Five decades of Himalayan treks show how collectivism operates in diverse groups

By studying climbers summiting Mount Everest, Professor Jennifer Chatman learned when collectivism works, and when it can be deadly.  

Cooperation is valued as a key attribute of successful groups, encouraging cohesion among diverse members. But Chatman discovered that there can be a high cost when it comes to decision-making and performance because the tentative ties among diverse group members cause them to overemphasize their shared group identity and overlook the individual differences in skills and experience that can help the group succeed.

She calls this a “blurring effect,” which is detailed in her new study, “Blurred Lines: How Collectivism Mutes the Disruptive and Elaborating Effects of Demographic Diversity on Group Performance in Himalayan Mountain Climbing.” The paper is co-authored by Eliot Sherman (PhD 2016, MS 2012), London Business School, and Bernadette Doerr (MS 2015), CrossLead Inc.

The study focuses on the impact of a collectivistic versus individualistic orientation among diverse climbing groups. Promoting a collective mindset is one of the most common solutions to the challenge of managing diverse work groups. But sometimes, emphasizing collectivism can cause groups to blur not only disruptive attributes, but also important differences among members, such as a veteran climber’s expertise.

“This blurring effect, which is cognitive in nature, is among the most profound I've seen in my research career. It is easily manipulated and has dramatic consequences. By simply asking people in a diverse group to focus on commonalities within the group, they appear to be unable to also focus on the attributes that differentiate group members from one another. It is like asking people to focus on the forest, which seems to preclude them from also focusing on the trees,” says Chatman, who studies how group norms and group composition influence group performance at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

To study how collectivism fails, the researchers tapped the Himalayan Database, a compilation of all expeditions in the Nepalese Himalaya since 1950. Journalist Elizabeth Hawley began compiling this database in 1960, when she moved from the U.S. to Kathmandu, Nepal, and interviewed thousands of climbers who are required to register their expeditions with the Nepalese government.

The archive documents all climbs, including information about climbers: climbing experience, nationality, and details about the expedition, such as route choices and weather conditions. Chatman focused on a dataset of 5,000 treks and nearly 40,000 climbers and measured them by climbing experience.The comprehensive data set enables researchers to better understand work teams with a single, common goal: to reach the summit, Chatman said.

“Work teams don’t always have a single objective goal. In contrast, the Himalayan expeditions do, making it easier to examine the factors affecting performance with great precision,” she says. “Further, these expeditions are truly international. Most cross-cultural research has been limited to perhaps two or three countries; the Himalayan data includes climbers from a wide range of countries.”

Though all of the climbers had the same goal, to summit, the researchers discovered very different results among the groups based on how they managed the group’s diversity.

The research showed when climbers collectively focused on reaching the summit, rather than more individualistic approaches to doing so, they “blurred”—didn't pay attention to—their fellow climber’s nationality. This blurring of national differences led to greater summiting successes because nationality is only a disruptive attribute and not one that is related to climbing skill.

But when a broad range of experience that was critical to the climb existed among climbers (for example, some had scaled a Himalayan mountain up to 15 times, while others had only attempted one climb), a different and more deadly pattern emerged. More people died on expeditions with different levels of experience when the group emphasized collectivism because it caused them to ignore the diversity of experience among members.

“They ‘blur up,’ pushing each other more because they fail to recognize that novices have less capability, and consequently, more people died,” says Chatman.

To further test their findings, the researchers also studied decision-making using a simulated expedition in a lab setting. They asked 280 participants or “climbers” to make two critical decisions: how to allocate portable oxygen canisters, and to decide which route to take to Annapurna, the world’s 10th highest mountain.

Participants were told their fellow climbers’ nationality and mountain climbing experience and later asked to recall that information. Subjects cued to be collectivistic were significantly less accurate in recalling differences among their team members than those who were cued to be individualistic.

These collectivists were more likely to give oxygen to foreigners and to someone who would benefit most. (While oxygen is critical, it also adds weight to one’s gear.) National diversity became blurred when collectivism was a priority, resulting in better group performance.

In the second decision, after hearing advice from an experienced team member, participants had to choose between two routes: One that was more direct but dangerous, and the other—recommended by the experienced member—that was less risky but a bit longer. Those who were cued to be collectivistic tended to disregard the advice provided by a more experienced team member because they blurred his or her experience and considered everyone to have similar experience. The downside: not acknowledging and following the advice of a more knowledgeable climber could result in increased injuries, even death.

In the workplace, Chatman’s results suggest that managers should not assume that emphasizing team cooperation is always the best strategy and that some differences among members are important to highlight, even if it means sacrificing some group cohesion. This is because imposing a cooperation norm can cause people to blur distinctions that they should value in order to perform effectively.

The United Arab Emirates’ Prime Minister’s Office has appointed 60 “Chief Happiness and Positivity Officers,” who are being trained by a cross-section of campus faculty experts to create a more positive workforce, and ultimately a happier country.

The training and development program—which will be taught in both Dubai and Berkeley—is spearheaded by UC Berkeley Executive Education, partnering with Berkeley-Haas and the Greater Good Science Center.

“We are thrilled to partner with The Greater Good Science Center and rely on UC Berkeley Psychology Professor Dacher Keltner's influential body of research for this innovative program," said Mike Reilly, CEO of UC Berkeley Executive Education, who traveled to Dubai for the contract signing in August. “Our hope is that the government, citizens, and residents of the UAE are able to build happier lives through what we've learned from the science of happiness and positivity and serve as an inspiration to other countries.”

Mike Rielly, CEO of Berkeley Executive Education, signing the UAE contract

The training supports Prime Minister Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s five-year initiative, which focuses on promoting happiness and positivity in government work through policies and initiatives; promoting happiness and positivity as a lifestyle in the UAE; and developing ways to measure happiness in the community. Berkeley-Haas Lecturer Rajiv Ball is faculty director of the program.

UC Berkeley and Haas faculty will teach in the areas of business, psychology, leadership and public policy on topics ranging from mindfulness, to creating metrics around happiness and positivity, to leading happy people and organizations. Government employees working in areas including the oil industry, information technology, education, and welfare are participating.

 “We are delighted at the opportunity to partner with the UAE,” said Berkeley-Haas Dean Rich Lyons. "This is a wonderfully forward-thinking program and initiative, and we are grateful for being selected, reflecting Berkeley’s leadership in interdisciplinary research and unparalleled spirit of questioning the status quo.”

UAE government workers in training

The government’s happiness officers-in-training are taking their work in the program quite seriously, says Andrea Salvemini, director of business development for UC Berkeley Executive Education. Salvemini attended the first session in September in Dubai, taught by Keltner, who also teaches at Haas, and Emiliana Simon-Thomas, co-directors of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, which researches happiness and gratitude.

 “There is a clear science behind happiness and they are applying what they learn as they go,” said Salvemini. “Happiness at work is attainable—and our faculty members are helping these workers to become leaders who are more engaged with their colleagues and, ultimately, more satisfied at their jobs.”

Future sessions will be taught at UC Berkeley, and in Dubai, tapping faculty expertise from across campus. Site visits to study companies practicing happiness and positivity in the workplace are also planned to local companies in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area.

By Pamela Tom

It’s been three months since the U.K. voted to leave the European Union. At a special Dean’s Speaker Series, a panel of UC Berkeley's top economists gathered Sept. 29 to discuss the Brexit fallout and future.

“Brexit: What Next?” featured Andrew Rose, Bernard T. Rocca, Jr. Chair in International Business & Trade and a member of the Economic Analysis & Policy Group at the Haas School of Business. (Photo: second from left).

