyard is slated to begin Saturday, Dec. 15, although some preliminary preparation work, including installing fences, may begin slightly earlier as finals are wrapping up.

The schedule means that courtyard demolition, the noisiest and most disruptive phase of the project, will take place during winter break, when students, faculty, and most staff are away.

The goal of the renovation is to make the courtyard much more useable and inviting by creating new, larger spaces where students, faculty, staff, and visitors from across campus and beyond mingle, socialize, and share ideas. The renovation will provide a more flexible space for student clubs, career fairs, alumni events, social occasions, and everyday connections.

The courtyard project is expected to be complete in April, barring unexpected circumstances or an unusually wet winter. The courtyard and courtyard-facing entrances will be inaccessible during construction, but paths of travel will be re-routed. Mitigations are currently being worked out to reduce any inconvenience, and regular construction updates will be sent to the Haas community every week.

The new, improved courtyard is part of the school’s strategic plan to "Transform the Haas Campus." Another project already underway, installing air conditioning in Cheit classrooms, is expected to finish by the end of October and has already brought some relief to classrooms during the most recent heat spell.

Updates and information on these projects will be available on the Haas School Strategic Plan website: haas.berkeley.edu/strategicplan/strategicfocus/transform/index.html. Questions or concerns can be emailed to [email protected].

Read More About the Courtyard Project

Fed Vice Chair and Haas Prof. Janet Yellen to be Honored at Gala, to Speak at Haas

| by Laura Counts

Federal Reserve Bank Vice Chair and Haas Professor Emeritus Janet Yellen will be honored as the 2012 Business Leader of the Year at the annual Haas Gala on Friday, Nov. 9, in San Francisco.

Yellen then will speak at Haas on Tuesday, Nov. 13, at 12:30 p.m. Details on how to register for her talk will be available on the Dean's Speaker Series website as the date approaches.

Alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends are invited to attend the black-tie Haas Gala at the West St. Francis Hotel. The reception begins at 6 p.m., followed by dinner at 7:30 p.m. and an after-party and dessert at 9:30 p.m.

In presenting its annual Business Leader of the Award to Yellen, Haas will recognize her intellectual leadership in the field of economics, her dedication to teaching for more than two decades at Haas, and her service to the country at the Federal Reserve.

"Janet Yellen is a leading thinker who has dedicated her career to sharing her knowledge with students while also playing a crucial role in setting economic policy," says Dean Rich Lyons. "We are privileged to have her representing Berkeley-Haas at such a high level."

Yellen was sworn in as the Fed's vice chair in October 2010 after being nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. As vice chair, she casts one of 12 votes on the Fed’s Federal Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, and has emerged as a key figure in the nation's quest for economic recovery.

Yellen has been a champion of more transparency in Fed deliberations since her time as CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from 2004 to 2010. In January of this year, after she became vice chair, the Fed took the historic step of establishing a formal numerical inflation objective for the first time.

In addition to her work at the Fed, Yellen served as the chair of the President's Council of Economic Advisors from 1997 to 1999 under President Bill Clinton. Before joining the business school faculty at Berkeley in 1980, she worked at the Fed, Harvard, and the London School of Economics. She studied macroeconomics at Brown and then earned her PhD at Yale.

In addition to honoring Yellen at the Gala, Haas will present its Leading Through Innovation Award to Patrick Awuah, MBA 99, to recognize his audacious vision and impressive accomplishments in founding and building Ashesi University in Ghana. Haas also will present its annual Raymond E. Miles Alumni Service Award to Ann Hsu, MS 91, MBA 98, who is CEO of RivalWatch in Shanghai and president of the Haas Alumni Network Shanghai Chapter.

To attend the 11th Annual Haas Gala, RSVP by Oct. 26 at the Gala website.

