Cold Hands, Warm Win: Haas Undergrads Take Second in Singapore Competition


Singapore winners (l. to r.) Rosa Huh, Jenny Mi, and Ryan Liu, all BS 13; and Deiya Pernas, BA 13 (Econ./Stat.)

A team of Haas undergraduates did its part recently to make it easier to text with fingers numb from cold weather. Rosa Huh, Ryan Liu, and Jenny Mi, all BS 13, along with graduating Economics and Statistics student Deiya Pernas, took second place (as first runner up) Sept. 16 in an international case competition that challenged students to develop a sales and marketing strategy for a Singapore startup manufacturing gloves for smartphone users in frigid climes.

The team beat out 11 other schools, including USC and Copenhagen Business School, to claim its title in the NSU-DBS competition, hosted by the National University of Singapore and sponsored by the Development Bank of Singapore. Students had 22 hours to prepare for a session in which judges could interrupt with questions at any time.

Their winning approach included an idea for in-store competitions for speed-texting while wearing the gloves and even a complimentary product idea for a sleeve that would let users in cold AND wet climates use smart phones in the rain. “I think we won due to the comprehensiveness of our approach,” says Liu. The team outlined a plan not just for a YouTube video, but for a YouTube Takeover (where main video screen elements interact with sidebar and other screen elements). The students also provided a comprehensive valuation and a list of the top seven reasons venture capitalists should invest to help the firm with the pitches for funding.

"It was the first time any of us had done a one-day case,” says Liu, who says the team was well prepared by Haas’ broad curriculum. “We had specialists in every area,” Liu says, noting that he handled the financials, Mi focused on marketing, Huh on strategy, and Pernas on product.

“This is a strong showing by our students,” says Erika Walker, executive director of the Haas Undergraduate Program, “and the trophy looks great!”

Two Alumnae Make Barron’s Top 100 Women Financial Advisors List

Sonia Attkiss, MBA 97, an advisor with Credit Suisse in New York, and Valerie Garcia Houts, MBA 99, an international financial advisor with Merrill Lynch, made Barron's list of "The Top 100 Women Financial Advisors for 2012."

Attkiss ranked 29th and Houts ranked 36th on the list, published in June and compiled from more than 400 candidates nominated by their firms. The rankings are based on assets under management by advisors and their teams, revenue generated for an advisor's firm, and quality of the advisor's practices.

Sonia Attkiss

Attkiss has made the Barron's list for the past five years and in 2007 also was named as one of the 100 most influential women in New York City by Crain’s Business. She has worked at Credit Suisse's Private Banking Group since 2000 and specializes in advising high net-worth individuals and family offices. In addition, Attkiss and her team manage discretionary equity, fixed- income, and currency portfolios. The team oversees a total of $2.9 billion in assets, with a client's typical account totaling $30 million and a client's typical net worth totaling $50 million.

Attkiss began her career as a financial advisor at Donaldson, Lufkin and Jenrette in New York. She also has been highlighted in the Daily Beast in a women in business series.

Valerie Garcia Houts

Based in San Francisco, Houts and her team manage $11.7 billion in assets in their clients' accounts, the second-highest amount of the 100 women ranked by Barron's. Her typical client has $70 million in assets and a net worth of $125 million. Her client base is composed of private equity and venture capital funds as well as their general partners and investors.

Before joining Merrill Lynch in 2002, Houts worked at regional banks Robertson Stephens and Montgomery Securities while earning her Berkeley MBA in the Haas School's evening program.

Undergrads Who Examined Failure Win Cohort Case Comp


Winners and judges of the inaugural Cohort Finance Case Competition (l. to r.): Vicki Ni, BS 14; judges Matt Therian, MBA 13, and Sam Snyder, MBA 11; Kevin Hsu, BS 14; judge Tara Kramlich, BS 03; Esteban Zapata and Saba Ali, both BS 14.

A team of Haas undergraduates who delved into the possibility of TV flop on Wednesday won the first-place prize−a dinner with Dean Rich Lyons−in the school's inaugural Cohort Finance Case Competition.

The winners, who bested 26 other Haas teams, were Kevin Hsu, BS 14 (Bus./Econ.); Vicki Ni, BS 14 (Bus./Bioengineering); and Saba Ali and Esteban Zapata, both BS 14. Of the group, only Hsu had previous case competition experience through the Berkeley Investment Group, the first and largest undergradute investment club at UC Berkeley.

The competition required at least half of the members of each four-student team to have no previous case competition experience. It was designed by the Haas Business School Association (HBSA) to give more students Confidence Without Attitude, one of the school's defining principles.

"It felt a lot more like a learning experience than an actual competition," says Ni, who participated to learn more about case competitions. She noted that Hsu took the lead on the financials and modeling because he had more experience in those areas, and the judges also guided teams with questions and advice.

The case involved examining potential deals for company that sells cooking spices, including a cable TV show and issuing stock.

"We created three models: one assuming the show was canceled; one assuming a hit; and one assuming it was somewhere in the middle," says Hsu, who has competed in several case competitions and placed in three. "No other team thought about the possibility that the TV show could be a flop, but we really thought about the downside."

The cohort case competition was the first in a series of events organized by the HBSA to foster the Berkeley-Haas Defining Principles. Each month, HBSA is planning to host an activity or event related to one of the four principles. In addition to the case competition in September designed to build Confidence Without Attitude, the events this fall will include : 

  • October, Question the Status Quo: Working with the university's Operational Excellence team to look at change within institutions.
  • November, Students Always: A fun trivia night with questions about business and Haas.
  • December, Beyond Yourself: A food drive.

Alum and SAP Exec Amit Sinha Recognized by International Business Development Program

Amit Sinha, MBA 04, a marketing executive at German software giant SAP, was named the IBD Alumnus of the Year Friday at the school's annual International Business Development Conference in recognition of his professional success and embodiment of the Berkeley-Haas culture.

The inaugural award was presented to Sinha during a luncheon at the International House, which followed a two-hour poster session featuring the 37 teams of full-time and evening-and-weekend students who took the course this spring and summer. The award was created to honor alumni who have helped make possible the IBD Program's growth during the past couple of years, including its expansion to the Evening & Weekend MBA Program this year.