The panel also included (left to right) panel moderator Maria Carkovic, executive director of the Institute for Business Innovation; Galina Hale, research advisor at the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank; and Barry Eichengreen and Gerard Roland, UC Berkeley professors of Economics & Political Science. 
The panel was co-sponsored by the Berkeley-Haas Dean’s Speakers Series and the Clausen Center.

One primary concern with Brexit is its impact on international trade. About half of all British exports go to countries in the EU, according to Rose. By comparison, only about one-tenth of the EU’s exports enter the U.K. Rose says that’s a big deal because the U.K.’s trade deficit has been growing and Brexit will cause a long period of trade stagnation.

“Most of the estimates from academics say the Brexit disruption to the trading system is going to lead to around a two percent drop in GDP,” Rose said. “The long run effect is going to be larger because Brexit will create a more closed economy in the U.K..”

Rose says he expects the exit term negotiations between the U.K. and EU will be “painstaking and politically fraught” and will likely take more than the allowed two years.

Prof. Andrew Rose says he doesn't expect a large collapse of living standards in the UK.

“Free trade agreements aren’t really that important," he says. "Most trade barriers are already limited. Non-tariff barriers are always protected by special interests and that’s why trade negotiations take a long time. I don’t expect a large collapse of living standards in the U.K. It will be far less than 20 percent.”

Hale spoke about Brexit’s impact on the financial sector, including the possible reduction of labor and capital mobility. It may be more expensive for financial institutions to bring highly-skilled foreigners to the U.K., one of the world’s central financial hubs. However, she said the impact on U.S. banks will likely be limited to legal and relocation costs, even if the U.K. does lose its financial hub status.

Macroeconomic fallout will depend on whether the historical relationships among countries continue. The Bank of England, the U.K.’s central bank, will have to ride the wave of uncertainty, Eichengreen says.

“Slightly lower interest rates and more quantitative easing are not likely to help much when the main cause of an economic slowdown in the U.K. is high uncertainty, which makes firms reluctant to invest,” says Eichengreen.  

Brexit’s impact on the political economy is equally uncertain, but Roland said he believes it will have bearing on the refugee crisis and EU governance.

“Maybe the EU’s governance system is not the right one for Europe,” says Roland. “Perhaps an elected EU president will compensate for the current democratic deficit within the EU.”

By Karen Sorensen

Startup Roundup is an occasional series highlighting new enterprises created by Berkeley-Haas students and recent alumni.

Dot

Co-founders:

Kunal Chaudhary, BS 17, Business Administration & Computer Science
Rahul Ramakrishnan, BS 17, Business Administration & Electrical Engineering
Grant Empey, BS 18, Computer Science
Rishabh Parikh, BS 18, Computer Science
Anuj Chaudhary, BS 09, Mechanical Engineering

When five UC Berkeley engineers get together and talk science fiction, innovative things can happen—especially when some of them also have business skills.

That was the case for the founders of Dot, a startup that aims to streamline people’s lives by bringing them the right information at precisely the right time through their smart phones.

“We are all avid science fiction fans, so we looked at how computers of the future appear in sci-fi and asked ourselves, ‘What is the next step for our smart phones to get to that world?’” says Berkeley-Haas senior and Dot co-founder Kunal Chaudhary, who met his co-founders in the Berkeley student-run consulting club Venture Strategy Solutions. “If we are going to make the phone more intelligent, an important step is to make it more aware of its surroundings.”

Watch a video of how Dot works.

The Dot device looks like a small black hockey puck with an LED light that changes color when you are in range. Using precise location tracking and push notification, it sends reminders or opens relevant smartphone applications. For example, if you are in your car, your Dot automatically loads map apps and sends directions and traffic updates; at the office it might notify you of upcoming meetings and to-dos; at home, it reminds you to take medicine or pings a housemate to take out the trash.

The concept proved so popular that the group’s Kickstarter campaign reached its initial $20,000 goal in less than 12 hours, and is now nearing $90,000. Dot also earned a spot with CITRIS Foundry, the University of California Accelerator, as well as support from the Berkeley House, an extension of the new $6 million House Fund launched by UC Berkeley alumnus Jeremy Fiance.

Members of the team found several Berkeley-Haas courses to be especially useful in forming their startup, including Advertising Strategy taught by Assoc. Prof. Clayton Critcher. “That course taught me how to think about messaging and branding, and how we can turn individuals who are interested in our product into passionate advocates for our brand,” Chaudhary says.

Dot plans to begin shipping its product to its first customers in March and hopes to be in the smart home sections of retail outlets, such as Home Depot and Target, by next fall.

Fishball
Co-founders: Yuriy Pryadko, Tony Sgroi, both EWMBA 17

Yuriy Pryadko, EWMBA 17, thinks the pictures and videos he takes on his smartphone are boring and flat.

“There’s more to the world than today’s smartphone camera can capture,” says Pryadko, who with Tony Sgroi, EWMBA 17, is working to make photos and video come alive with a simple to use phone attachment. “Our vision is to help people capture their memories in a way that they were never able to do before.”

Their startup, Fishball, is a nod to the dual fish-eye lens they are developing to clip on a cell phone to take immersive 360 degree photos and video. The phone attachment works with an app that stitches the image so that it can be viewed using a virtual reality headset, such as Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, or Google Cardboard. It also allows users to easily upload and share their content on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.

Pryadko and Sgroi met in the Evening & Weekend Program, developing their idea last semester as a project during their Entrepreneurship class with Lecturer Kurt Beyer. “We did the market research, finished our user interviews, and decided that this truly is a viable product,” Pryadko says. They partnered with Vahid Esfandyarpour, who holds a PhD in optical engineering, to complete the hardware design, and are on track to product launch in the coming months.

This is the first startup for the team. Sgroi, who was most recently a plant manager at industrial manufacturing company Eaton, spent four years as an infantry officer in Iraq with the U.S. Army. He came to Haas to learn about the strategy behind running an advanced manufacturing business. Pryadko brings eight years of experience at Cogniance, a product design and development consultancy that has helps hundreds of entrepreneurs launch tech products ranging from connected car apps to a breathalyzer for smart phones. “My entire career has been in helping startups be successful, and now I am ready to launch one myself,” he says.

Haas courses are providing the range of business skills the team needs, including design thinking from Lecturer Clark Kellogg, brand management from Lecturer Lynn Upshaw, and venture capital from Lecturer Terry Opdendyk.

“This is a very integrative experience that will allow Tony and me to take everything we’ve learned at Haas and during our careers and apply it to something that is tangible, that is fun, and that will make people’s lives better,” Pryadko said.

Sign up for the Fishball news and product announcements at their website, Fishball.us.

Planet Murple

Co-founders:
Emily Yao, MBA 16
Dave Resnick, MPH 16

When Emily Yao arrived at Haas, she set her sights on solving an age-old problem: getting children to eat their vegetables.

She combined her expertise in human behavior, her passion for art, and her new-found business skills to launch startup Planet Murple.

Planet Murple co-founders Emily Yao (r) and Dave Resnick (second from right)

A former behavioral/cultural change strategist for IBM, Yao met her co-founder, former elementary school teacher Dave Resnick, in Eat. Think. Design., an interdisciplinary innovation course for UC Berkeley graduate students who want to improve the food system.

“We saw a huge attitude and cultural problem around food that kids experience at a young age,” Yao says. “Over 90 percent of kids don’t eat the recommended amount of vegetables and 40 percent of parents report they have mealtime struggles due to children’s pickiness. This is frustrating both parents and schools.”

