Author: Laura Counts

New Behavioral Lab Expands Faculty Research Opportunities

| by Laura Counts

A new behavioral lab has opened on the fifth floor of the Haas School’s faculty wing, enabling faculty to complete more small-group studies.

The behavioral lab, comprised of six small offices, was built to support cross-disciplinary behavioral research, which typically involves one to six participants at a time. One office features a big-screen TV and video game console, complete with steering wheel, for experiments; another offers food samples for marketing research. The facility was built in space previously used as a hallway. Faculty held a grand opening celebration of the facility on May 10.

Before the lab was constructed, 20 faculty, post-doc, and doctoral student researchers used the Koret classroom breakout rooms, logging in

more than 6,700 participant hours last year. The new lab will increase the capacity to more than 8,000 participant hours annually and allow a greater number of small-group studies to run simultaneously. 

“The behavioral lab is a totally critical component in my research,” says Assistant Professor Dana Carney in the faculty’s Management of Organizations Group. Carney’s research on success, leadership, and adaptive behavior involves looking at participants’ physiological changes, including increases in testosterone, cortisol, heart rates, and temperature.

Carney can’t talk about her current research in the behavioral lab because it involves Haas volunteers. But she notes that the behavioral lab at Columbia, where she previously worked, allowed her to study how being given power in a lab context makes people more stress-resilient. Participants could give a speech without becoming stressed and keep their arms in buckets of ice-cold water longer, evidence of higher pain tolerance, she recalls. Her conclusion: “Power changes us physiologically to endure the stresses of life. It literally acts as a drug to help us better handle the challenges of our lives.”

Such work would not be possible without a behavioral lab, which is why Carney says she is “very, very excited about the new lab at Haas.” “These studies have to be done in closed rooms where you have two people or a small group interacting,” she says.

Other lines of research that will be explored at the lab include :

  • the effect of experimental variation on people’s confidence and feelings about procedural justice;
  • the effects of quantitative complexity on risk-taking in financial investments;
  • impression management and the effects of overconfidence on credibility;
  • how differences in perceived power and status affect behavior in small groups;
  • factors that influence how people negotiate.

The Xlab, a unit of the Institute of Business and Economic Research, continues to operate at Berkeley-Haas. During the past year Xlab ran more than 200 experiment sessions involving nearly 6,000 participants.

Haas Trio Receives Academy of Management Award

| by Laura Counts

A trio in the Haas community─a PhD student, a professor, and an alumnus─ co-authored an article that won a 2012 "Best Paper" distinction from the Academy of Management.

The article, titled "Materials Transfer Agreements (MTAs), Licenses, and the Flow of Scientific Knowledge: A Preliminary Assessment," is co-authored by PhD student Neil Thompson; Haas Professor Emeritus David Mowery; and Haas alumnus Arvids Ziedonis, PhD 00, a professor at the University of Oregon.

The authors will present their paper in Boston during a session on university-industry interfaces at the Academy of Management's annual meeting, the largest annual gathering of management scholars in the world, held each year in August.

Using data from the University of California (UC) system from 1997 to 2007, the researchers examined the effects of licenses on university-patented discoveries and of materials transfer agreements (MTAs) on the publication of follow-on research citing scientific papers that were also linked to a licensed patent. MTAs are agreements between researchers at universities, other research institutions, and private sector firms governing the exchange of research materials.

Despite concerns by some scholars and policy-makers that MTAs may have a “chilling effect” on progress in academic research, preliminary results in this study found little evidence that recent growth in MTAs and licenses covering the results of academic research are constraining scientific communication.

The authors did observe, however, that in two instances — MTAs between UC researchers and private companies and exclusive licenses covering patents in “research tools” patent classes — these instruments are associated with a decline in citations to scientific papers linked to the related MTAs and licenses. These findings suggest that in some specific contexts, MTAs and licenses may have a negative effect on academic science. The findings to be presented in Boston are preliminary, however, and Thompson, Mowery, and Ziedonis continue to refine their analysis.

Berkeley Angel Network Seeds Entrepreneurs

| by Laura Counts

Every year, dozens of companies are launched by innovators and innovations from the UC Berkeley community—many helped off the ground by angel investors.

Some of these investors also have ties to the campus, yet until recently there was no organized way for these alumni angel investors to connect with each other or with budding UC Berkeley startups. That changed when several UC Berkeley alumni teamed up with the founding director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship last year to launch the Berkeley Angel Network.

“Our network includes alumni and faculty who share an interest in angel investing and a common Berkeley heritage,” says George Willman, MBA93, who co-founded the group with the Lester Center’s Jerry Engel. “We are all interested in startups and entrepreneurship, and the group itself is a startup that we are building together.”

The network has attracted about 100 members and held two networking events and two pitch meetings, where about 30 investors heard presentations from nine companies. At least three—including two from Haas—have been offered some funding by members of the network.

Although the network does not limit itself to only Berkeley startups, it’s a natural place for alumni entrepreneurs to turn. Bhavin Parikh, MBA 10, was invited by Engel to pitch the network at its second meeting in April, seeking funding for his Internet test-prep company, Magoosh.

"Berkeley Angel Network made the daunting task of finding interested investors much easier,” says Parikh, Magoosh’s CEO. “I presented my company to over 20 pre-qualified investors and received some funding within weeks."