Sinha participated in the IBD Program during his time at Haas, working in his home country of India with a health-care nonprofit. Almost 10 years later, he still volunteers his time as an adviser to nonprofits in India, working with partners he met during his IBD fellowship.

As head of marketing for database products at SAP, the world's largest software companies with a market cap of more than $85 billion, Sinha oversaw the launch of HANA, a platform for real-time big data analytics and applications, and one of SAP's most successful product in recent years. 

"Amit is doing for SAP exactly what the mission of Haas is: He is a leader redefining how business is done─for literally thousands of customers around the world," says Elizabeth Kovats, program manager of the IBD Program.

Sinha also has maintained a strong connection to Haas, hiring many students over the years and most recently retaining a team of IBD students this summer to work on a project in China. He was recently featured in Fast Company magazine talking about IBD and the importance of MBA global education.

In addition to honoring Sinha, the IBD Program presented awards to the students who prepared the best presentation at the IBD conference and who took the best photo during their IBD trip. The team with the best presentation consisted of part-time students Michael Edde, Olivia Herbert, Rubbee Myggen, and Wole Olowu, all MBA 13, who traveled to Uganda as consultants to WE CARE Solar, which has developed solar suitcases for health facilities to power lights and fetal monitors to make night-time labor and delivery safer for women.

Here are the two winners of the photo contest:


Wildlife Conservation Society Full-time Berkeley MBA Team in Laos


Amar Lata Gramin Seva Foundation Evening & Weekend MBA Team
 

Read a blog post by the IBD team in Uganda.

Learn more about IBD.

Lester Center Hosts Lean LaunchPad Educators Program

The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship hosted more than 60 educators from around the country for a three-day Lean LaunchPad Educators Program in August sponsored by the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance.

Haas Lecturer Steve Blank and Lester Center Founding Executive Director Emeritus Jerry Engel taught the cutting-edge Lean LaunchPad approach to teaching entrepreneurship, which emphasizes experiential learning and immediate feedback to engage students with real-world entrepreneurship.

Unlike many approaches to entrepreneurship education, the Lean LaunchPad does not rely on case studies or fixed models; it challenges students to create their own business models based on information derived from personal engagement rather than secondhand market research. Students learn by proposing and immediately testing hypotheses. They "get out of the building" to talk to customers, partners, and competitors,

“Steve Blank is creating a revolution in how we teach entrepreneurship," says Lester Center Executive Director André Marquis. "And now Berkeley-Haas is helping other educators take this revolution around the world.”

Blank previously taught his Lean LaunchPad course to Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA and evening and weekend Berkeley MBA students and will teach it to full-time Berkeley MBA students this spring. 

Steve Blank

Symposium to Explore Tensions in Energy Innovation, Investment, Policy, Oct. 18-19

The annual BERC Energy Symposium will examine the tensions involved in aligning energy innovation, investment, and policy during a two-day series of events on Thursday, Oct. 18, and Friday, Oct. 19, at UC Berkeley.

The symposium, the largest student-run energy conference on the West Coast, will bring together key players from research, business development, policy, and economics at the Martin Luther King Student Union. It is organized by the Berkeley Energy & Resources Collaborative (BERC), an interdisciplinary UC Berkeley student club, founded by Berkeley MBA students.

"Energy is a very complicated, interdisciplinary topic, so we decided to explore where some of the tensions are," says BERC co-president Josh Lich, MBA 13. "Challenges in the energy field will only be solved if people with different views come together to discuss the hard topics. So every panel will discuss a problem in energy that needs to be solved."

For instance, a panel on shale gas and renewables will feature executives from a solar company and big oil and gas companies, Lich says. "There's a lot of debate whether we as a country should invest in natural gas because it's so cheap or whether we should continue to invest in renewables," he says. "We have both points of view on this particular panel to discuss that."

Other panel discussions will delve into such topics as energy savings for the 99 percent, China's energy agenda, and how the arts can promote sustainable energy.

The event will begin with an Innovation Expo from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday, when more than 50 scientists, researchers, and companies will showcase their latest breakthroughs. "It's really the only place on the West Coast where so many new and emerging technologies will be on display at one time," Lich says.

The next day, Friday, the symposium will run from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. with two keynote speeches, a fireside chat, and a reception in addition to the panels throughout the day.

The morning keynote will be given by Dan Arvizu, the eighth director of the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab, the Department of Energy's primary lab for energy efficiency and renewable energy research and development. Arvizu also is serving his second six-year term on the National Science Board, the governing board of the National Science Foundation and the national science policy advisory body to the president and Congress.

Richard Kauffmann, senior advisor to the U.S. secretary of energy since September 2011, will give the afternoon keynote address. Before joining the Department of Energy, Kauffmann served as CEO of Good Energies Inc., an investor in renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies. He previously worked as a partner at Goldman Sachs, where he chaired the Global Financing Group, and Morgan Stanley, where he served as vice chair of the Institutional Securities Business and co-head of its banking department.

An early-bird discount on ticket prices is available until Oct. 1. For more information and registration, visit berc.berkeley.edu/symposium-2012.

Watch a promotional video for the Energy Symposium.

 

>play Digital Media Conference to Explore the Mobile-First Economy

Tens of millions of people keep their smartphones within reach 24 hours a day, and tens of millions more will soon join them—carrying the Internet in their pockets for the first time.

This explosion of smartphones has profound implications for businesses and will be the focus of >play 2012: Think Mobile First on Oct. 27 at the Haas School. A sell-out crowd of 500 industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and students is again expected for the annual student-run digital media conference.

“By 2016, a billion people will have smartphones—many of them in countries where most people don’t have access to computers,” says Zubin Desai, MBA 13, marketing co-chair for >play.  “For a long time, many companies saw mobile as an afterthought. They need to make mobile the core part of their business plan.”