Yao’s and Resnick’s solution is a creative app that engages children to join “The Murples” in an entertaining world of natural food. The app uses a combination of silly and colorful stop-motion videos and interactive recipes to encourage children to prepare and eat nutritious food. (The first episode is a “Big Sea Adventure” with Meep the Murple, and features red peppers and pears.)

The co-founders quickly raised nearly $9,000 through Indiegogo, and received additional support from the Berkeley-Haas Dean’s Startup Seed Fund. Planet Murple was also a regional finalist in the 2016 Global Social Venture Competition, and a recent participant in the GSVLabs & Google Launchpad Pioneer Accelerator.

Yao drew inspiration and support from the Berkeley-Haas Innovation Design (ID) Club, which she helped lead as co-president. The team also benefited from the Social Lean Launchpad course taught last fall by Lecturers Jorge Calderon and Ben Mangan.

“This was an amazing community of teachers, mentors, and fellow social entrepreneurs,” she says.  “We got great feedback and were encouraged to be open to change. We’ve now done more than 75 customer interviews and have pivoted a few times to get where we are today.”

Coming next: Yao and Resnick hope to expand Planet Murple’s content and partner with schools, public markets, and grocery stores. “We want Planet Murple to help kids discover a love for food," Yao says.

By Laura Counts

Incoming full-time MBA students pose for a selfie during orientation week.

At a time when issues of race and diversity lead the daily news cycle and are top-of-mind for educators, business leaders, and hiring managers, a record crowd of more than 250 prospective students is expected at the Berkeley-Haas Diversity Symposium Oct. 15.

They’ll join more than 100 current students, alumni, faculty, and staff for a day of panels and workshops on issues affecting women, racial and ethnic minorities, the LGBTQ community, and veterans in the MBA program and in the workplace.

Though the symposium is largely geared toward potential applicants to the school’s three MBA programs—with sessions on financing and balancing school and career—the day also serves as a mass networking opportunity and a chance to showcase Haas’ culture.

“Our mission as a school is to develop leaders who redefine how we do business, and that requires people who experience the world in different ways, who think differently, and who welcome different ways of thinking,” said Dean Rich Lyons. “We want to do everything we can to create an environment where everyone feels included and has the support to succeed.”

A recent Haas admissions survey found that an inclusive culture is the No. 1 reason students choose the full-time MBA program. Last year, the school adopted a new strategic business plan that puts a high priority on ethnic diversity, gender equity, and leading in a diverse world.

 “We’re at a point in history when we’ve got this interesting global workforce, and increasingly companies are saying ‘I want someone who can manage anyone, anytime, anywhere,’” says Eric Abrams, director of diversity initiatives. “The more people learn about each other while they’re here, the better managers and leaders our graduates will be—and the more in demand they’ll be.”

To further the strategic plan goals, Assistant Dean Erika Walker has taken on an additional role as student equity officer, reviewing how diversity is reflected in the curriculum, extracurricular activities, and the school community across all programs. Profs. Jenny Chatman and Jonathan Leonard are serving as faculty equity officers, working on equity issues among students and faculty; Human Resources Director Denise Boyd serves in a similar role for staff.

Dean Rich Lyons will speak at the symposium.

A growing number of student-led efforts such as the Race Inclusion Initiative and the Gender Equity Initiative, as well as active clubs like Q@Haas, the Black Business Students Association, Haas Veterans Club, and the Women in Leadership Club’s “manbassadors” highlight the value students place on a culture of inclusion. The evening & weekend MBA program and the executive MBA program have recently added VPs of Diversity in their student governments; an implicit bias workshop is part of orientation for the executive MBAs.

Cristy Johnston-Limón, EMBA 16, is the executive MBA program's first vice president of diversity.

Haas has also put in place some admissions initiatives that have paid off. While the University of California has been restricted in its use of affirmative-action criteria in the admissions process since the 1996 passage of Prop. 209, the school works closely with organizations such as the Robert Toigo Foundation and Management Leadership for Tomorrow, which help build the pipeline of talented students from diverse backgrounds.

One effort that has helped boost applications from underrepresented minority students to the full-time program is the school’s participation in the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, which seeks to increase the number of African Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans in top business programs and corporate management. It offers fellowships that include training and some merit-based scholarships for exceptional MBA candidates with a track record of promoting diversity and inclusion in their schools, jobs, or personal lives.

This year, the incoming full-time MBA class includes a record 47 Consortium fellows, which is the largest group among the organization’s 18 member schools. Among them are 19 African American students, who make up 7.5% of the incoming class.

The full-time MBA office has also worked closely with the student-led Gender Equity Initiative to increase the proportion of women in the program, with direct outreach from alumnae and senior women leaders from Haas. Women make up 38 percent of the incoming class and 40 percent of the program overall. The working professionals MBA programs have similar outreach efforts, and host a popular Women’s Dinner for prospective students.

 “There’s increasing competition for the most talented students among all top MBA programs, and we’ve been increasingly able to attract a diverse group and remain one of the most selective programs in the country,” said Morgan Bernstein, executive director of full-time MBA admissions. “What we hear time and again from applicants is that Haas really stands out for its inclusive culture.”

The symposium also includes a Friday night welcome reception in San Francisco, hosted by Wells Fargo Sr. VP Monica Stevens, MBA 96, and the Haas Alumni Diversity Council. The alumni council is actively involved in the school’s efforts to increase diversity on campus and in building a strong alumni community.

By Pamela Tom
Illustration by Dulce Lopez

Study reveals how gender and social pressure drive unethical decisions

Would you tell a lie to help someone else? A new study says women won’t lie on their own behalf, but they are willing to do so for someone else if they feel criticized or pressured by others.

In contrast, the study, co-authored by Laura Kray and Maryam Kouchaki found that men are the opposite: they do not compromise their ethical standards under social pressure regardless of whether they’re advocating for themselves or anyone else.

Co-authored by Prof. Laura Kray of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and Maryam Kouchaki of Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, their paper, “‘I’ll Do Anything For You.’ The Ethical Consequences of Women’s Social Considerations,” received the Best Empirical Paper Award from the International Association of Conflict Management (IACM) on Jun 28.

“We found that when women act on their own behalf, they maintain higher ethical standards than men. However, women will act less ethically, such as telling a lie, when they fear being viewed as ineffective at representing another person’s interests,” says Kray. “When women negotiate on behalf of someone else, they are willing to make compromises in order to satisfy the needs of others.”

But at what cost?

Kray says there’s a tradeoff for women, who face a “Catch 22.” Men are typically less constrained by social expectations. But when women are asked to advocate for others they face a conflict because they must either relinquish or reduce their usual moral standards, or open themselves up to possible social backlash.

The authors write, "they are damned if they lie because it goes against their communal mandate with respect to their negotiating counterpart, however they are damned if they do not lie because it goes against their communal mandate with respect to the party they are representing.”

The findings are a result of four studies, each involving from 160 to 235 participants.

In the first study, participants were assigned either self-advocacy or friend-advocacy roles and asked to consider the appropriateness of various negotiating tactics.  As hypothesized, women who negotiated on behalf of someone else were less ethical than when advocating for themselves.

The second study was designed to better understand the psychological process behind unethical negotiating tactics. Participants advocating for others answered questions about how much they anticipated social backlash if they did not reduce their ethical standards to help others. For example, “How much would your friends like to socialize with you?” and “How likely would your colleagues be to go with you if you invited them out for drinks after work?” The findings were the same as in the first study. However, women were not found to completely disregard — only lower — their moral obligations regardless of whether they were advocating for themselves or others.