Angel investors typically provide seed money to early-stage ventures with high-growth potential. Their investments tend to be smaller and earlier than venture capitalists’, and angels also tend to be interested in playing an advisory role in the companies’ development. According to the Angel Capital Association, there are about 40 angel groups associated with universities nationwide.

“The Berkeley Angel Network is a natural extension of all we do at the Lester Center to support entrepreneurship at Berkeley,” says Engel. “Our first meetings have proven that Berkeley has a wonderful community of investors willing to support entrepreneurs. It is more than simple investing—it is really a collaborative activity to encourage and support our young entrepreneurs.”

More information on the Berkeley Angel Network, including guidelines for entrepreneurs and investors, is available at berkeleyangelnetwork.com.

Full-time MBA Students Embark upon their Futures, Invest in Haas

| by Laura Counts

The full-time MBA class of 2012 may have marched to Pomp and Circumstance on May 19, but they leave a lasting legacy: More than $69,000 raised in the annual Lifelong Connections (LLC) Campaign.

This year 94 percent of the class gave, with an unusually high 20 percent of them donating up front rather than pledging. Campaign co-chair Andrea Leewong, MBA 12, attributes this to a $2-to-$1 matching program set up by a group of young alumni. “This definitely helped to boost our overall numbers.” Gifts from the campaign go to funds that include MBA program support, faculty support, and the dean’s discretionary fund.

“I’ve had a phenomenal experience at Haas,” says Leewong, who co-chaired with Stephanie Tsai, MBA 12. Leewong says she was motivated to inspire others “in large part because of the generosity of those who came before me. I felt a strong desire to pay it forward.” Tsai notes that “LLC plays a big role in keeping our community strong.”

To reach out to fellow students with the LLC message, the campaign committee adopted its own version of the Haas Defining Principles as part of their message: Alumni Always, Pledging Without Attitude, Beyond Your Debt, and Enhance Your Status Yo. They also gave yellow sunglasses to those who donated or pledged. “An especially proud moment was when many of our classmates and even Dean Lyons wore them to graduation,” says Leewong.

Dean Rich Lyons receives a LifeLong Learning Campaign check from co-chairs Andrea Leewong (middle) and Stephanie Tsai, both MBA 12.

 

Nancy Unsworth and Scott Van Brunt, both MBA 12, in yellow glasses

Electric Eels and the Smart Grid: Case Study Explores GE’s Open Innovation Challenge

| by Laura Counts

When General Electric launched its “ecomagination” strategy to double its renewable energy business, CEO Jeffrey Immelt pledged $10 billion over five years for clean-tech R&D. The company also took a more unusual step for a traditional Fortune 500: It looked outside, soliciting renewable energy ideas from entrepreneurs and startups.

GE’s $140 million foray into open innovation is examined in a new case study by Adjunct Professor Henry Chesbrough published in the Spring 2012 edition of California Management Review, the school’s quarterly peer-reviewed journal. The case, “GE’s ecomagination Challenge: An Experiment in Open Innovation,” is part of a new case series written by Haas faculty to promote faculty research and the school’s teaching mission. Abbreviated versions of the cases are also published in the Financial Times.

GE’s ecomagination Challenge grew from the company’s awareness that even with a $37 billion energy business and impressive in-house expertise, it didn’t have a corner on the market for good ideas in the rapidly changing renewable energy sector. Venture capitalists were pouring $2 billion a year into energy startups, including many in GE’s core business area.

Partnering with Kleiner Perkins, RockPort Capital, KPCB, Foundation Capital, Emerald Technology Ventures, and Carbon Trust, GE launched the challenge in July 2010. The company expected just a few hundred entries. Instead, nearly 4,000 entries poured in from 160 countries in the first round, followed by 1,000 more in a second round focused on improvements to the smart grid.

There were a few wacky ones—such as stocking a lake with electric eels and tossing in a power cord—but many held promise. By 2011, GE and its VC partners had invested $140 million in 23 startups, and made one acquisition.

Chesbrough uses the case to show how open innovation is not something that only takes place between companies, but can enable companies to tap into a larger community of innovators. Chesbrough pioneered the concept of open innovation, which holds that companies benefit by using external as well as internal ideas and technologies.

Read CMR and the Open Innovation Case

 

Role Reversal: New Book by Prof. Vogel Illustrates How the U.S. Lost Its Lead in Risk Regulation to Europe

| by Laura Counts

Air pollution, climate change, food additives, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and electronic product hazards all pose global consumer and environmental risks, but the regulatory controls to manage them vary by country and by region. In recent decades, Europe has taken the lead over the US in comprehensively managing such risks, according to a new book by Berkeley-Haas Professor David Vogel.
In The Politics of Precaution (Princeton University Press, April 2012), Vogel argues that there has been an overall shift towards greater regulation to manage risk in Europe than in the United States in the last five decades. Vogel, who holds the Soloman P. Lee Chair in Business Ethics at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, examined case studies and risk regulation over this period and found regulations–once more stringent in America–have become less comprehensive and innovative than those in Europe since that time.

Vogel recently answered questions about his book in a short interview:

Why did you want to compare the politics of consumer and environmental risk regulation in the United States and Europe?