This year, for the first time, students have organized a pre-conference sneak-peek and networking event, scheduled for 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 26, at Eventbrite’s San Francisco offices. It will feature Eventbrite co-founders Kevin and Julia Hartz. Tickets for the networking event are available at play-pre-event.eventbrite.com.

In another first, organizers this year have dispensed with printed programs completely, going all-digital with the help of a customized app provided by San Francisco firm DoubleDutch.

"This is a digital conference and yet we've always handed out printed programs," says marketing co-chair Mohit Bhargava, MBA 13. "This year we've gone all digital and we're working with DoubleDutch to create a state-of-the-art digital program which will allow attendees to interact with not only each other, but with presenters and companies."

Box CEO Aaron Levie, who launched the cloud storage and collaboration company from his dorm room with CFO Dylan Smith in 2005, will give a keynote speech. Box now has more than 11 million users, and is valued at between $1.2 and $1.5 billion, according to a recent Reuters report.

The conference will begin with a rocket-pitch session, where sponsors will pitch the audience on their latest digital media technology: apps, games, hardware, and social media innovations. Attendees can browse the expo to learn more about the products and companies throughout the day.

Six panel sessions include discussions on gamification, the next generation of e-commerce and mobile payments, the ways that companies are collecting and using data, the future of TV and of digital music, and cloud collaboration via mobile.

Other highlights include a networking lunch, career fair, and afternoon session of >play talks—modeled on TED talks.

The >play conference is organized by the Haas-based Berkeley Digital Media and Entertainment Club. Discount tickets are available through Oct. 1: $25 for students; $39 for Haas alumni and faculty; and $69 for professionals. To register, visit play2012.eventbrite.com. For conference details, visit playconference.net.

 

New MBA for Executives Program Receives UC Berkeley Approval

The UC Berkeley Graduate Council formally approved the Haas School's new Berkeley MBA for Executives graduate degree earlier this month.

The Graduate Council is a committee of the UC Berkeley Academic Senate, the university faculty's governing body. Approval from the Graduate Council is required for all new UC Berkeley graduate degrees.

The 19-month Berkeley MBA for Executives Program is specifically designed for senior-level working professionals.

Haas is recruiting for the new program, with information sessions scheduled in San Jose (Sept. 25), Los Angeles (Sept. 27), San Francisco (Oct. 3), and Seattle (Oct. 4). The first class will arrive at Haas for orientation on May 15, 2013.

For more information about the new Berkeley MBA for Executives Program, visit mbaforexecs.haas.berkeley.edu/.

Intel CEO and Alumnus Paul Otellini, MBA 74, to Speak at Haas, Oct. 3

Intel CEO Paul Otellini, MBA 74, will share lessons from a 40-year business career, including leading the world's largest chip maker, in an interview with Dean Rich Lyons at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 3 in Andersen Auditorium. 

Otellini also will share advice for students preparing for business careers as part of this Dean's Speaker Series event. Registration is required; visit the Dean’s Speaker Series website for registration details as the event date approaches.

Otellini, known for his integrity and development of innovative business strategies, joined Intel in 1974 after receiving his MBA from Haas. "I graduated in a recession and my MBA was my initial foot in the door," he said in a 2007 article in the school's CalBusiness magazine.

After starting in the finance department, he advanced to manage key components of Intel’s business, including its PC and server microprocessor division and its global sales and marketing organization. He was promoted to president and chief operating officer in 2002 and became CEO in 2005.

Otellini oversees a semiconductor company that recorded $54 billion in net revenue in fiscal year 2011, up 24 percent from 2010, and has been named one of Fortune's best companies to work for. He has turned the semiconductor giant into a larger provider of software and services through the acquisitions of such companies as McAfee and Wind River. The company's ambitious mission this decade: We will create and extend computing technology to connect and enrich the lives of every person on earth.

Otellini also serves on the board of directors of Google and the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. He was named the Haas School’s Business Leader of the Year in 2006. Intel annually collaborates with the UC Berkeley Lester Center for Entrepreneurship to produce the Intel Global Challenge, a global business plan competition held at Haas that encourages student entrepreneurs and rewards innovative ideas that have a positive impact on society.

Teece Outlines Ambitions for Institute for Business Innovation

As the new faculty director of the Institute for Business Innovation (IBI), Professor David Teece is aiming his sights on launching new programs focused on intellectual property and online education as part of an effort to bring management and innovation closer together.

Teece succeeds Haas Professor Michael Katz, who left to take a three-year post on the UC Berkeley Budget Committee. Teece was joined at IBI in August by new Executive Director Maria Carkovic, who brings a global perspective to the institute. Carkovic previously served as director of Brown University's Program in Commerce, Organizations, and Entrepreneurship and taught International Trade and Global Macroeconomics at Brown.

The Institute of Business Innovation is an umbrella organization that promotes interdisciplinary research, instruction, and corporate outreach on matters related to innovation, entrepreneurship, and technology. It oversees and provides strategic direction for the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship; Fisher Center for Management and Technology; and Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, which includes Haas@Work and the school's Open Innovation Program.

With IBI's support, the Garwood Center has sent out a call to faculty for proposals to receive grant money for innovation-related research. IBI also is developing a signature annual event on entrepreneurship and innovation that would involve the Lester and Garwood centers.

"We aim to rejuvenate existing programs and launch new ones focused on intellectual capital," saysTeece, a world-recognized authority on strategy and innovation, who served as director of IBI's predecessor organization from 1982 to 2009.  "I also want to explore the online world, particularly online education, innovation, and the management of technology, and how we can potentially assist the university in its effort there." These programs will involve additional fundraising, Teece says.

Teece has been a leading force in the study of intellectual capital and its relationship to management practices. "The American economy depends increasingly on intangible assets, whether it's in the tech industry, entertainment, or great brands," Teece says. "Yet in business school we tend to focus on how to manage tangible assets."

He envisions a program focused on intellectual capital that involves more research, PhD students, and outreach to the business community.

Teece also wants to raise the profile of existing programs and activities, including Berkeley Skydeck, an interdisciplinary business accelerator, and the Berkeley Open Innovation Forum, which brings companies from diverse industries together to share ideas on open innovation that was started by Adjunct Professor Henry Chesbrough, PhD 97, executive director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation.