“This suggests that women did not see unethical tactics as more acceptable when helping others but instead, they lowered their ethical standards because they felt pressured to do so,” says Kray.

The third study focused on the anticipation of social backlash. Female participants were asked to read a description of a salary negotiation from a self-advocacy perspective; for example, as new recruits negotiating their own starting salary. They also read a description depicting an other-advocacy situation such as a friend negotiating salary on behalf of a new recruit whom she referred for the position. The ethical dilemma of each script is whether to tell the hiring manager that they (or the friend) had another job offer even though one didn’t really exist. The alternative option was to be honest with the hiring manager and tell him that they (or the friend) had no other job offers. Women were more inclined to lie when negotiating for the friend.

In the final study, the authors recruited participants (49% male; 51% female) to complete an actual negotiation and assigned them to be either a property seller or a buyer. In the scenario, the seller wants to sell to a buyer who would retain the property for residential use. However, buyers were instructed that their intent was to turn the property into a high-rise, commercial building against the wishes of the seller. Would those negotiating on behalf of the buyer be deceptive as a result of social pressure? Again, women who chose to be dishonest expected greater social backlash when negotiating for themselves than on behalf of others. And, women who chose not to lie anticipated greater backlash when representing someone else’s interests.

Across all studies including men, the men’s ethics were not affected whether they represented themselves or another person. Also, their ethical standards were lower than women representing themselves.

The study’s results may appear disturbing to women who are trying to do the right thing, but Kray contends that when considering whether to compromise one’s usual ethics, consider the particular situation. Women may be unaware that they have this tendency to lower their moral standards when trying to help others.

“Ask yourself, ‘What are the constraints and social pressures? If I was doing this for myself or someone else, how would I act differently,” says Kray.

By Kim Girard

When Wolfgang Stehr is at work in the operating room at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland, he’s at the center of a complex ballet, performing delicate surgeries with a highly-skilled team.

The stakes are high. Stehr, the hospital’s division chief of pediatric surgery, operates on around 20 children per week, from one-pound premature babies to 200-pound teenage gunshot victims. When things break down, egos may reign, tempers may flare, and miscommunication over logistics such as scheduling may lead to resentments.

“I wanted to improve the communication among our nurses and doctors, to break down silos in the hospital, and create a better experience for the patients and staff,” said Stehr, whose hospital is one of six Level 1 pediatric trauma centers in California, treating about 10,000 patients last year. “I wanted to become a better leader.”

Stehr found the tools to transform both himself and his team just a few miles down the road from the hospital, at Berkeley-Haas, where he’s in his second year of the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program.

Care, community & positivity

In August 2015, Stehr participated in a Leadership Communication course, taught by Lecturer Mark Rittenberg during the EMBA Program’s immersion week in Napa, Calif. One of four core leadership classes for all MBA students, Leadership Communication tackles four areas: showing up and choosing to be being present; paying attention to “heart and meaning;” telling the truth without blame or judgement; and being open and not attached to outcome.

“By the end of the class I was so inspired by the work, how it made me think about my colleagues, and even how I felt about the world,” says Stehr, who began chatting with Rittenberg on the second day of the workshop about his leadership goals.

Wolfgang Stehr in front of the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland Photos: Noah Berger

“Wolfgang told me, ‘We have a problem at the hospital. We need to bring the same level of care, community, and positivity toward each other that we bring to the children,’" said Rittenberg. Indeed, research has linked better communication among healthcare teams to better patient care; a 2015 article in the Columbia Medical Review found doing so can reduce the length of hospital stays and create more positive patient health outcomes.

David Durand, chief medical officer at UCSF Benioff Oakland, says Stehr started raving about Rittenberg’s class immediately. “He asked: can we roll this out to some groups within the hospital?”

The heart and mind of a leader

By last March, Stehr had convinced hospital leadership, and they agreed to give Leadership Communication a try. A total of 25 hospital doctors, nurses, and staff kicked off a three-day workshop, run by theBerkeley Executive Coaching Institute.

Rittenberg, a former professional actor who founded the Coaching Institute, uses theatrical activities to build bridges and develop respect among groups that have over the years ranged from Israeli and Palestinian students to Facebook and Salesforce execs. With UCSF Benioff Oakland he focused on developing “the heart and mind of a leader,” by getting staff to engage with each other.

“We had them share what they most wanted their colleagues to know about them, what holds them back, their biggest dreams for themselves at the hospital, and what they wanted to be remembered for at the hospital,” said Susan Houlihan, EWMBA 11, a coach with the Berkeley Executive Coaching Institute who is working with UCSF Benioff Oakland.

During the workshop, Stehr and his colleagues explored the difference between verbal and nonverbal communication—everything from a person’s tone of voice to eye contact to facial expression, all factors that can impact communication in the OR, where it’s critical to be calm and present.

“Simplest things make the biggest difference”

By many accounts, the workshops are starting to transform the hospital’s operating room environment, helping to build more trust.

Chris Newton, trauma director at UCSF Benioff Oakland, who is works in the OR with Stehr, called the workshop “phenomenal.”

Stehr chats with OR team members

“A small percent of the core staff here did this, but those core people are changing the culture of our little world overnight,” he said. “It was the simplest things that made the biggest difference: How you talk to each other in the hallway, how you solve a problem, how you see other people and walk in their shoes.”

The tools have enabled the staff to approach problems with “curiosity instead of judgment, which could make you go down the wrong path,” said Scout E. Hebinck, a nurse and clinical educator in perioperative services.  “People talk about their experiences in the workshops and how it’s changed them,” she said. “This has made people’s trust go up across the board.”

Durand said he expects the hospital, which has sent a total of 60 people to two Leadership Communication workshops so far, to continue to see benefits. “With Mark’s workshop we saw two things happen: we’re working together and getting to know each other and this brings a lot of value. Also, the communications tools and how we use them have proven really valuable for the team. It’s taken on a life of its own.”

Each month, workshop attendees hold follow up meetings to revisit key leadership concepts. Stehr believes what they’ve learned will only stay fresh if they “keep the fires burning” until they hold a third workshop in December.

Stehr and Rittenberg have also taken the leadership message on the road, most recently speaking to doctors at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. The pair plans to continue spreading the word at hospitals about how valuable authentic communication can be for staff and for patients.

Meantime, when Stehr walks the halls at Haas, he scans the posters in the hallway, of Berkeley leaders like Annie’s President John Foraker and Ghana-based Ashesi University founder Patrick Awuah, and ponders what his own legacy will be.

His goal is lofty: “We can revolutionize health care through trust and connection with each other,” Stehr said. “This can be as powerful as any new procedures, treatments, or antibiotics.”

Part 2 in a series of articles covering diversity and inclusion at Berkeley-Haas

By Laura Counts

More than 80 MBA students spent a recent lunch break in an unusually candid conversation on a topic that many shy away from: race.

Bolstered by an online platform that allowed all participants to submit questions anonymously and an agreement that all comments and stories would be kept in the room, a panel of students with diverse backgrounds opened themselves up to classmates eager to gain fluency in discussing race and, learn how to be better allies.

“Fear of saying the wrong thing and fear of asking questions often prevent the dialogue necessary to address issues of race,” said Lauren Dugard, MBA 17 and class VP of diversity, who co-organized the event and moderated the panel. “We wanted to create an event where people could overcome this hesitation.”