Vogel: I have always been fascinated by how countries decide differently which risks they choose to worry about and regulate. Over the last five decades, Europe and the United States have perceived and regulated many similar risks differently, and I wanted to understand why. For example, during the 1970s and 1980s, why did Americans take the risks of ozone depleting chemicals more seriously than did most European governments? Or, more recently, why are the safety and environmental risks of genetically modified food very controversial in Europe, but not in the United States?

To what do you attribute global regulatory leadership shifting from the U.S. to Europe over the past decade? What are the implications?

Vogel: I think two big factors explain this shift. The first is the growth in the regulatory role of the European Union. In order to increase public support for its single market program, the EU has been highly responsive to public and political pressures, which have demanded higher levels of consumer and environmental protection. In the United States, a key factor has been the decline in partisan cooperation on regulatory policy making. Since the early 1990s, regulatory politics in Washington have become highly polarized, with Republicans increasingly opposed to enacting stronger regulations. The result has been two decades of policy gridlock. Because the EU’s market is not larger than that of the U.S. and its regulations more stringent, other countries are now following the regulatory lead of the EU rather than the U.S.

You write that American policymakers face a climate of critics who claim the U.S. is over-regulated. Please elaborate.

Vogel: While the extent of partisan gridlock is frustrating to both Democrats/liberals who would like to make many regulations stronger, and to Republicans/conservatives who would like to make them weaker, poll data suggests that many Americans are not very dissatisfied with the regulatory status quo. Compared to the three decades before 1990, there is a notable lack of strong public support for strengthening many health, safety, and environment standards. At the same time, there is also little public support for Republican and business efforts to weaken them. However, as I discuss in my book, California is a notable exception: The state has adopted so many EU regulations that it could almost qualify as the 29th member state of the EU!

The bovine book cover is quite eye-catching. What was the inspiration?

Vogel: The design was inspired by the fact that several of the important differences between food safety regulations in the U.S and the EU described in the book involve cows and cattle. For example, the use of beef and milk hormones and antibiotics in animal feed has been banned in Europe but not in the U.S. In addition, during the 1990s, public anxieties over mad cow disease in Europe played an important role in strengthening public demands for more precautionary food safety standards. I hope that readers find the book’s content as engaging as its cover.

Air pollution, climate change, food additives, pesticides, cosmetic safety, and electronic product hazards all pose global consumer and environmental risks, but the regulatory controls to manage them vary by country and by region. In recent decades, Europe has taken the lead over the US in comprehensively managing such risks, according to a new book by Berkeley-Haas Professor David Vogel.

Hundreds to Toss Mortar Boards in Undergrad, MBA, and PhD Commencements

| by Laura Counts

More than 900 students will graduate from the Haas School in three separate ceremonies this month, celebrating the end of one chapter in their educations and the beginning of another as Students Always.

PhD Commencement

The first graduation ceremony, the Berkeley-Haas PhD Program, will take place Saturday, May 12, at 10:30 a.m. in the Wells Fargo Room. Sixteen PhD students are expected to graduate in 2012, moving on to teach in such universities as MIT and NYU Stern as well as work at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Full-time and Evening & Weekend MBA Commencement

On Saturday, May 19, 500 students in the Full-time and Evening & Weekend MBA programs will celebrate their graduation at 9 a.m. at the Greek Theatre.  The number of graduates is evenly split between the two programs. (The 68 graduates of the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA Program held their ceremony in early February.)

Commencement speaker Shantanu Narayen, MBA 93, CEO of Adobe Systems, will share business insights that he has gained during nearly 15 years working for the tech giant, where he began as vice president of engineering. As CEO, Narayen has lead the company in acquisitions of web development software company Macromedia and online marketing and web analytics firm Omniture.

During the ceremony, outstanding MBA students will receive awards for excellence in three areas: academic achievement for the student with the highest GPA from each program; community service, given to those community fellows who contributed the most volunteer hours; and service and leadership awards for full-time MBA students who are considered to have made the greatest lasting impact in improving the community and the school.

Haas also will announce the winners of the Cheit teaching awards for faculty and graduate student instructors, , as well as the results from the class fundraising campaigns, during the MBA and undergraduate commencement ceremonies.

Undergraduate Commencement

Four hundred and fifty undergraduate students will receive their diplomas in a ceremony that will begin at 9 a.m. on May 18 in the Greek Theatre. Margo Alexander, BS 68, will deliver the commencement address, inspiring the crowd with her accomplishments during her dramatic rise from stock analyst through several positions at PaineWebber to become chair and CEO of UBS Global Asset Management (after it acquired PaineWebber).

In a fun twist this year, Haas Undergraduate Program Manager Dinko Lakic is using “crowdsourcing” to allow students to choose their graduation ceremony music playlist.  Students can nominate and “like” songs on their class Facebook page, and the selections with the most “likes” will be chosen for the list of music that will be played during the hour before the ceremony begins.

Three undergraduates will be recognized with awards. The Department Citation in Business, given to the student with the best academic record, will go to Richard Berwick. Berwick and three other Berkeley students are in the process of launching One Billion Watts, a supplier of energy-efficient products.

Alicia Salmeron is the winner of this year’s Haas Community Fellow Award, which recognizes the student who has excelled in volunteerism. During her years at Haas, she mentored non-English-speaking students in local elementary schools and spent the spring of 2011 at the U.S. Embassy in Madrid, where she visited American prisoners to ensure their well-being, facilitated extradition cases, assisted travelers in distress, and processed emergency passports. She will relocate to Washington, D.C., this summer to begin work in Microsoft’s public sector division.