Teece will be building on a long history of success at the institute and its predecessors, he notes. The institute's history dates back to the 1960s, when its predecessor, the Center for Management and Research Science, was blazing new trails exploring the applications of computing to business management.

When Teece took the helm of the center in 1982, its heyday had passed and it had a tiny budget. He stepped up its stature by launching an annual event called the Consortium on Competitiveness aimed at pursuing a deeper understanding of the failures of the U.S. economy and attracting close to $20 million in grant money and donations over the next two decades. Those funds helped launch the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, and other programs.

"Berkeley-Haas has led the way in research on entrepreneurship and innovation for decades," Teece says. "We want to make sure the public and business community know this and that we continue to be at the forefront in these fields." 

 

Undergrads Launch Competition to Build Confidence Without Attitude

More than 100 undergraduates have signed up to compete in a new cohort finance case competition launched by the Haas Business School Association as part of its year-long effort to foster the school’s four Defining Principles and culture.

The case competition, which attracted 27 teams of four members each, requires each team to include at least two students without any previous case competition experience. It’s designed to give more students Confidence Without Attitude, one of the school’s defining principles.

“With so many students participating, this is an amazing learning experience,” says HBSA President Tyler Wishnoff, BS 13. “We get to help develop our students professionally and give them the self confidence to go after more cases.”

Each month, HBSA is planning to host an activity or event related to one of the school’s four Defining Principles. In addition to the case competition in September designed to build Confidence Without Attitude, the events this fall will include :

  • October, Question the Status Quo: Working with the university’s Operational Excellence team to look at change within institutions.
  • November, Students Always: A fun trivia night with questions about business and Haas.
  • December, Beyond Yourself: A food drive.

The case competition will include an information session on the case and mixer with alumni Sept. 14, when students will be able to ask alumni for guidance and coaching. Cases will be due Sept. 16. The best team from each of the six undergraduate cohorts will be chosen to compete in a final round Sept. 19.

“The structure is designed for students without case competition experience to learn from students who have experience, which also gives those with experience the opportunity to apply leadership skills,” says Wishnoff. “And the competition will provide students with a chance to build relationships with alumni.”

Alumni involved in the competition include Tara Kramlich, BS 03, of Imprint Investments; Sam Snyder, MBA 11, who just left Goldman Sachs to join alumnus and lecturer Steve Etter, BS 83, MBA 89, at Greyrock Capital; and Aaron Schwartz, MBA 10, CEO of Modify Watches.

Etter, who teaches Corporate Finance to undergrads, helped develop the case and is organizing the grand prize: a dinner with Dean Rich Lyons and three alumni. The HBSA also will award smaller prizes along with $500 to be split amongst the top two teams.

 

Doctoral Seminar Focuses on Innovation Research

From Boston to Bangalore, top thinkers on innovation will visit Haas for an interdisciplinary seminar for doctoral students and faculty this fall.

The Fall 2012 Innovation Seminar (PHDBA 279I) will bring together scholars from economics, public policy, agricultural resources, Haas, and other UC Berkeley departments to examine the latest research in the field.

"One things about innovation research on campus is that the people who do it are very spread out, so this brings people together," says Neil Thompson, PhD 13, one of the conference organizers. “The Innovation Seminar has really become a focal point for these researchers to interact."

Thompson organized the series with professors Lee Fleming in UC Berkeley's Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and Brian Wright in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics. The audience for the seminar has grown steadily since it was started several years ago by recently retired Haas Professor Emeritus David Mowery and UC Berkeley Economics Professor Bronwyn Hall, Thompson says.

This year’s lecturers include :

  • Karl T. Ulrich, Wharton's vice dean of innovation and author of Innovation Tournaments and the popular textbook Product Design and Development. Ulrich is also a designer of the Xootr scooter. (Oct. 31)
  • Jim Bessen of Boston University, an expert on software patents and the economics of innovation. (Nov. 14)
  • Bill Kerr of Harvard Business School, who has researched the role of immigrant scientists and entrepreneurs in the United States. (Oct. 3)
  • Haas alum Tim Simcoe, PhD 04, an assistant professor of strategy and innovation at Boston University and expert in the area of compatibility standards, which are design rules that promote product interoperability. (Oct. 24)
  • Chirantan Chatterjee of Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Management, who will wrap up the seminar in December. His research areas include incentives for innovation and the role of patents and technology strategy and globalization. (Dec. 5)

The seminar receives funding support from the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership in the College of Engineering, which aims to prepare scientists and students to lead enterprises in industry, government, and the nonprofit sector.

The seminar meets 12:30 p.m. to 2 p.m. on Wednesdays in Cheit C125.

See the Innovation Seminar schedule.

New Fall Courses Feature Social Networks, Online Learning, Women in Business

New fall courses are offering students the chance to zoom in on hot topics like the economics of social networks, social finance, and the strategic and societal impact of investing in women. Students in the Full-time and Evening & Weekend MBA programs also will get their first chance to take a popular course in a new, interactive online format.

Haas alumnus Nicholas Economides, PhD 81, a visiting professor from NYU’s Stern School of Business, will teach The Economics of Social and Other Networks. Economides, an expert on antitrust and network economics, will offer one version of the course for Full-time and Evening & Weekend MBA students (EW/MBA 217.1), and another for undergraduates (UGBA 117). The courses will analyze a wide variety of networks, from Facebook and Twitter to cable TV, banking, and the Internet, developing an understanding of competition within and across platforms.

MBA Students will get a class and practicum all in one in a new social finance course titled Money and Meaning: Sourcing Capital for Social Enterprises (EW/MBA 292T.3), taught by Professor Jennifer Walske, faculty director of the Global Social Venture Competition, and Esther Park, former vice president of strategy and business development at RSF Social Finance, a nonprofit financial services organization that connects investors and social entrepeneurs. After learning about the social finance process from cases and speakers, including high-profile impact investors, student teams will identify and recommend an investment idea to a panel of impact investors, including Brian Trelstad, former chief investment officer of Acumen Fund, and John Goldstein, co-founder of Imprint Capital.