 

Ashesi University Founder Patrick Awuah, MBA 99, to Receive Leading Through Innovation Award, to Speak at Haas

| by Laura Counts

The Haas School will present its 2012 Leading Through Innovation Award to Patrick Awuah, MBA 99, founder of Ashesi University in Ghana, at its annual gala on Friday, Nov. 9.

Before the gala, Awuah will speak to the Haas community at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 7, in the Wells Fargo Room. The event is co-sponsored by the Dean's Speaker Series and the school's International Business Development Program. Details on how to register for Awuah's talk will be available on the Dean's Speaker Series website as the date approaches.

Awuah will be recognized by Haas for his bold, innovative leadership in the founding of Ashesi University, a private liberal arts university that is educating future ethical, entrepreneurial leaders who possess the courage to transform Africa. Ashesi is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year.

The annual Leading Through Innovation Award was established to celebrate Haas alumni who embody the school’s emphasis on innovative leadership and serve as exemplars to others in the Berkeley-Haas community.

After growing up in Ghana, Awuah left home in 1985 with $50 in his pocket and a full scholarship to Swarthmore College. He then rose through the ranks of Microsoft to become a program manager. The birth of Awuah's first child inspired him to turn his focus back to Africa and think about how he could make a difference there.

After concluding education would be the best way to create change, Awuah enrolled at Berkeley-Haas and turned his idea for a university in Ghana into a project in the school's International Business Development (IBD) Program. Awuah's project so captivated classmate Nina Marini, MBA 99, a member of the same IBD team, that she jumped on board and went on to change her career goals to join Awuah in founding the university in 2002. Marini is currently a member of Ashesi’s board of trustees.

Awuah's mission was to create a new kind of liberal arts university focused on quality, ethics, and personal empowerment to be the spark of a revitalized Africa and a catalyst for new enterprises, new solutions, and a model for other universities in Africa. Since its founding, the university has built a 100-acre hillside campus and graduated 350 students. 

Awuah continues to work with the Haas School's IBD Program, hiring students as consultants to work on various projects with Ashesi. And he continues to ambitiously push Ashesi ahead: A new 10-year plan has set goals that include recruiting more students from Africa beyond Ghana; expanding academic program to include engineering and applied sciences, management and economics, and law and society; and planning for succession. 

To attend the 11th Annual Haas Gala, RSVP by Oct. 26 at the Gala website.

Fisher Center Co-Hosts Forum on Energy Efficiency Financing

| by Laura Counts

The Haas School's Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics co-hosted a forum Friday in San Francisco focused on securing capital to fund a transformation in energy efficiency in commercial and multifamily residential buildings throughout California and beyond.

The invitation-only, full-day forum, titled "Where Is the Money? Unlocking Capital for Real Estate Energy Efficiency Improvements,” attracted more than 100 leaders from the real estate, energy, finance, technology and government sectors. U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the Senate Finance Committee, gave a keynote address on federal policy.

In addition to Wyden, the program featured California State Controller John Chiang; Caroline Blakely, vice president for multifamily risk at Fannie Mae; Richard Kaufman, senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of Energy Steven Chu; and Jeanne Clinton, Special Advisor to the Governor, California Public Utilities Commission.

"The forum was convened to discuss a possible roadmap for the development of needed capital markets to support energy-efficiency improvements in commercial and multifamily real estate,” says Professor Nancy Wallace, Lisle and Roslyn Payne Chair in Real Estate and Capital Markets and co-chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate and Urban Economics at Haas. “The dialogue was frank and provided an opportunity for leaders in technology, banking, the real estate industry, and public policy to debate the merits of numerous new public and private sector initiatives to jump-start these capital markets,”

The meeting was organized into four sessions: origination markets for energy-efficient commercial real estate loans; new metric technologies for evaluating the energy efficiency of commercial real estate; strategies to develop securitized bond markets to support an energy-efficiency loan market; and California and federal policy initiatives. The discussion was led by a panel of specialists for each topic and included significant audience participation by industry leaders.