Christopher Severn has been selected by his classmates to be the commencement speaker. He was active in the student Jericho! improv and sketch comedy group, serving as president his senior year. He also coached golf to children in Oakland. Severn will begin his career as an analyst with health-care consulting firm Triage.

Job Outlook

In looking ahead to their employment futures, this year’s graduates can be a bit more optimistic than those in recent years. “The MBA market continues to improve as we see strong hiring in typical industries such as consulting and technology. Silicon Valley hiring is strong, and we continue to see activity in the technology sector,” says Jenn Bridge, director of recruiting, MBA Career Management. 

Bridge says she has seen a larger number of students interested in and securing jobs in the consumer packaged goods sector as well as an uptick in venture capital and asset management postings.

Companies that had a major presence on campus this year include McKinsey & Co., Amazon, Samsung Global Strategy, Microsoft, Zynga, The Boston Consulting Group, and J.P. Morgan.

Undergraduates can also be hopeful for better times ahead. A recent national survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges & Employers revealed that employers plan to hire 10 percent more recent college graduates than they did in 2011. This trend was evident in Berkeley’s Just in Time job fair in mid-April, which attracted more than 160 employers, including tech giants, engineering firms, digital media companies, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations.

“We believe the large turnout is indicative of employers feeling more confident about their hiring plans, no longer holding off on them, and wanting to reach Cal students before they disperse and find opportunities elsewhere,” says Paul Savage, Haas employer relations specialist.

Haas to Launch Three Digital Classroom Pilots

| by Laura Counts

Tapping into new cutting-edge technologies, the Haas School is launching three digital courses on a pilot basis starting this summer to optimize the teaching opportunities offered by this game-changing medium.

"Digital education is revolutionizing how we teach, including our traditional courses. It already affords us new and deeper ways to customize how students absorb material and how they link it to their own interests," says Dean Rich Lyons. "This is the future. We need to shape it─and be a leader."

Lyons also has been asked to serve on a new executive group that is steering UC Berkeley's participation in online learning.

The first online course, to be rolled out at Haas in June, is Data and Decisions, a prerequisite for the school's Evening & Weekend MBA Program.

In the undergraduate program, Lecturer Tiffany Rassmusen will begin teaching Professional Judgment in Accounting online starting in July. And finally, Associate Professor Cameron Anderson will begin teaching his popular MBA elective Power and Politics course online to both full-time and evening and weekend students in Fall B. He will also offer the course in the classroom to full-time students during Fall A.

"We specifically selected quantitative and qualitative courses and faculty with different teaching styles," says Jay Stowsky, Haas senior assistant dean for instruction. "Haas also is using three different vendors to implement the pilots to better learn about the effectiveness of different approaches to development of online education courses."

Funds from a $1 million matching gift from Steve and Susan Chamberlin, MBA 87, former members of the Haas faculty, are being used to cover the costs of the pilots. The gift also will help pilot initiatives at other UC Berkeley professional schools, including the College of Engineering, Graduate School of Education, School of Information, and School of Public Health.

The faculty members have spent months rethinking their courses for the new format. "We're building in both synchronous and asynchronous learning experiences that take advantage of the online medium," explains Adam Berman, Haas' executive director of emerging initiatives, who is leading Haas’ online activities as well as a consortium of UC Berkeley professional schools to explore online education.

"One of the biggest advantages is this: when I go in and teach a class, I’m teaching the same thing to all 30, 60, or 100 students and I don’t fully know whether my students understand the material. Online there’s not only a way to understand whether students are progressing but also which concepts are challenging for students to learn. This will allow faculty to tailor instruction to each student. That’s a huge difference," adds Berman.

For example, students will complete an assessment before taking their online class so that the instructor knows more about them. Then, if the instructor knows a student is interested in health care, he or she can tailor the content to include more examples in that field.

The technology also enables instructors to build new features into their courses. Anderson, for instance, notes that for years he has wanted to create an exercise to accompany a lesson on the importance of resources to power–resources ranging from a team to a position in an organization to expertise. Haas' outside partner, with surprisingly minimal feedback required from Anderson, created an online game called "King of the Hill" that involves gold mining to illustrate the points from Anderson's class.

"It's pretty darn clever," Anderson says. "Through trading gold, students experience and learn the ins and outs of political corruption."

Although the content in Anderson's online course will be the same as in the in-person version, he believes the digital course may prove even more effective for a few reasons.

Anderson's online class, which was oversubscribed several times over, will involve one day a week of synchronous learning for as long as an hour and a half (compared to approximately three hours in the classroom version). During that time, all students will log onto their computers for a variety of learning activities through an online portal.

Anderson believes that format will work better at creating a level playing field for students who may be less likely to speak up in class. "This is a much safer environment that pushes them to contribute a lot more," Anderson says. "I think there is going to be a ton more participation."

He also believes students will learn more from each other than in the in-class version because they will be required to have more group discussions on their own. And he expects students will learn more because they will be going at their own pace. "I've heard from my students that my class is like drinking from a fire hose," Anderson acknowledges. "This online approach allows for self-paced learning that I think will benefit students in their busy, time-constrained lives."