Haas is among six business schools working with Trelstad, a leader in the socially responsible investment world, to create a national network of MBA students to source and complete due diligence on potential early-stage regional and national investments. Haas is the only school in the network, which also includes Harvard and Wharton, to structure its participation as a course rather than investing club.

Corporate social responsibility expert Kellie McElhaney, faculty director of the Center for Responsible Business, is offering a new course that will dive deeply into the subject of gender equity in the business world. Through a combination of lectures and guest speakers, Women in Business (EW/MBA 292T.1) will give MBA students a global perspective, exploring Goldman Sachs’ womenomics theory—which links the economic health of a country to the health of its female population. The course will look closely at trends and issues facing women in business and leadership.

Professor Cameron Anderson is taking his in-demand Power & Politics (EW/MBA 254.1B) online, giving MBA students more flexibility in customizing course content to their interests, learning styles, and schedules. The course combines real-time lectures with asynchronous learning opportunities, including games, interactive assessments, and extensive discussion forums.  As the only online MBA offering in a new pilot program, the course filled up quickly and remains oversubscribed.

In addition to Economides’ social network course, undergraduates pursuing careers in marketing can take Marketing Strategy (UGBA 167.3), a new special topics course taught by Senior Lecturer David Robinson. Continuing where the core marketing course left off, Robinson’s course will give students tools to identify the competition, develop strategic marketing plans, and identify risk.

Haas Centers Host Screening of Fixing the Future Documentary

The Haas School's Center for Responsible Business and Lester Center for Entrepreneurship are co-hosting a pre-DVD release screening of the film Fixing the Future at 8 p.m. Monday, Sept. 24, in the Wells Fargo Room.

Fixing Our Future, which premiered in theaters in July, highlights communities and entrepreneurs who are employing sustainable models such as local business alliances, community banking, and worker cooperatives to create jobs, build prosperity, and reinvent the American economy.

The screening will be followed by a speaker from a successful Bay Area social enterprise, who will share reaction to the film and how it relates to their organization's story. The speaker also will share experiences and advice for converting individual passions into successful, scalable, sustainable enterprises.

Dinner will be provided at the free event, which is part of the Center for Responsible Business' Peterson Series.

Register for the event.

Watch a trailer for Fixing the Future.

Schwab Series to Address Social Impact through Hybrid Ventures, Tech, Consulting

The Haas School's Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership will offer three panels this semester through the Schwab Charitable Philanthropy Speaker Series, exploring hybrid business models (Sept. 18), technology for the lowest-income populations (Nov. 2), and social impact consulting (Nov. 15).

The first panel, on how hybrid business models blend purpose with profit, will be moderated by Jim Schorr, a Haas senior fellow in social entrepreneurship; national chair of the Social Enterprise Alliance; and a co-founder of Net Impact, a global network of MBAs applying business skills to solve social problems. (Haas senior fellows are professionals with significant accomplishments in a given field who share their knowledge with students and other faculty, help build relevant offerings, and connect the school with professional networks in the field.)

Participants in the panel moderated by Schorr will include Michael Hannigan, president and co-founder of Give Something Back, an office supply business giving an average of 75 percent of its profits to nonprofits; Andy Fyfe of B-Lab, a nonprofit certifier of B Corporations, which use the power of business to solve social and environmental problems; and Donald Simon, attorney at Wendel Rosen Black and Dean, the first U.S. law firm to gain third-party certification as a “green business.”

Next up in the Schwab Series is a Nov. 2 panel discussion on innovative technology for base-of-the-pyramid populations.  It will be led by Shashi Buluswar, a Haas senior fellow in international development and executive director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Institute for Globally Transformative Technologies. He will lead an exploration of how technology is redefining possible solutions to base-of-the-pyramid problems and helping to alleviate global poverty.

The final event in the fall series will be a Nov. 15 panel on social impact consulting, exploring MBA career paths that tackle complex, strategic questions with social impact as the goal. The discussion will be led by new Haas Lecturer Colin Boyle, ex-partner at the Boston Consulting Group, and will include Jacquelyn Hadley of Bridgespan, Leigh Fiske of FSG, Tim Carlberg of Dalberg Global Development Advisors, and Steven LaFrance of LFA Group.

For registration, information, and more social impact events at Haas, visit nonprofit.haas.berkeley.edu/events.html.

Alumnus and Accounting Benefactor Donald Seiler, BS 49, MBA 50, Passes Away

Alumnus Donald (Don) Seiler, BS 49, MBA 50, a longtime friend of the accounting program at Berkeley-Haas, passed away Aug. 3 at his Atherton home. He was 83.

After earning his Berkeley degrees, Seiler, a San Francisco native, spent time as an accountant in the 1950s before founding Seiler and Company (now Seiler, LLP), a regional accounting and advisory firm, in 1957.

Seiler was involved with real estate, venture capital, not-for-profit and for-profit business operations. His professional board service included Ross Stores from 1982 to 2012 and Greater Bay Bancorp from 1985 to 2006.

Seiler, who believed very deeply in giving back to the community, established an academic chair at Berkeley-Haas in 1995 and served on the Haas Board, which advises the dean, from 2006 to 2009. He also served on the board of the Haas School’s Center for Financial Reporting and Management, actively helping to shape the accounting program and curriculum at Berkeley-Haas.

“We are saddened by the loss of Don Seiler. He leaves behind a strong legacy at Berkeley-Haas,” says Professor Patricia Dechow, who currently holds the Donald H. and Ruth F. Seiler Chair in Public Accounting. “Our students will continue to be influenced by his philanthropy both through the success of Seiler LLP and through his involvement with the accounting program at the University. I have benefitted from Don’s generosity by holding of the chair established by Don and Ruth, which has allowed me to substantially advance my academic research.”

Seiler’s philanthropy and volunteerism also extended to the Peninsula Community Foundation, Stanford Medical Center, and the Jewish Community Federation, among other groups. Seiler received the 1989 Community Service Award from the California Society of Certified Public Accountants for his charitable work and awards for other charitable activities.