The event, called “Ask Me Anything: an Open Conversation With the Black Business Students Association (BBSA),” was sparked by a Black Lives Matter demonstration organized last month by BBSA co-presidents Jenelle Harris and Jay Obaze, both MBA 17. After more than 200 Haas students, staff, and faculty showed up at short notice to stand with the BBSA in solidarity, they were inspired to carry the conversation forward, Obaze said.

“I was genuinely moved by the groundswell of support that arose here at Haas,” Obaze wrote in a letter to the community. “I am aware that conversations on race in America are often very difficult for people, but Haas has shown that it’s open to learn and be educated on the issues that are directly impacting people of color in this country.”

The “Ask Me Anything” format allowed participants to ask questions anonymously via the web platform sli.do; others could vote up those they found most compelling.

“Don’t take time to toil over the vocabulary you use in your questions,” said Dugard, as she introduced the panel. “We’ll assume everything is coming from a place of love here today.”

Many of the questions reflected students desire to learn what they could do to support black classmates and future colleagues. What kinds of “micro-aggressions” (actions or comments that feel dismissive or offensive) have you experienced at Haas? What can I say to support black friends after police shootings without adding more stress? Are you tired of talking about police brutality and is there something you’d rather see addressed? Does it feel exhausting to be in a white-dominated environment all day, and what can we do to change that?

Other questions were about how to avoid blunders that might be seen as insensitive—or downright racist. “When I see a group of black students I often won’t approach because I think you’re in a safe space at that moment and don't want to interrupt. Is this good, bad?”, or “Can you talk about how to balance personal safety as a female with not wanting to be perceived as discriminatory?”

Answers reflected the diversity of experiences on the panel, which included two students from Nigerian families, one student with an Ethiopian father and white mother, a student who is half Trinidadian and half Haitian, and a white student who recently married a black partner. All agreed, however, that even though panelists were sharing their experiences that day, people of color shouldn’t bear the responsibility of educating non-minorities on racial issues.

“When I see people who look like me being shot in the streets, it’s hard to go to work and have no one say anything about it,” said another panelist. “I appreciate it when someone other than me can help bring it up as a conversation.”

“It’s important to have these conversations while I’m in the room, but it’s just as important to have these conversations when I’m not in the room,” one panelist said. “Part of this conversation is about making sure that when we are all in positions of power, we can ensure there is no discrimination taking place.”

“Ask yourself, ‘do I want to work with my black colleagues as much as with my white colleagues?’ If not, why?” another added.

Event organizers Jay Obaze, MBA 17, and Lauren Dugard, MBA 17

Participants also watched a video providing context on racially discriminatory legislation dating as recently as the past 60 years, myths about “black crime,” and data on income disparities (e.g., the median white household is now worth 13 times more than the median black household, a gap which has widened during the economic recovery according to the Pew Research Center).

“Part of being an ally isn’t necessarily saying things like ‘I don’t think that’s nice,’ but having the facts to say ‘That’s not true,’” Dugard said.  “It’s not just showing up and being willing to wear a black shirt, it’s being willing to dive deep and know the facts.”

The session also revealed the depth to which some black students feel traumatized by the relentless series of police shootings now under media scrutiny, and how much the issues they’ll face in the workplace weigh on them. In response to a question to panelists on how they experience the color of their skin on daily basis, one student described walking down the street as a tall black man and seeing people hug their purses to their bodies—even when he’s wearing a suit. Another student expressed frustration with managers hesitant to give her the same feedback as white colleagues because “I don’t look like them.”

“This gave insights into what many people in the room might not have known about the black experience, and also that the black experience is not monolithic,” Obaze said after the session.

The BBSA is planning more events to bring discussions of racial issues into the open. Next month, the group plans to organize a screening of the documentary “13th,” which makes the case that when the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution outlawed slavery, it ushered in a new racist system of mass incarceration.

By Pamela Tom

When Henry Chesbrough began planning his sabbatical last year, he chose to visit Barcelona, Spain, where he could practice what he preaches.

For nine months, Chesbrough, known as the “father of open innovation,” helped European academics and industry practitioners—two groups typically siloed in their own worlds—collaborate on innovation.

The move also inspired Chesbrough, an adjunct professor and the faculty director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, to host the Third Annual World Open Innovation Conference in Barcelona, Dec. 15-16. To see the entire WOIC program and list of speakers, or to register, visit the conference website.

“Barcelona is a hotspot for innovation within Europe,” says Chesbrough. “Europe boasts a history of science and technology excellence but there is a feeling in much of Europe that the U.S. has done a better job of innovating and getting products to market faster and on a larger scale.”

Chesbrough, known for coining the term, “open innovation,” is the author of Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating Profit from Technology (Harvard Business Press, 2003) and three other books about scaling innovation by collaborating with other firms. For almost two decades, he has been studying the open innovation concept, which details how firms can benefit by opening themselves up to external, as well as internal ideas, and sharing their internal ideas with others.

As a consultant to technology company Philips in the Netherlands, Chesbrough witnessed open innovation at work.

He recalls a day when Philips’ research campus was very guarded, surrounded by fencing and security.

When Philips embraced the open innovation model, it literally tore down the fence and opened the campus up to researchers from other companies.

Today the research hub houses more than 7,000 researchers who are able to exchange ideas with colleagues from more than 70 companies, according to Chesbrough.

“After that, we studied 465 research projects at Philips and found that those projects with an open innovation component got to market faster and had better results in the market,” says Chesbrough.

Taking an open innovation approach can address tricky business challenges companies face. For example, “Your company may think it can do better than a competitor but the other guy already has the product and it’s selling right now. It may take you a few years to create something better while the competitor continues to keep improving too,” says Chesbrough. “Open innovation is about leveraging those external ideas and incorporating them into what your company does best.”

Open innovation is gaining a growing foothold in European business and is becoming part of EU policy.

Carlos Moedas, EU Commissioner for Research, Science, and Innovation, and a former student of Chesbrough's at Harvard, has advocated the Three Opens (open science, open innovation and open to the world) as the linchpin of future EU policy towards innovation.

At December’s conference, Moedas, one of the WOIC’s keynote speakers, will discuss his proposal to make open innovation a mandate for all EU-financed R&D grants. Known as “Horizon 2020,” this coupling of research and innovation provides nearly 80 billion euros in research funding from 2014 to 2020.

Chesbrough says the European economy will grow as open innovation expands. He plans to continue to advise European companies on open innovation application strategies as he has for many Silicon Valley companies.

The days of rushing to be in a particular place at a particular time to watch a particular thing seem like a quaint, bygone era: we now expect to watch or listen to whatever we want, wherever we want—and we’re frustrated when it takes too long to load.

The >play 2016 Digital Media & Technology Conference will explore how on-demand culture is transforming the media and entertainment landscape. The conference is expected to attract 600 students, professionals, and industry leaders to San Francisco’s Regency Center on Friday, Nov. 4.

“This year we wanted to move away from a broad technology focus and shift back to digital media and entertainment,” said Cynthia Song, MBA 17, who is co-chairing the conference with Mike Matheson, MBA 17. “As the dominant industry trend, on-demand culture was the logical choice for a theme.”

Organized by students in the Digital Media & Entertainment Club, >play is the largest student-run digital media and technology conference in the country. A team of more than 40 students from the full-time and evening & weekend Berkeley MBA programs has been working since last spring to put on the 12^th annual event.

Each of the four panels and speakers will touch on how on-demand culture has changed how content is created, distributed, and consumed—including new developments in augmented reality and virtual reality. “On-demand content is becoming more dynamic via games and video entertainment on new, immersive devices,” Matheson said.