Why did Anderson want to be one of the first faculty members to dip his feet into the world of online education? "When I was in college I was taking a comparative religions course that I wasn't doing well in, and I realized it was because I was distracted in class," he recalls.

By luck, the professor offered an audio recording of the class. After listening to that, Anderson found his performance "went through the roof" because he could stop the tape when he didn't understand something and then replay or pause to think about a point the professor made.

Plus, he adds, "I like the idea of using new innovative technology to convey content in ways that will engage and teach students even more."

Three Teams with Haas Alumni, Students Win at UC Berkeley Startup Competition

| by Laura Counts


Bplan winners Calcula: David Gal; Buzz Bonneau, MBA 11; Dan Azagury; and Kate Garrett.

Haas alumnus Buzz Bonneau, MBA 11, and his team, Calcula Technologies, won the $20,000 grand prize at the UC Berkeley Startup Competition April 26 for their innovative kidney stone treatment. All told, Berkeley-Haas students and alumni were on three winning teams at the 14th annual competition hosted by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship.

In addition to taking home the grand prize, Calcula also won the $5,000 first-place prize in the Life Sciences track. Calcula's innovative treatment allows smaller kidney stones to be treated in a doctor’s office.

“We are really excited to have the money to complete an in-vivo study of our device next month,” says Bonneau. “We truly believe Calcula's technology will help 1.5 million kidney stone patients avoid six weeks of the worst pain of their lives."

Other Haas wins included Back to the Roots, founded by Haas undergraduate alumni Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez, both BS 09. The team won the $5,000 first-place prize in the Products and Services Track and the $5,000 People’s Choice Award for their grow-at-home gourmet mushroom kits.

Haas undergraduate Nanxi Liu, BS 12, and her Nanoly venture took home the $1,000 Elevator Pitch prize. Nanoly, which also includes UC Berkeley PhD students Chawita Netirojjanakul (Chemistry) and Peter Matheu (Applied Science and Tech.), recently won $70,000 in the Duke Startup Challenge for its technology that enables cheap, effective, and safe delivery of vaccines worldwide without refrigeration.

“We are very excited by all the work the student organizers and Lester Center staff  have done to drive the transition this year from the historic UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition to the new UC Berkeley Startup Competition," says Lester Center Executive Director André Marquis, referring to a change this year in the competition's name and format.

"The name change is the manifestation of the many changes the team has made to drive more learning and refinement between the startups, customers, and domain experts throughout the competition," he adds. "It reflects the way we teach entrepreneurship here at Berkeley-Haas and how we work to create the most impactful, scalable startups from across our great colleges, laboratories, and partner companies."

Undergrad Team to Represent Cal at Mobile Health Competition in South Africa

| by Laura Counts

A team of four Berkeley undergraduates was one of only twelve competitors worldwide accepted to participate in this year’s GSM Association Mobile Health University Challenge in Cape Town, South Africa, on May 28.

Berkeley’s team designed a digital checklist called LifeCheck that helps health-care providers avoid potentially deadly mistakes. The team developed a prototype of its application in Cal’s Mobile Applications and Entrepreneurship class, which is open to all majors.

Two members of the Berkeley team, including Haas undergrad Hung Dang, BS 12, will travel to Cape Town to present the idea and meet industry representatives. The winning team will receive a $5,000 award.

Other U.S. schools accepted include USF, UCSF, and MIT. They will compete against teams from Indonesia, Jordan, Brazil, Lebanon, Canada, Senegal, and the UK. The competition is part of the Mobile Health Summit, an industry conference addressing the role of mobile technology in human health.

For more information, see bmic.org/gsmamobilehealthchallenge.

Five Haas Teams Serve Up Proposals for elBulli Competition

| by Laura Counts

Five Berkeley MBA teams have submitted proposals for a new course of action for elBulli restaurant as part of world-renowned Spanish Chef Ferran Adrià's international Ideas for Transformation competition.

Haas was the only West Coast business school selected to participate in the global competition, which launched last year and required submissions on April 30. Adrià asked MBA students to develop strategies and models to guide the 2014 launch of elBullifoundation, the successor to his recently closed restaurant, which he hopes to establish as a "pioneering center for gastronomic creativity and innovation."

Thirty-two teams submitted proposals. Three finalists, to be announced May 25, will be flown with their faculty adviser to Rosas, Spain, for the final awards ceremony on June 27. Lecturer Greg La Blanc advised the Haas teams.

"What I really loved about the competition was it was an open canvas," says Ken Su, MBA/MPH 13, who admits being a "Bay Area food snob." He adds: "Adrià said, 'I want a center for creativity,' and when people asked for more specifics, he said, 'That's it.'"

That lack of concrete guidance made the competition more difficult, Su acknowledges, but also more fun.

Haas Tenedores

Su's team, called the Haas Tenedores (forks), also consisted of Gabriel Gomez-Rojo and Aashi Vel, both MBA 13. Their proposal envisioned creating a "global ideation nexus" whose central program they called the TedBulli Innovation Camp─a twist on the TED Conferences. But unlike the typically one-day TED conferences, elBulli would host a month- or week-long camp focused on a particular theme, such as poverty in India, in which leaders from different disciplines and with different skill sets develop solutions.