 

Haas Welcomes New Students with Pathbending Leaders, Case Studies, Games

Whether gaining insights on innovation from IDEO General Manager Tom Kelley, hearing about successful teambuilding from Annie's CEO John Foraker, or learning about Haas through interactive games, new students got a head start on their business school education this month in three different orientations.

The Evening & Weekend MBA Program was the first to hold its orientation and begin classes on Aug. 6, while full-time MBA students went through O-Week orientation last week and undergrads gathered at Haas this week before beginning their classes today.

Full-time Berkeley MBA Program

Each day of the full-time Berkeley MBA orientation focused on a Haas Defining Principle: Students Always, Confidence Without Attitude, Question the Status Quo, and Beyond Yourself.

Alumnus Tom Kelley, MBA 83, general manager of design firm IDEO, kicked off the week Monday, Aug. 13, by addressing the importance of innovation on the day dedicated to Student Always.

Later in the week, on Thursday, the Question the Status Quo day began with a rare talk on path-bending leadership by alumnus Ralph Bahna (right), MBA 65, former CEO of Cunard Cruise Lines; chairman and founder of Club Quarters, an international group of private low-rate business hotels in city center locations; and board chairman of Priceline.com.

Bahna spoke on the difference between "thinkers" and "transactors" and shared his "secret sauce" for becoming a "thinker" to solve problems and transform organizations.

"If a person can add another half hour or an hour in a week [to thinking], their power increases immensely," said Bahna, who has spoke only one other time publicly in the last 20 years.

His recipe for success included boiling down a challenge or course of action very concisely, determination and tenacity, and the sales skills to convince others to implement a solution. He noted, for instance, how his efforts to successfully create the predecessor to business class travel at Trans World Airlines in the late 1970s required him to rewrite a proposal more than 20 times.

Later on Thursday, students were introduced to the case method with a study of Virgin America co-authored by Adam Berman, Haas executive director, emerging initiatives; Lecturer Frank Schultz, and Dickson L. Louie, a Bay Area consultant. After asking students who would invest in Virgin and then why or why not, Berman surprised them by introducing Virgin America CEO David Cush (right), who was standing in the audience and then walked them through more details on the airline's strategy.

Although there’s much to be learned from the speakers, O-Week co-chair Chris Brown, MBA 13, says what new students enjoy the most is the chance to meet one another, learn about the school, and create their own class culture.

“We do quite a bit of team-building activities. Some of it is silly and irreverent, and some of it is more substantive like our Building and Running Great Study Teams session,” he says. “The incoming students seem to very much enjoy those activities and relish the opportunity to interact with their new classmates.”

The full-time MBA class of 2014 consists of 240 students chosen from a pool of 3,352 applicants. The average class GPA is 3.61 and average GMAT 715. The median age of the class is 28, and members have an average of five years’ professional experience. Thirty-seven percent are international students, representing 38 countries and speaking more than 35 languages, including Afrikaans, Creole, Kyrgyz, and Maori.

The class includes 10 U.S. veterans; veterans from Israel, the U.K., South Korea, and Taiwan; and even the first South Korean astronaut, who spent 10 days on a Russian spacecraft. One student founded and led an organization that has helped 16,000 young people launch more than 130 entrepreneurial ventures; another volunteered in Tanzania with the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Several students are accomplished athletes, including a professional soccer player, a competitive gymnast, a cyclist who biked across the country to raise awareness for affordable housing, and an athlete who has competed in 28 triathlons. There are also four Fulbright Scholars and a Muskie Fellow.

Evening & Weekend MBA Program

Annie’s Inc. CEO John Foraker (right), MBA 94, inspired the evening and weekend students during their orientation from Aug. 3-5 at the Doubletree Berkeley Marina Hotel. Foraker shared advice on building a winning culture and putting together at team that truly reflects what a company stands for.

"I'll take an 'A' team and a 'C' product over a 'C' team and an 'A' product any day,” he told them. However, Foraker spent considerable time talking about how his ‘A’ team has worked hard to develop superior ‘A’ organic products.

This year’s Evening & Weekend MBA class consists of 250 students, chosen from an applicant pool of 752, an 11 percent increase in applications from last year. The average GMAT score is 692 and the median age 31. Students represent 179 companies and 16 job functions in 35 different industries with a median work experience of seven years. Sixty-six percent of students are multilingual, with 25 different countries represented. Just slightly over one-third of the students have master’s degrees, and six have PhDs.

One student is a medical device consultant and chef in a Michelin two-star restaurant; another co-produced and directed a documentary film; and a third holds a Guinness world record for riding 16,345 miles across Africa on a quad bike with his wife, raising money for charity.

Undergraduate Program

Undergraduate Program Executive Director Erika Walker welcomed the incoming class at orientation August 21.

Students spent much of the afternoon building their cohort teams through the Class of 2014 Journey, an interactive game. The game consisted of a series of puzzles that took them on a trip around the Haas campus to learn more about the school and its programs. For the first time, students used Twitter─their hashtag is #HaasCohorts─to record their progress and rack up extra points. This year’s class of 346 students has been divided into six cohorts.

The class of 2014 was selected from an applicant pool of 2,055. The average GPA of continuing Berkeley students is 3.65, and the average GPA of transfer students is 3.80. The class includes 71 international students representing 24 countries ranging from Afghanistan and Indonesia to Belarus and Sweden.

Read the Undergraduate Blog

PhD Program

For the first time ever, the incoming class of Haas PhD students includes more women (8) than men (7). Less than 3 percent of 525 applicants were accepted into the PhD Program this year. Three of the 15 new students hail from outside the United States: Colombia, China, and Canada.

“The fact that there are more women than men is very significant,” says Kim Guilfoyle, the PhD program’s director of student affairs. “As far back as I can see on record, we’ve always been happy to have a class of 30 percent or 40 percent women.”

In another first, each new PhD student is receiving an iPad as part of a pilot project to reduce paper use and printing costs. The PhD Program launched the pilot after surveying current students with tablets and finding they reported reducing printing by 70 percent to 90 percent.