Haas Professors Wallace, Dwight Jaffee and Richard Stanton recently completed a large Department of Energy funded research project that was carried out jointly with researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley’s Department of Civil Engineering. The purpose of this research was to develop new loan-underwriting techniques to evaluate and price the energy-efficiency risk of commercial real estate buildings. The authors found that not accounting for energy price and consumption risk leads to significant expected mispricing of commercial mortgage default risk.    

The forum was co-hosted by the UC Berkeley School of Law's Center for Law, Business and the Economy; the law firm Manatt, Phelps & Phillips; and the Philomathia Foundation, a private charitable organization that supports innovative, forward-thinking individuals and ideas to improve the human condition.

Dean’s Scholarships Bring New Perspective to Evening & Weekend MBA Program

| by Laura Counts

This year's entering class in the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program includes seven recipients of the new Dean’s Scholarship. The one-year, $10,000 scholarship is awarded to admits who best meet one or more of the following criteria: demonstrate a commitment to ethnic diversity or to shaping the role of women in business; diversify the program by bringing perspective from outside the Bay Area; or come from industries under-represented in the program.

The inaugural recipients are Dino Boukouris, Nicholas Caldwell, Ashkon Jafari, Brian Lee, Stephen Seiple, Eugene Shapiro, and Susan Truong, all MBA 15. They work in fields that include real estate, consumer packaged goods, financial services, defense, and entrepreneurship. Six of the seven came from outside the Bay Area and two of the seven received scholarships, in part, for their commitment to ethnic and/or gender diversity.

Nicholas Caldwell is a principal development manager at Microsoft in Seattle and commutes to Haas to attend classes on Saturdays. He has worked to promote diversity through his involvement with Blacks at Microsoft, Blacks at MIT, and the National Society of Black Engineers. Caldwell says his involvement in these organizations will allow him to attract “highly successful underrepresented minorities” to the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program.

Susan Truong, a lease contracting officer with the U.S. General Services Administration in Southern California, is pursuing her MBA to make a shift into management or transition into the private sector. “Coming from L.A., it was a difficult decision for me to choose Haas over UCLA and USC, especially since I would have to transfer to my SF office,” says Truong, “What drove my decision were the strong real estate, entrepreneurial, and consulting programs at Haas.” 

Truong has found that women are a minority in the commercial real estate industry and now serves as a mentor to new interns, as well as a role model, for her agency: She will be the first in her office to obtain both the CCIM (certified commercial investment member) and LEED-accredited professional designations to further her knowledge of the green buildings rating system. 

 “We are very pleased to have this new scholarship as a way to continue to build diversity in the program,” says Marjorie DeGraca, executive director of Part-time Berkeley MBA Admissions. DeGraca helped develop the new scholarships last year, which are named in honor of Dean Rich Lyons.

Other scholarships for students in the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program include the $10,000 Nonprofit/Public Service Scholarship, which facilitates access to the Berkeley MBA for students currently employed in the nonprofit or public service sector, and the need-based  $10,000 Ronald Shapansky Scholarship. For more information, visit http://ewmba.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/finaid/scholarships.html. 

Berkeley and Stanford Team Up on PhD Big Data Seminar

| by Laura Counts

The world’s nearly 2.5 billion Internet users are generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data daily as they socialize, work, shop, and play online, according to a recent estimate by IBM.

This big data explosion, combined with the unprecedented research opportunities and the technical and statistical challenges it creates, is the subject of a new cross-disciplinary PhD seminar that alternates between the Berkeley and Stanford campuses on Monday afternoons.

The Data, Society, and Inference Seminar features social science researchers from top universities and firms who are working on cutting-edge techniques for managing and analyzing data. The seminar is modeled on a series offered by Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

"Governments, businesses, and other institutions are collecting enormous amounts of data about what’s going on in the world,” says Haas student Neil Thompson, PhD 12. “As academics, we want to bring this data to bear on questions that are meaningful for firms and for society at large.”