Indeed, all of the Haas teams proposed creating a multidisciplinary forum, each with a different twist.

Los Osos de Oro

The Haas "Los Osos de Oro" (Golden Bears) team—Arun Abichandani, MBA 13, Brett Conner, MBA 12, and Aaron French, MBA 12—proposed creating a "traveling idearium" consisting of dynamic, focused workshops that bring concepts developed by foundation residents in Spain to all corners of the world. Spending a month in one location, the traveling idearium also would offer an evening interactive culinary experience–think Cirque de Soleil for food.

The concept stems from Adrià's proposal for an idearium—a pod-like, circular room—for his future foundation to give people the space and technology to brainstorm and refine ideas.

elBulli Ecosystem

Another team—consisting of Alia al Kasimi, Togay Ozen, and Onur Toprak, all MBA 13—proposed developing an incubator ecosystem that connects researchers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists, with elBulli serving as the nucleus. The goal would be to define and solve problems related to food in novel and creative ways, and then guide teams to successfully implement those ideas.

A group of big thinkers such as Al Gore and Alice Waters would identify problems the foundation should focus on, and then researchers with projects related to the problem and fellows without specific projects would be brought to the center to work on the issue, for periods of three to six months. At the conclusion of that period, the foundation would hold a conference for leaders in the field and venture capitalists to discuss the problem and choose projects to fund. The foundation would then get a stake in the ventures.

AlGeRa Team

The AlGeRa team─a name drawn from the first two letters of team members Alex Pederson, Genevieve Wang, and Ramon Alvarez, all MBA 12─proposes turning to the public for ideas for future research and creation at the foundation through an online forum. Those ideas would be selected by Adrià and five creative directors, renowned chefs who would each lead a creative team.

The students also focused on further developing The Bullipedia, an online repository of gastronomic creations and history created by Adrià, by expanding it to include new creations from the foundation and entries from the general public. The team proposed tapping partner Telefónica's expertise by creating an interactive exhibit at the foundation to feature the most interesting creations from elBulli restaurant and all over the world.

La Dolce Vita

The Haas team La Dolce Vita—Nandita Batra and Alicia Chan, both MBA 13, and Kristian Lau, MBA/MPH 13—presented their proposal as a viewbook for prospective participants in the foundation's activities. One valuable resource they proposed the foundation would give to successful chefs is time.

"Between his small crew of seven and 16-hour days, Chef Sawyer often wishes he had more time to stop and brainstorm about new dishes and new creations," the team wrote of a fictional chef. That chef, they said, went on to spend three weeks at the foundation learning about creativity while designing serving vessels with a ceramicist and thinking about color with a visual artist.

The team's proposal includes developing an "Inside Look Initiative" in which the foundation visits restaurants and homes to see how people interact with food and each other; a "Play Pen" to watch children discover the world through play' and a "Dim the Lights: elBulli by Night" annual fundraising dinner. 

 

Pumpkin oil caramel created at elBulli

Undergrads Make National Finals in Student Advertising Competition

| by Laura Counts

Innovation is important, but not at the expense of the tried and true. That was the key to success for imagiCal at the National Student Advertising Competition regionals in Reno on April 21. imagiCal, the UC Berkeley chapter of the American Advertising Federation, took first place to become one of 16 schools across the country advancing to the national finals in Austin, Texas, from June 3 to 4.

This year’s challenge was to design a $100 million ad campaign for Nissan targeted at multicultural millennials between the ages of 18 and 29. The company asked teams to highlight innovation in its product line. Most competitors focused on branding Nissan as an innovative car company, but according to imagiCal President Anna Zhi, BS 12, Berkeley’s team zeroed in on a few specific advances and matched them with concrete retail and sales strategies.

“I think that’s one of the things that helped us win this year,” Zhi says. “A lot of our PR features are designed to get people to look inside the cars.”

This year’s imagiCal team includes more than 30 students. The chapter is sponsored by both Haas and the ASUC and has been competing in the National Student Advertising

Competition since 1980. It has won seven times at the regional level and placed both third and fourth in the national finals. The team is currently fundraising to cover costs for the upcoming trip to Austin. To contribute, contact [email protected]. For more information, see CalAAF.com.

Haas Gear Store Reopens with New Products

| by Laura Counts

The Haas Gear store is reopening today, May 7, with a new design and new products, which also are available online at haasgear.com.

A longtime Haas vendor, Aviva Design, is taking over operations of the store at Haas in room S545A from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. A grand opening event is being planned for early fall.

The store features new design and apparel options with many more new products on the way.　

Yonka and Chris Hristov, the owners of Aviva Design, have worked with Haas Gear for the past 14 years, providing the majority of our merchandise and apparel designs.  In addition to Berkeley Haas, they have worked for such clients as Google, the Novato Fire Department, and the TESORO group.  They can be reached at [email protected], or at 642-7168.

Haas Community Invited to Fed Conference on Asia

| by Laura Counts

The Haas community has been invited to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's conference on “Challenges in Global Finance: The Role of Asia” on June 11 and 12.

The event will feature prominent policy-makers, bankers, regulators, and analysts discussing the current and future economic climate through an Asian perspective.

Participants will include Daniel Tarullo, governor, Federal Reserve System; Masaaki Shirakawa, governor, Bank of Japan; Zhu Min, deputy managing director, International Monetary Fund; and Alicia Garcia-Herrero, Chief Economist, BBVA Hong Kong.