The morning keynote speaker is Adrienne McCallister, MBA 03, Google’s director of global partnerships for AR/VR, who helped launch the company’s Chromecast streaming device and led content partnerships for Google TV.

Panel topics include new media and how user-created content has altered the “relationships between suits, creatives, and fans;” navigating online identities in digital marketing; what’s next for the music industry; and the future of AR and VR—expected to be a $150 billion market by 2020.

The conference also includes product demos by HTC Vive, Oculus Gear VR, and video animation producer Baobab Studio, as well as a career fair with recruiters from Amazon, Google, and more.

>Play is sponsored by SoFi and TubeMogul, along with Google, Deloitte, and Amazon.

Tickets and more information can be found at playconference2016.com.

Berkeley-Haas has high hopes of beating its 2015 results during the third annual Big Give fundraising campaign, which kicks off at 9 pm PST on Wednesday, Nov. 16, and runs through 9 pm PST on Thursday, Nov. 17.

This year's campus-wide 24-hour Big Give fundraiser celebrates “The Berkeley Effect,” a nod to the Butterfly Effect, a theory that details the way that small changes to one part of a system can create an enormous change in an environment.

Olympic gold medal backstroker Ryan Murphy, BS 17, does his part for Big Give

“If a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas, just imagine how frequently the discoveries and activities happening at Berkeley-Haas are changing the world,” said Berkeley-Haas Dean Rich Lyons.

Last year, Haas raised $694,401 from 561 gifts during Big Give, the one day that the entire Haas community comes together to support the school.

Big Give includes competitions that foster friendly rivalry between UC Berkeley schools and departments based on the most money raised as well as highest participation rates. There is over $250,000 in prize money available and many contests will take place on social media throughout the day.

Alumni, faculty, staff, students, and friends can compete by posting creative photos—including pets and babies—on social media. Participants can take photos or write posts that tell what effect Berkeley-Haas has had on them or how they spread the Berkeley Effect into the world. (Remember to post all social media and shares using the #CalBigGive and #Haasome hashtags.)

Big Give contests include:

• Big Slice: Schools and programs that raise the most money during the Big Give get the biggest pieces of the pie.

• Big Bang: Schools and programs with the highest donor participation rate during the Big Give win big prizes.

• Big Countdown: Hour-long contests in a variety of categories.

Big Give social media information is available here: https://biggive.berkeley.edu/social/

Lyons noted that the Big Give is important because tuition covers only about half of the cost of running Berkeley-Haas. “The entire Haas campus that surrounds you was built with donations,” he said.  “If you believe that education, leadership, ideas, and values can have a positive impact on our society, then please join me and give back on November 17.”

Adair Morse, an associate professor with the Haas Finance Group, is one of three University of California researchers to win the 2016 Moskowitz Prize for their finding that Europe's demand for impact funds over more traditional investments is outpacing supply.

Morse, along with UC Davis’ Brad Barber and Ayako Yasuda, received the Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing during the 27th annual SRI Conference, held Nov. 9-11 in Denver. The long-running conference draws investors and investment professionals in sustainable, responsible-impact investment in North America.

The winning paper, "Impact Investing," is a study of 3,500 limited partners, 5,000 funds, and 25,000 capital commitments results. For their research, the authors developed a model to chart investor demand for impact funds over traditional options, matching characteristics between fund and investor. Their study found the lack of options for impact investment is most acute in Europe, where demand is three times higher than in the U.S. and the rest of North America.

The private capital pool is enormous, and even a small redirecting of that capital could have a huge impact on the world's most pressing problems, Morse said. "We hope that by documenting the demand for impact—and the institutional factors that promote or hinder investing for impact— we can add just a bit of knowledge that empowers policy and society," said Morse, who teaches New Venture Finance at Berkeley-Haas. Her research covers household finance, entrepreneurship, corruption and governance, and asset management.

Robert Strand, executive director of the Berkeley-Haas Center for Responsible Business, which manages the Moskowitz Prize, called “Impact Investing” a landmark article, noting the sheer quantity and quality of measurement the study required.

Lisa R. Goldberg, co-director of the Consortium for Data Analytics in Risk and an adjunct professor of economics and statistics at UC Berkeley, said the study’s main finding represents a huge incentive for innovation in impact investing funds “that can do such things as mitigate climate change and elevate the standard of living around the world.”

The prize is named for Milton Moskowitz, one of the first investigators to publish comparisons of the financial performance of portfolios screened for social and environmental issues and impacts. Its sponsors are Calvert Group, First Affirmative Financial Network, Nelson Capital Management, Neuberger Berman, and Trillium Asset Management.

Three years ago, Elizabeth Foster was a Peace Corps volunteer in Rwanda building a cooperative-owned business that helped farmers address malnutrition and unemployment.

Today, Foster, MBA 18, is among 12 first-year Berkeley-Haas full-time MBA students, six of them women, who recently received Finance Fellowships.

William Rindfuss, executive director of strategic programs for the Berkeley-Haas Finance Group, noted the increased number of women in this traditionally male-dominated area, as well as a growing number of students interested in entrepreneurial finance in this year’s recipient pool.

Other recipients of 2016 Berkeley-Haas Finance Fellowships include:

—Caitlyn Driehorst, Amanda Eller, Molly Brister, and Alvaro De Rivera, who, like Foster, received Entrepreneurial Finance Fellowships.

—Clarissa Berman, Diego Dias, and Maeyce Rebelato, who received Investment Banking Fellowships.  

—Nathaniel Boersma and Jeff Oldenburg, who received Investment Management Fellowships. 

—Francois-Jerome Selosse and Ashley Lannquist, who received CJ White Fellowships.

Finance Fellowships are awarded to students with strong career goals who serve as Haas ambassadors to alumni and the broader finance community. Recipients receive a cash award and priority enrollment for finance electives. Most importantly, they are paired with a mentor, often a Haas alumnus/alumna, who works in finance.

Foster is already receiving important advice from her mentor, Andrew Krowne, MBA 14, a principal at Dolby Family Ventures, who was also awarded a Finance Fellowship while a student at Berkeley-Haas.

“Given my social sector background, there’s a lot I’m trying to learn quickly, and he has been very helpful—whether he’s explaining the different kinds of funds to me or keeping his ear to the ground and telling me about opportunities I might not hear about,” says Foster.

Next year, Foster will serve as a principal of the Haas Socially Responsible Investment Fund. She is currently active with the Berkeley-Haas Net Impact Club and the Berkeley-Haas Finance Club.  Foster and Boersma were also elected co-presidents of the Investment Club, and will take on those roles in January.

Francois-Jerome Selosse, MBA 18, and part of the Haas Impact Investing Network, received the CJ White Fellowship in Finance earlier this spring.

Selosse looks forward to working with his mentor, Haas alumnus Mike Pearce, MBA 08 and managing director of global investment at consulting firm Cambridge Associates. “He’s a very experienced and knowledgeable professional in the investment world who has already given me valuable feedback and advice.”

Caitlyn Driehorst is another MBA student benefiting from an Entrepreneurial Finance Fellowship to expand her career in fintech, an industry composed of companies that use technology to provide financial services.

“The mentorship is one of the most exciting aspects of this fellowship,” says Driehorst, MBA 18 and co-president of the Berkeley-Haas FinTech Club. “Since the fintech space is innovating and changing quickly, access to mentors who are currently in the trenches is so helpful for understanding how to think about my career after Haas.”

Photo, clockwise from top:

This article is part of a series called Classified, in which we spotlight some of the more powerful lessons faculty are teaching in Haas classrooms.