Thompson co-organizes the seminar with Professor Lee Fleming of the UC Berkeley Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, Berkeley Political Science Professor Jasjeet Sekhon, and Stanford Economics Professor Guido Imbens.

Stanford economist Susan Athey, winner of the John Bates Clark Medal and chief economist at Microsoft, kicked off the seminar Oct. 1 with a discussion of her econometric pricing model for the auctions used to sell search engine advertising. This week, Berkeley Statistics Professor Philip Stark will present an evidence-based approach to certifying elections.

Another speaker, Gary King, director of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, analyzed millions of social media posts from 1,400 services throughout China both before and after they were censored by the government’s vast network of Internet police, discovering that censors are largely ignoring individual criticisms of the state and focusing instead on blocking collective actions. 

The seminar is funded by the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership and the Institute for Government Studies, both at UC Berkeley, and the Gareatis Foundation. It is open to faculty and graduate students. For more information, visit faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/neil_thompson/DSI_Seminar/index.htm.

Tee Off for Haas School’s Youth Mentoring Program, Nov. 12

| by Laura Counts

With several members of the Oakland A's also hitting the links, the Young Entrepreneurs at Haas (YEAH) mentoring program for under-resourced youth will hold its second annual golf tournament at Sequoyah Country Club on Monday, Nov. 12.

YEAH attracted 84 golfers and raised $30,000 at its inaugural tournament last year at Sequoyah's golf course, a challenging par 70 for men and par 72 for women, tucked away in the Oakland Hills.

Similar to last year, Charles “Chili” Davis, a three-time baseball all-star, will participate in the tournament and is an honorary tournament chair. Davis is a three-time World Series champion and a hitting coach for the Oakland Athletics, the newly crowned American League West Champions. Davis will be joined by other members of the A's organization, who will add to the festive atmosphere of this tournament. 

YEAH's 23-year-old program serves middle and high school Bay Area youth. One-hundred percent of students who complete YEAH's four-year program graduate from high school and attend college, usually as the first person in their family to do so.

Last year's top sponsors included cPrime; Luther Burbank Savings; William R. Coke; Morgan Securities and JP Morgan Chase; and Larissa Roesch, MBA 97, and her husband, Jason Crethar.

To register for the tournament or to become a sponsor, visit haas.berkeley.edu/yeah/golf.

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah to Speak on Open Source Global Development, Oct. 10

| by Laura Counts

USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah will give a talk titled "An Open Source Approach to Global Development" at 4 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 10, in Sibley Auditorium in the Bechtel Engineering Center on the north side of campus.

The event is hosted by the Blum Center for Developing Economies, named after Haas Board chairman and alumnus Richard Blum, BS 58, MBA 59. Refreshments will be served.

Shah's keynote address will focus on his ambitious efforts to transform USAID through new partnerships, an emphasis on innovation, and a relentless focus on results. 

Shah leads the efforts of more than 8,000 professionals in 80 missions around the world who are seeking to help people overseas struggling to make a better life, recovering from a disaster, or striving to live in a free and democratic country.  

Since being sworn in on Dec. 31, 2009, Shah managed the U.S. government's response to the devastating 2010 earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti; co-chaired the State Department's first review of American diplomacy and development operations; and now spearheads President Barack Obama's landmark Feed the Future food security initiative. He is also leading USAID Forward, an extensive set of reforms to USAID's business model focusing on key areas including science and technology and monitoring and evaluation.

Prior to joining the Obama administration, Shah served for seven years with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, as director of agricultural development in the Global Development Program and as director of strategic opportunities. 

For more information, visit events.berkeley.edu/?event_ID=59628.

Study Linking Market Performance to Social Responsibility Wins Moskowitz Prize

| by Laura Counts

Three academics who linked positive market performance to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities at major publicly traded U.S. companies were presented with the 2012 Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing on Oct. 2.