For more information, visit frbsf.org/banking/asiasource/events/2012/0611/agenda.html.

 

Student Peer Support Website Wins Global Social Venture Competition

| by Laura Counts

A team from the University of Wisconsin that has developed an online nationwide student support community won the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) Friday at the Haas School.

The first-place winner, called Spill, has created a website called spillnow.com that allows students to vent (or spill) anonymously about their problems and then receive anonymous peer support within 48 hours. Mental health professionals screen all "spills" within five minutes of receipt, and "spillers' receive up to five messages of support that include feedback, empathy, and relevant resources.

Spill has intervened in 19 potential suicides since its inception. The team, which won $25,000 in the competition, plans to expand to other markets such as the military and high schools.

Spill was chosen from an initial pool of more than 600 entries to GSVC in a record 50 countries. GSVC was started by Berkeley MBA students in 1999 and has expanded to new parts of the globe every year since then.

Of the Haas entries, Watsi, a team that includes Katie Dewitt, MBA 13, won the $1,000 People's Choice Quick Pitch Award. Watsi calls itself the first global peer-to-peer crowdsourcing platform that enables donors to fund low-cost medical treatments for individuals in developing countries.

In addition, the other winners were:

·       Second place, $10,000: Greennovation Technologies, University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, is introducing an affordable and sustainable housing material made from jute and resin in order to address the acute housing crisis for people at the bottom of the pyramid in Bangladesh.

·       Third place, $5,000: Exygen, Strathmore University, Kenya, is harnessing renewable biogas energy to deliver low and middle-income urban households in Kenya an alternative to charcoal fuel, which has adverse effects on the country's forests and the health of its users, and kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas, which are plagued by shortages and high pricing.

·       Social Impact Assessment Award, $10,000: FasoProt, Burkina Faso, aims to fight malnutrition in the region with an agribusiness model that involves the local collection and distribution of high-protein caterpillars—a staple of the local diet. 

Staff Receive Service Awards to Celebrate Milestones

| by Laura Counts

A team of staff members collectively holding nearly 150 years of Berkeley-Haas experience have been honored in recent months for their service. Kathy Andrews, Dayna Haugh, and Alexis Kurland-Deeds have each been with Berkeley or the Haas School for 30 or more years altogether; Barbra Felkins has been at Haas for 25; and Christine Blaine, Jesse Paraiso, and Dhundup Tsering have been at Haas for 10 years.

For Andrews, Haugh, and Kurland-Deed, three decades at Haas have passed by pretty quickly, thanks to “great opportunities for growth and continuous learning” and a “wonderful sense of community.” Andrews, senior development director of leadership giving, says Haas “is an engaging environment where everyone has a sense of purpose and is given an opportunity to make a difference.” For Haugh, assistant director of the Center for Financial Reporting and Management, working with “great, creative people” in “an innovative environment” have made the difference

The Haas culture and its four Defining Principles have been important to the awardees as well. Financial analyst Kurland-Deeds says she most identifies with Question the Status Quo, “because I feel there are always better ways to do things.” Confidence Without Attitude resonates for Andrews: “Collaboration is extremely important to me and to our work, and I strive to make a difference without the least bit of arrogance.”

Service to students motivates a number of these staff members. Felkins, assistant director of academic affairs for the Undergraduate Program, recalls that after the shooting incident this past fall, counselors cautioned that students with trauma in their pasts might have particular difficulty dealing with the aftermath. Felkins made a point of reaching out to every student she knew who might be vulnerable in this way. Her reward for such attentive care is watching “her” students walk across the stage at graduation and then getting to brag about them to their families.

For Paraiso, ECSM lab coordinator, satisfaction comes from “the smiles on students’ faces when I fix their computer problems. I feel like I have done my job whenever I have made someone’s day go a bit easier.”

You may think you know these longtime colleagues really well, but they hold surprises in store. Kurland-Deeds was an avid and fearless skier from childhood through college; Paraiso is a part-time wedding photographer and videographer; and Haugh just welcomed her second grandchild.

As for proudest accomplishments, Blaine sums it up with, “Getting a job here. Abby Scott took a chance and I have been eternally grateful ever since.”

Berzon, Bridge, Pivonka, and Wong Win Outstanding Staff Awards

| by Laura Counts

Berkeley-Haas honored four staff members with 2011-12 Outstanding Staff Awards at an appreciation lunch April 20. Kirsten Berzon, Jenn Bridge, Mike Pivonka, and June Wong were each honored for exemplifying a Haas Defining Principle in their work. They were selected from 54 nominations.

Faculty Assistant June Wong, who has worked at Haas since 1966, was touted by one faculty member who simply said, “I cannot imagine a more deserving person for the Haas Outstanding Staff Award.” The sentiment was shared by other faculty, who claim they could not function without her Confidence Without Attitude. Colleagues note, “She conducts her work with ease, is always thinking ahead and, incredibly, never, ever makes mistakes.” 

Bridge, director of recruiting career services, is known for routinely asking such questions as, “How can we think bigger? Work more effectively?” Not only that, says supervisor Lisa Feldman, executive director of MBA Career Management, “She answers them.” “Question the Status Quo is Jenn’s middle name," says Feldman. "She continuously demonstrates this in every aspect of her work.”