By Krysten Crawford

It’s an October afternoon in Lecturer Krystal Thomas’s Product Branding & Entertainment class, and the pitch sessions are heating up. The undergraduate students have just three minutes to sell their marketing campaigns.

In the first go-round, groups are making cases for a movie remake to an imaginary audience of Hollywood producers; a second round of pitches includes campaigns tied to a skin-lightening cream sold in India and a discussion of the emotive power of symbols like purple fingernails.

Thomas—who has been at the forefront of modern marketing as a consultant/producer for Disney and Showtime Networks—offers feedback that is both candid and exacting. “Your body language came across as ‘I couldn't care less about this,’” she told one group. “The foundation of your campaign has to be emotional.”

Berkeley-Haas students come to the course seeking something different from the typical undergraduate business curriculum. 

“We often have to make our case in business school through numbers rather than ideas,” says Ariana Diaz-Saavedre, BS 17. “Here, there’s a lot of opportunity to include our own voices.”

Thomas created the cross-disciplinary course six years ago to address all the ways that digital marketing, social media, video gaming, mobile devices, and other technologies have pushed marketing far beyond the 30-second TV spot.

Her course is capped at 32 slots but has a waitlist almost three times as long, and Thomas—currently an executive producer at  Irvine, Calif.-based branded entertainment, content development, and marketing consultancy Pooka Ventures—is a regular on the “Club 6” list of students’ favorite instructors.

“This is, without question, an amazing opportunity for me,” says Diaz-Saavedra, who will also earn a BA in media studies in May.

In class, students work with companies such as LinkedIn, Safeway, Glacier Water, The Cooking Channel, and Western Digital to design real-world marketing campaigns.

Thomas says her goal is to challenge students to question the status quo. “You have to ask the right questions — ones the executives haven’t thought about or can’t ask due to company politics,” Thomas tells them. She reminds them, too, that they can never know enough about what consumers want or need.

Kylan Nieh, BS 14, now a senior product manager at LinkedIn, recently shared with the class a LinkedIn app designed to help college students land their first jobs. Students will present marketing proposals on the app before the end of the class next month.

“We might hear something we haven’t thought of before,” he says.

Students praise Thomas for being a straight shooter. “There are a lot of intricacies of the entertainment business that she knows that you would never learn about unless you were in the business, or in this class,” says Michelle Rubinstein, BS 17.

Adds Diaz-Saavedra: “She’s very intimidating at first, and a little bit sassy. Everybody loves that about her.”

Students also appreciate that, despite Thomas’s hectic schedule, she also takes the time to mentor them.

Jess Mersten, BS 16, said the class paid off for her immediately. After her team pitched a campaign to Western Digital, the judges offered her an internship at the company.

After graduation, she took a position as a trainee in the retail management program at The Gap.

“I’ve been able to apply a lot of the customer-centric learning from that class to my current job,” she says.

Event organizers thanked all the alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends who donated, sent emails, and participated in a social media campaign with Big Give photos, posts, tweets and more tweets, comments and shares.

Berkeley-Haas undergraduate students created a video, sharing why they give back to the school. Students across Berkeley-Haas rallied classmates with social media posts, live events, and a cappella concerts in the courtyard. Overall, undergrads exceeded their participation goal for the day by an amazing 248% — winning $10,000 in prize money for Haas with the highest percentage of students giving more than the targeted goal.

As President Barack Obama and his administration prepare to leave the White House, students in the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program will spend a week in Washington D.C., gaining insights from White House policy makers, ambassadors, lobbyists, and journalists.

The Washington, D.C. immersion trip, to be held, Dec. 5-9, is one of five immersive experiences organized for the Class of 2016, emphasizing experiential learning, collaboration with elite companies, and networking with high-level business and policy experts. This is the final immersion for the 69-member class, which will graduate in January.

Maura O’Neill, an entrepreneurship lecturer in the EMBA Program who teaches New Venture Finance, is leading this year’s trip. O’Neill, a Distinguished Teaching Fellow at Berkeley-Haas, has deep White House ties. Under the Obama administration, she served as the first chief of innovation and senior counselor to the administrator at the United States Agency for International Development. (USAID) until summer 2013, focusing on foreign assistance and development worldwide. She also served as a former chief of staff in the U.S. Senate.

O’Neill leads the trip for the first time this year. Prof. Laura Tyson, who served as an economic advisor to Presidents Clinton and Obama, paved the way for EMBA students by organizing previous Washington D.C. immersions.

O’Neill said that the Washington D.C. immersion is an essential part of the program. Students prepare by reading a wide array of material that covers topics ranging from the roots of income inequality to opposing views on international trade.

“Whether you work for a small business, start a business or work for a world-class global company, government policy and tax structure play a gigantic role,” she said. “If people want to be leaders in business and in their communities they’ve got to understand and be way more sophisticated about government. It’s an absolutely essential part of an MBA education today.”

The week begins with a meeting with Deputy Secretary of State Heather Higginbottom, along with Obama's Science and Technology Deputy Director Thomas Kalil, former special assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology at UC Berkeley. Meetings in the U.S. Senate to discuss access to start-up business capital will follow, as well as a timely preview of the expected fight over the future of the Affordable Care Act and tax reform. O’Neill will also include a special audience with Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen.

On the final day of the trip, many of the students will participate in debates for their final project. The debates, held at the Aspen Institute, will cover seven subjects, including corporate tax reform, immigration, job creation, prison reform, trade, climate change, and Bitcoin. Mara Liasson, award-winning national political correspondent for NPR, will keynote the final lunch.

By Laura Counts & Kim Girard

Before the year is out, Alvaro Silberstein, MBA 17, hopes to become the first person to navigate three iconic routes in Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National Park in a wheelchair.

But if he has his way, he won’t be the last to do it. He plans to leave his $8,000 trekking wheelchair behind for the next adventurer.

“We want to raise awareness, and increase visibility of people with disabilities—people who are active, who have challenges, and live life to the fullest,” says Silberstein, a native of Santiago, Chile, who suffered a spinal cord injury in a car accident at age 19, losing use of his legs and some control of his arms and hands. “We also want to work on making the parks more accessible in Chile.”

From Dec. 18 to 24, Silberstein will follow three classic trekking routes at the southern tip of the Andes in Chile: a very difficult hike to the Mirador Base de las Torres and hikes to Refugio Los Cuernos and the Grey Glacier Lake.

His 26-lb chair, made by French manufacture Joelette and purchased through a crowdfunding campaign, is the same model some have used to reach base camp at Mt. Everest.

Silberstein’s crew will use the chair’s handles and ropes to help carry him up and down the steepest inclines. The team will use horses to carry gear in the park, which is known for its beautiful glaciers and lakes, sharp peaks, and wildlife.

Silberstein began planning the “Wheel the World” expedition six months ago, assembling a 12-member team that includes experienced mountaineers, disabilities experts, and a physical therapist who specializes in spinal cord injuries. Three others are joining to document the trip: a Chilean outdoor filmmaker and two photographers. Silberstein has received sponsorship from several companies.

He’ll also be accompanied by fellow MBA student Matan Sela, MBA 17. Silberstein said Sela was the first MBA classmate who asked if he wanted company on the trek, and that since then he’s had to turn down several other classmates who offered to come along to help.

The idea for the trek came to Silberstein after he returned home to Santiago during a break in his MBA studies, and realized what a contrast there was between disability access at home, where many of his friends had visited Patagonia, and Berkeley.