The winners of the Moskowitz Prize, awarded annually by the Haas School's Center for Responsible Business in cooperation with the Social Investment Forum, are Elroy Dimson, emeritus professor of finance, London Business School; Oğuzhan Karakaş, assistant professor, Carroll School of Management, Boston College; and Xi Li, assistant professor, Fox School of Business, Temple University.

In their winning paper, “Active Ownership,” the trio examined highly intensive shareholder engagements on environmental, social, and governance issues from 1999 to 2009. Their findings suggest that CSR activism creates shareholder value, consistent with traditional shareholder or hedge fund activism but on a different scale.

The positive returns documented were most pronounced for engagements on the themes of corporate governance and climate change. Firms with more reputational concerns and higher capacity to implement CSR changes were found more likely to be targeted by CSR activists, and more successful in achieving the engagement objectives. Targeted firms experienced improvements in operating performance, profitability, efficiency, and governance indices after successful engagements. The paper’s findings provide new evidence on the value of shareholder activism on CSR issues.

 “We had a very competitive year in 2012, with nine judges reviewing over 40 studies in detail, so the winning team can take credit for a very strong showing, and a very strong research effort," says Lloyd Kurtz, a lecturer at the Berkeley-Haas Center for Responsible Business, Moskowitz Prize administrator, and chief investment officer at Nelson Capital Management.

The $5,000 Moskowitz Prize is the only global prize recognizing outstanding quantitative research in the field of sustainable, responsible, impact investing. The prize is named for Milton Moskowitz, one of the first investigators to publish comparisons of the financial performance of screened and unscreened portfolios.

Learn more about the Moskowitz Prize

Alumnus and Former Canadian Ambassador Ken Taylor, MBA 59, Portrayed in New Ben Affleck Film

| by Laura Counts

One of Haas' own played a major role in the real-life Iran hostage crisis that inspired the new Ben Affleck movie, "Argo," which has already generated buzz as the likely Best Picture winner in next year's Academy Awards.

Alumnus Ken Taylor, MBA 59, was the Canadian ambassador in Tehran in 1979, when Iranians stormed the American embassy and took hostages. Six embassy employees managed to flee to the streets and find shelter at Taylor's residence. Taylor is played by actor Victor Garber in the movie. Affleck plays CIA agent Tony Mendez, who comes up with the idea of disguising the Americans as Canadian members of a film crew making a fake science fiction movie called ”Argo."

Argo already has made the rounds of film festivals and will officially hit theaters Oct. 12. Affleck stars in and directed the film and co-produced it with George Clooney.

In response to concerns raised by Taylor and Canadians, Affleck changed the postscript of the film, which they said gave too little credit to Canada. The postscript now reads: "The involvement of the CIA complemented efforts of the Canadian embassy to free the six held in Tehran. To this day the story stands as an enduring model of international co-operation between governments.” 

Alumnus Ken Taylor with Actor/Director Ben Affleck

Haas Faculty Bring Industry Leaders to Speak in Classrooms−and Out

| by Laura Counts

From artisan chocolate to ice cream and airlines to eyeglasses, dozens of high-profile leaders from a broad range of sectors will visit Haas classrooms this fall, offering up-to-the-minute business expertise and networking opportunities for students.

Undergraduates in Adjunct Professor Jennifer Walske’s Introduction to Entrepreneurship (UGBA 96) will hear from a parade of colorful pioneers, including John Scharffenberger, who transformed the American chocolate industry by importing European techniques to make his Scharffen Berger Chocolate; Charles Huang, who enabled millions to express their inner rock stars with Guitar Hero music video games; and Fred Reid, founder of Virgin America, known for its aircraft's club-like interiors.