Three new PhD students each are specializing in business and public policy, finance, marketing, and management of organizations; and one each in accounting, real estate, and operations and information technology management.

Entering PhD students range in age from 21 to 31, with the average age of 28. Four students already hold advanced degrees.

Berkeley-Haas Launches New MBA for Executives Program That Focuses on Innovative Leadership

On Aug. 14, the Haas School formally launched its new Berkeley MBA for Executives Program, which is designed to put executive careers on the fast track and to teach working professionals how to generate fresh ideas that drive their businesses forward.  The program will enroll its first class in May 2013.

Recruiting for the first class begins with information sessions in Berkeley on Aug. 30 and in San Francisco on Sept. 13. For a schedule of additional recruiting events go to http://mbaforexecs.haas.berkeley.edu/admissions/visit.html

Specifically tailored to seasoned executives who have about 12 years of professional experience on average, the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program is anchored in the same rigorous, general management curriculum as the school’s top-ten ranked full-time and evening and weekend MBA programs.  The program also features the school’s cutting-edge innovative leader curriculum, which is supported by Haas’ distinctive culture: Question the Status Quo; Confidence Without Attitude; Students, Always; and Beyond Yourself.

The new program stresses a convenient, business-friendly schedule, with classes meeting every three weeks on Thursdays through Saturdays over the course of 19 months. Students stay at a nearby hotel while attending classes; most meals are provided.  The majority of sessions will be taught on the Berkeley-Haas campus, but other sessions–each with a special focus–will be held overseas and in various locations.

The new program will draw upon the school’s highly successful Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program, which will have graduated more than 600 students when its last class completes it studies and the program closes in early 2013. Berkeley-Columbia alumni provided input and guidance into the new MBA program for executives, drawing on their experiences and perspectives as alumni to help the Haas School create an exciting new program and an expanding community of innovative thinkers.

In addition, the new program will draw upon the school’s expertise in teaching thousands of executives who have attended the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education at Haas, which has been offering non-degree advancement programs to executives for more than 60 years. 

The first class of the new program will meet for orientation on May 15, 2013, and begin classes on May 16. The admissions team will start accepting applications as of Sept. 15, 2012.

“Our strength lies in teaching students how to bring fresh thinking and new ideas to every facet of the organization, and to motivate others to do so as well,” says Haas School Dean Rich Lyons. “We do so by providing them with a set of tools that empowers them to enter any situation─no matter how ambiguous─and to find a way to frame the challenge and develop creative solutions from it.”

These tools are taught in the Berkeley Innovative Leader Development (BILD) curriculum that focuses on teaching four essential capabilities — framing problems, experimenting to learn, navigating uncertainty, and influencing beyond authority.  These lessons are contained in offerings such as:

  • In a Problem Finding Problem Solving course, students will learn problem framing, specifically to navigate the design and innovation process by applying different modes of thinking in order to find, frame, reframe and solve difficult business problems.
  • In the Applied Innovation course student teams will apply these tools to address an actual company challenge or global issue, such as providing safe drinking water. Faculty will coach and mentor students on working effectively in cross-disciplinary teams, on the content area of the project, and on experimenting with alternative solutions.
  • A weeklong, required international trip to Asia will further deepen familiarity with problem framing tools and the innovation process applied to an international challenge.
  • A study trip to Washington DC led by a senior faculty member familiar with the inner workings of the capitol.
  • A study trip based in the entrepreneurial San Francisco /Silicon Valley area.
  • A campus-based lecture series featuring the best and brightest UC Berkeley faculty researchers, whose work and ideas may be transformed into commercial blockbusters of the future.

Students are also able to participate in international business seminars and intensive, week-long blocks in conjunction with the Evening & Weekend Berkeley MBA Program.  Many of these block weeks and electives will be taught off campus. 

Students of the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program will be able to network with alumni of the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA, as well as the larger Berkeley-Haas alumni network of 40,000 undergraduate, MBA, financial engineering, and PhD students around the world. 

Being based on campus will also allow participants to take full advantage of the university’s and the business school’s distinguished speakers, conferences, and cultural events, such as entrepreneurship-related events, the Economist Innovation conference, the Dean’s Speaker Series with C-level innovators from a wide range of industries, and university-wide talks and performing arts. 

 

Haas Expands World-Class Faculty

The Haas School is kicking off the fall semester with three new tenured professors from some of the East Coast’s top business schools: new Lester Center Faculty Director Toby Stuart, a management and entrepreneurship professor from Harvard; Professor Ross Levine, from Brown, ranked one of the ten most-cited finance experts in the past decade; and Gustavo Manso, from MIT, who already has won an award teaching full-time Berkeley MBA students since arriving in the spring.

The Berkeley-Haas faculty also has been bolstered by five new assistant professors and more than a dozen new lecturers and visiting faculty.

“We continue to hire at the very top of the faculty market,” says Haas Dean Rich Lyons. “It is a part of what’s making us stronger and stronger. Great faculty attracts great students and great staff─a virtuous circle, and we are in it.”

Toby Stuart

Toby Stuart, a visiting professor at Haas from Harvard for the past two years, officially joined the faculty’s Management of Organizations (MORS) Group this summer. He holds the Leo Helzel Chair in Entrepreneurship.

Stuart’s research focuses on social networks, venture capital networks, and the role of networks in the creation of new firms. He is the recipient of the 2007 Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship, granted every other year to recognize an individual’s contributions to entrepreneurship research. Stuart also received the Administrative Science Quarterly’s Scholarly Contribution (best paper) award.

Stuart says one of his goals is to develop the curriculum’s aim to teach students to think like entrepreneurs regardless of their fields. “Even if they don’t plan to launch a startup company, students can learn how to use innovation to strengthen organizations in any field,” says Stuart, who earned his PhD from Stanford and his AB, summa cum laude, in economics from Carleton College.

Ross Levine

Professor Ross Levine, previously at Brown University’s economics department, is the Haas School’s new Willis H. Booth Chair in Banking and Finance, and a member of the Economic Analysis and Policy Group.