He says he chose to do an MBA at Berkeley-Haas in part because of its history at the forefront of the disabilities rights movement. He knew that navigating daily life in a wheelchair would be easier than it was back home, but he was surprised to find that he also had easy access to the region’s natural wonders: Muir Woods, Lake Tahoe, and Yosemite.

“I was amazed that I could even rent a handbike in Yosemite,” he said.

Silberstein, an industrial engineer, has always been athletic and is a lifelong nature lover. A former member of the under-19 Chilean national rugby team, he has continued to pursue adaptive sports, and to enjoy getting outside after his accident. For the past four months, he’s been training for the trip at the campus gym and outside on handbikes.

His says his parents, who have never visited Patagonia, are a bit nervous about the danger of the climbs and the weather—it’s summer in Patagonia but the temperatures can still be extreme, with snow and rain, and gale-force winds.

“We are taking all of the measures to do this in a safe way,” Silberstein says.

The locals in Patagonia are excited about the trek, which has been covered by Chilean news outlets, Silberstein says. After the trip, he plans to create a blog that details how to use the wheelchair on the routes, and inspires others to visit Patagonia.

“When I had my accident, one of my biggest concerns was not being able to enjoy traveling and to enjoy nature because it would be different,” he says. “But I’ve realized everyone can enjoy nature, and I want to inspire others to do it as well.”

Married more than 50 years, Susan Chamberlin, MBA 87, and her husband, Steve, are partners in an ambitious effort to improve local schools.

Though technically retired, they remain committed to doing what they’ve done throughout their careers: building. For more than four decades, as a highly successful real estate developer and architect respectively, their tools were steel, glass, and concrete.

Now they employ different building materials but have similar goals. Where once they created places for people to live and work, today they’re focused on building innovative facilities and providing them to organizations running schools that expand minds and hearts. It’s an educational experience that’s inspiring (and even fun) for hundreds of middle- and high-school students in the West Contra Costa Unified School District.

“We believe all kids should have the same chance to attain their dreams,” Susan says.

Spearheading their educational philanthropy is the Chamberlin Family Foundation, which was created in 2006 with a simple yet powerful mission: invest in the people and ideas that will vastly improve K–12 public education, particularly where inequitable opportunities impede student potential.

For their efforts bettering the lives of others, Susan and Steve Chamberlin have been named Berkeley-Haas’ 2016 Business Leaders of the Year, the highest honor the school bestows.

Read more in Berkeley-Haas Magazine.

By Pamela Tom

How messaging can be framed to influence acceptance

Imagine you are an organ donor in need of an organ yourself. Should you get preferential treatment because you had volunteered to be a donor? A new study shows that most people would support moving you up on the waiting list. At the same time, they would vehemently oppose moving non-donors needing an organ down on the list.

Why do people accept some policies and reject others when the outcomes are the same? Getting the desired results depends on the policy’s messaging and whether people’s behavior is voluntary or obligatory. Study participants favored outcomes that reward positive and voluntary behavior. Likewise, people tend to favor punishing people’s behavior when it runs afoul of an obligation or rule but oppose preferential treatment for those who did not break the rules.

The study, “When Do People Prefer Carrots to Sticks? A Robust ‘Matching Effect’ in Policy Evaluation,” forthcoming in Management Science, suggests that by understanding how people evaluate policies, marketers and policymakers can better frame and improve acceptance rates. The paper is co-authored by Ellen Evers, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Yoel Inbar of the University of Toronto, and Irene Blanken and Linda Oosterwijk of Tilburg University, Netherlands.

“For a policy to succeed, it must not only be effective in changing behavior, it must also be accepted by stakeholders,” says Evers. “Therefore it is crucial to understand how different descriptions of the exact same policy can lead to dramatically different rates of acceptance.”

When a policy addresses voluntary behaviors, study participants favored outcomes that help those who participated more than outcomes that punish non-volunteers, as in the organ donor scenario. The same results occurred in 13 similar scenarios. For example, people supported a plan to move community service volunteers up on a waiting list for a desirable apartment, while moving non-volunteers down on the list was seen as completely unacceptable.

The pattern flips when the policy addresses obligations. For example, study participants preferred a policy that cut test scores by 50% for students who cheated on an exam. Those students failed to fulfill their obligation not to cheat. At the same time, the study participants were less favorable toward a policy that doubled test scores for students who had not cheated because the honest students’ behavior is deemed voluntary.

Evers calls these differences in judgment a “matching effect.” Policies that provide a disadvantage—such as being moved down on the organ donor list—are considered punishment. At the same time, policies that create an advantage (moving up on the organ list) are favored because they are seen as rewarding a desired voluntary behavior. By understanding this matching effect when framing a message, policymakers are more likely to increase acceptance of a policy.

Think of the Netherlands’ so-called ‘fat tax’ proposal in 2012. Left-leaning parties wanted to increase taxes on unhealthy, fattening foods and use the proceeds to make healthy foods more affordable. Evers says the proposal failed because of its campaign message— introduce a fat-tax and use the proceeds to make healthy food cheaper—because it was perceived as punishing citizens for eating bad foods.

“If they had framed the campaign positively such as, ‘We should make healthy foods cheaper and fund this by increasing the cost of bad foods,’ it is likely many more people would have seen this as an acceptable intervention,” says Evers. “The same policy can get a lot of support, or be hated by most of the population, purely by the way it is described.”

By Krysten Crawford

About 70 innovation scholars from around the world are gathering at Berkeley-Haas this week for the ICC conference, where they will ponder the forces that drive industrial and corporate change.

Prof. David Teece (pictured) is spearheading the ICC conference“Beyond Technological Innovation and Diffusion”—with his Italian colleagues, Giovanni Dosi and Franco Malerba.

ICC is an acronym forIndustrial and Corporate Change, the journal which Teece co-founded in 1992 with the late Nathan Rosenberg, a longtime Stanford professor. The conference this year honors Rosenberg— “one of the world's pioneering scholars on the economics of innovation and how it drives the prosperity of firms and nations,” says Teece, the Thomas W. Tusher Professor in Global Business.

Among the pioneers attending the three-day event are Nobel Prize laureates Oliver Williamson of Berkeley-Haas and Kenneth Arrow of Stanford. Conference topics range from why firms are funding less of their own research to how regions diversify over time to the role of patents in the financing of innovative firms.

It was 30 years ago that Rosenberg and many of the scholars meeting this week first gathered in Venice, Italy, to talk about innovation, an area rarely discussed in business. The fact that they took a multidisciplinary approach to the study of innovation was highly unusual at the time, says Teece, who also serves as faculty director of the Tusher Center for the Management of Intellectual Capital.

“This crew has been pushing innovation relentlessly for decades, long before the term became fashionable with the rest of the world,” he says.

ICC, which celebrates its 25^th year as a journal next year, has proven key to helping innovation scholars to gain legitimacy in academia.

“The science of economics, as important as it is, really has had trouble grasping innovation,” says Teece. “The reason is that economists like systems to be in equilibrium and innovation throws everything into disequilibrium. Innovation is very messy.”

Since ICC launched, Teece says, experts have developed a much better understanding of the processes that drive innovation, how the spoils of innovation get divided between pioneers and their imitators, and the role that ecosystems, as opposed to industries, play in determining business opportunities.

What’s more, ICC has addressed aspects of innovation that cross into other disciplines, including public policy, social science, and physical science. Prominent contributors have included Richard Nelson of Columbia University, Sidney Winter of Wharton, and Constance Helfat of Tuck.

Because of ICC and its peer journal, Research Policy, “it’s easier today for someone with a serious interest in innovation to be taken seriously,” says Teece. “But it’s still not easy.”