Cal alumnus Gary Rogers, BS 63 (Engineering), who built Dreyer’s Grand Ice Cream into an industry leader with Haas alum Rick Cronk, BS 65, will share his lessons on effective leadership in Professor Jennifer Chatman’s MBA Leadership course (MBA 257 1-B). Servaes Tholen, former CFO of eBay North America and current CFO of online employment company Elance, will speak on fostering innovation, while alumna and Genentech Senior Vice President Jennifer Cook, MBA 98, will talk about leveraging culture for strategic success.

Evening and Weekend MBAs will hear from Robert Lynch, CEO of vision care giant VSP Global, in Lecturer Frank Shultz’s Leadership Competencies course (EWMBA 257). Schultz is bringing in speakers from Salesforce.com and Merck Serono for his Berkeley-Columbia Executive Leadership course (XMBA 256).

In some courses, guests are acting as sounding boards for students’ work.  Undergraduates will pitch their ideas much as they would in the agency world in Lecturer Krystal Thomas’ Product Branding and Entertainment (UGBA 167). The clients: alumni Michael Smith, MBA 86, general manager of The Cooking Channel, and Anika Nieh, BS 11, of Safeway Consumer Brands.

Home-run Speakers

High-profile sports business leaders will also offer real-world perspective in Lecturer Michael Rielly’s Sport Marketing (UGBA 167). Students already left the classroom for an optional field trip to AT&T Park in San Francisco earlier this month that featured a private, behind-the-scenes tour and meeting with Bill Lawrence, the San Francisco Giants' director of sponsorship sales, and Sara Hunt, senior director of Giants Enterprises, who oversees public and private events at the ballpark. One student even caught a home run ball during the game against the Rockies.

Reilly's speaker lineup also includes New York Mets General Manager and former A's exec Sandy Alderson and Cal Athletics Director Sandy Barbour.

Marketing Leaders

MBA students interested in marketing will hear from executives at Charles Schwab, Intuit, Clorox, and Levi's in Lecturer Lynn Upshaw's Strategic Brand Management (EWMBA 262) and Marketing Management (MBA206) courses.

In Lecturer Wasim Azhar’s International Marketing course (MBA 268, full-time MBA students will learn about international competition from Infosys Consulting CEO Stephen Pratt. Other visitors will include executives from Salesforce.com, Cisco, and Chevron. Guests to Azhar’s Marketing Organization and Management (EWMBA 206) course include Banana Republic President Jack Calhoun.

Professor Miguel Villa-Boas' Marketing Strategy course (MBA 299) will bring in several alumni, including Trevor Traina, MBA 96, a tech entrepreneur, and Steven Chan, BS 88, senior VP of strategy, marketing, and product management at the Automobile Association of America (AAA).

Women, Finance, Consulting

For her new Women in Business (MBA 291T-1) course, Adjunct Assistant Professor Kellie McElhaney has arranged guest lectures by several innovative women, including Tara Sophia Mohr, author of an article titled 10 Rules for Brilliant Women, and Libby Leffler, BS 06, a strategic partner manager focusing on community partnerships and programs at Facebook.

Former SNOCAP CEO and former Electronic Arts Senior Vice President Rusty Rueff will speak on transparency and management in Strategy, Structure, and Incentives (EWMBA 210), taught by Professor Jonathan Leonard, chair of the Haas Economic Analysis and Policy Group.

Lecturer Sam Olesky's Portfolio Management course (EW/MBA 236D) will bring in practitioners from such as firms as BlackRock, Wells Fargo, and Kohlberg Kravis Roberts to discuss their methods and strategies. Similarly, Lecturer Rada Brooks' Strategic Cost Management course (UGBA 128) will feature consultants from McKinsey, Deloitte, and PricewaterhouseCoopers talking on such topics as customer profitability and pricing.

Undergrads in Lecturer Ethan Namvar's Introduction to Financial Engineering (UGBA 137) will enjoy a look into quantitative investing in the Asia Pacific from visitor Ernest Chow, partner and founder of Sensato Investors.

Bill Lawrence and Sara Hunt of the San Francisco Giants meet students in a Sports Marketing class