Jenn Bridge (far left) with other MBA Career Management staff: Tamera Garlock and Jocelyn Newman (sitting l. to r.); Rich Wong, Virginia Martin, Gina Ney, and Betsy Worth (standing l. to r.).

Colleagues say that no one on staff has a more intimate knowledge of the Haas campus than Mike Pivonka, associate director of Enterprise Computing and Service Management (ECSM), winner in the Students Always category. Pivonka's supervisor, Haas Chief Technology Officer Zane Cooper, says this knowledge has been instrumental in the successful completion of physical plant improvements and IT infrastructure enhancements over the years.


Dean Rich Lyons, Mike Pivonka of Enterprise Computing & Service Management, and COO Jennifer Chizuk.

Lester Center Program Manager Kirsten Berzon (right) embodies the principle Beyond Yourself, according to Andre Marquis, the center’s executive director. “She is always selflessly looking to make what we do in our office better and to build the very best and meaningful institution she can.” Colleagues note that she makes the same sacrifices in supporting the advancement of social justice and is an inspiration.

Both Dean Rich Lyons and Chief Operating Officer and Senior Assistant Dean Jennifer Chizuk noted the challenges of the past few years and of this year, in particular. “We will continue to be tested,” Chizuk said. “But I know that no matter what life throws at us, we will succeed—because of the respect this community has for each other, the humanity we show at all times, and the fact that we really support one another.

In recognition of their service, all staff received a watch by Modify Watches─a successful startup led by Haas alumni Aaron Schwartz and Gary Coover, MBA 10, and Liz Callahan, MBA 11─sporting a custom design for Haas that includes the four Defining Principles emblazoned on the back.

 

Faculty Assistant June Wong

Haaski Golf Open to Celebrate 10th Anniversary at New Venue

| by Laura Counts

The Haaski Golf Open will celebrate its 10th anniversary on May 14 with a tournament, dinner, and live auction at the Orinda Country Club, a new venue for the popular fundraiser.

Participants will have a chance to join Dean Rich Lyons, Cal coaches and former athletes, Haas students, and Bay Area business leaders in an afternoon of golf. Players will compete for the longest drive, the straightest drive, and closest to the pin, as well as the opportunity to win a car from Mercedes-Benz of Oakland for a hole-in-one.

For the first time, the event will include a dinner, open to both golfers and non-golfers alike, at in the Orinda Country Club’s historic Spanish-Mediterranean-style clubhouse. Prizes lined up for the live auction include a private catered dinner with Dean Lyons and his wife; another private dinner with former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, now teaching at Berkeley; and a private Grace Street Catering cooking demonstration. The winner of the wine-barrel raffle will receive a half barrel of wine blended by the event’s steering committee members.

The Haaski Golf Open begins with breakfast and registration at 10:30 a.m. The golf tournament will begin at noon and dinner at 6 p.m. The cost is $350 for a single player and $1,400 for a foursome. Tickets for dinner alone are $75.

For more information and to register, visit haas.berkeley.edu/groups/alumni/giving/corp/haaski.html

 

New Professional Faculty Wing Open on Fifth Floor

| by Laura Counts

The fifth floor of the Haas School's faculty wing has been renovated to include a hip new office suite for professional faculty.

The new professional faculty offices in F502, which accommodate 76 people, opened in mid-March in space previously occupied by the Institute of Business & Economics Research (IBER). IBER staff moved temporarily to fifth-floor offices across from the mailroom.

The wing sports a modern white and lime green décor unlike any other area at Haas. It includes eight offices, each accommodating four professional faculty members; three conference rooms, each offering different style of table and chairs; and a large open space with 12 desks ("touch-down stations) for use by 44 professional faculty, each of whom teaches one course at Haas. The wing also features shiny white lockers for the faculty assigned to the touch-down stations.

The goals of the remodel were to improve office conditions for professional faculty, cluster professional faculty to help foster collaboration and communication, and free up space in the faculty building for ladder-track faculty to support hiring and research goals.

Berkeley-Columbia Student Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com, Speaks at TED Conference

| by Laura Counts

Fark.com founder and editor-in-chief Drew Curtis, BCEMBA 13, spoke at a TED (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) conference in Long Beach last month on "How I Beat a Patent Troll."

Curtis founded Fark, a news aggregator and edited social networking news site, in 1999. In his six-minute TED talk, Curtis spoke on how Fark─along with Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, TechCrunch, and others─was sued by a company called Gooseberry Natural Resources in January 2011. Gooseberry, Curtis explained, had a patent "for the creation and distribution of news releases via email," a broad description that itself drew some chuckles from the audience.

"The patent system is dysfunctional, and as a result most of these lawsuits end in settlements," Curtis said. "Because the settlements are under a non-disclosure agreement, no one knows what the terms are."

Curtis pointed out that the average patent troll defense costs $2 million and takes 18 months when the defendant wins. "One of the major problems of patent law is that when you are sued by a patent troll, the burden of proof … is actually on the defendant," he said.

Curtis had hoped to team up with the other larger defendants to fight the suit, but they settled one by one, even though they didn't infringe on the patent. The reason, said Curtis: "It's cheaper to settle than fight the lawsuit."

To find out what happened to Fark and what Curtis learned, watch the TED video.