Levine’s just-released book, Guardians of Finance: Making Regulators Work for Us, with James Barth and Gerard Caprio critiques the role of U.S. and international regulators in causing global financial crises and proposes strategies for improving their performance.

Levine’s primary research examines how financial sector regulations and the operation of financial systems affect economic growth and poverty, economic stability, and the distribution of income and economic opportunities. His scope ranges from international finance to entrepreneurship, including the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs. He has published more than 100 articles.

Levine is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations as well as a senior fellow at the Milken Institute. He received his PhD in economics from UCLA after graduating Phi Beta Kappa in economics from Cornell.

Gustavo Manso
Haas Finance Group Associate Professor Gustavo Manso arrived at Haas in January 2012 and, after just one semester, students in his MBA corporate finance students nominated him for a teaching award. Manso previously taught for five years at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.

In 2010, Manso received the Swiss Finance Institute’s Outstanding Paper Award. He was also honored with the Review of Financial Studies Young Researcher Award in 2009. As co-founder of the Finance Theory Group, Manso helps foster theoretical research in the areas of corporate finance, financial institutions, and financial markets.

Studying financial incentives, Manso’s research has revealed that combining tolerance for early failure with reward for long-term success is effective in motivating both creativity and innovation.

Manso earned his PhD in Finance from Stanford, an MS in mathematics from the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada in Brazil; and his BA in economics from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica in Brazil.

New assistant professors, visiting faculty, and lecturers

Berkeley-Haas also is welcoming five new assistant professors: Andreea Gorbatai; Jose Guajardo; Alexander Nezlobin; Sameer Srivastava; and Brett Green.

  • Andreea Gorbatai, who has a PhD in organizational behavior and an MBA in sociology from Harvard, studies social structures and mechanisms of collective production, open innovation, and collective entrepreneurship.
  • Jose Guajardo, PhD from Wharton, focuses his research on service operations, supply chain management, operations strategy, and business analytics.
  • Alexander Nezlobin, who earned his PhD at Stanford and a BS in applied Mathematics from the St. Petersburg State Polytechnic University in Russia, studies equity valuation, managerial performance measurement, profitability analysis, and monopoly regulation.
  • Sameer Srivastava, who earned his PhD in organizational behavior and sociology from Harvard, studies network analysis, culture and cognition, and research design and methods.
  • Brett Green, previously a visiting professor at Haas from Northwestern, earned his PhD at Stanford and studies information and sports economics, including news and liquidity in markets when traders have different information.

The Haas faculty also will be strengthened by four visiting professors:

  • Haas alumnus Nicholas Economides, PhD 81, a visiting professor from NYU’s Stern School of Business, is an internationally recognized academic authority on network economics, electronic commerce and public policy and has published more than 100 articles in top trade journals.
  • Hanno Lustig, visiting associate professor from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, won the 2009 Terker Family Prize (First Prize) for a co-authored paper on risk factors in currency markets and the 2010 NASDAQ OMX award for the best paper on asset pricing.
  • Adair Morse, visiting professor from the University of Chicago, studies tax evasion and corporate fraud as well as equity markets, including activist investors and performance in private equity.
  • Annette Vissing-Jorgensen, visiting professor from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, studies household consumption and portfolio choice, stock market participation, returns to entrepreneurial investment, and corporate governance.

In addition, a well-rounded group of lecturers will be joining Haas this fall:

  • Ajay Bam, a former senior product manager at Nokia who also has more than 10 years of experience with startups, is teaching the undergraduate Introduction to Entrepreneurship course.
  • Colin Boyle a San Francisco-based partner and managing director with The Boston Consulting Group is teaching the MBA course Strategic Management of Nonprofit Organizations.
  • Asiff Hirji, a Partner with TPG Capital with a specialization in financial services, technology and e-commerce and formerly president of TD AMERITRADE, and Theodore Kuh, BS 82, former managing director and global head of Citigroup’s retail industry, are co-teaching Private Equity: from LBOs to Emerging Markets.
  • Don Howard, head of the San Francisco office of the Bridgespan Group, an advisor for nonprofits, will co-teach Advanced Social Sector Solutions.
  • Bhavik Joshi, BCEMBA 08, co-founder of an early-stage startup and senior fellow at Haas’ Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, and Bob Neher, a founding partner, president, and CEO of St. Ives Laboratories beauty care products and CEO of Botalia Pharmaceuticals, will co-teach Advanced Entrepreneurship in the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program.
  • Safwan Shah, an executive with Total Systems, which processes electronic payments for financial and nonfinancial institutions, is co-teaching Entrepreneurship in the Evening & Weekend MBA Program.
  • Brian Steel, executive in residence in the Cleantech to Market Program with 30 years of business innovation and leadership experience, is co-teaching the MBA course.

Haas Signs on to U.N. Principles of Responsible Management Education

Demonstrating its commitment to a sustainable future, the Haas School became a signatory of the United Nations’ Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) in June.

The aim of PRME is to inspire and champion responsible management education, research, and thought leadership globally. “PRME provides a framework to guide schools’ efforts to continuously improve curricula and research related to corporate citizenship and sustainability,” says Jo Mackness, executive director of the Haas School’s Center for Responsible Business (CRB). The center will serve as the primary hub to coordinate and report the Haas School’s activities to the U.N.

Dean Rich Lyons added, “PRME’s principles are very much aligned with our school’s culture and vision to develop pathbending leaders.”

Haas was one of the first high-ranking business schools to sign onto PRIME.

PRME signatories commit to principles that include :

  • the development of students as future generators of sustainable value for business and society;
  • engagement in research on the role of corporations in the creation of sustainable social, environmental, and economic value;
  • interaction with corporate leadership to explore jointly effective approaches to meeting social and environmental responsibilities.

Being a PRME signatory also involves conducting an annual project in support of PRME, such as heightened efforts around improving energy efficiency or launching new courses, and sharing progress against PRME aims publicly through an annual report to stakeholders.

“We have been doing many of these things for years,” says Mackness. “We hope to be in a position five years from now to see our graduates continuing to apply these principles in practice and to serve as a model for other business schools.”