What do you expect the impact of the new North Academic Building to be?

There is a strong reputational case to be made for this new building. Over the past 20 years, our school has experienced a spike in visibility and rankings, alumni engagement and giving, and employer engagement. We want to make sure we continue on this trajectory.

The North Academic Building also allows us to grow our highly selective programs. In the current building, for example, our classrooms limit our MBA cohort size to 60 students. The new building makes it possible to increase cohorts up to 76 students, which strengthens both our financial model and our partnerships with employers.

20 years ago Haas moved into its current facilities. How did that change things for Haas?

Moving into our current beautiful buildings in 1995 was an inflection point. The new building enabled us to grow self-supporting programs by some 300 percent. The resulting financial strength allowed us to compete for and win top-of-the-market faculty. It stoked a sense of belonging and affiliation among our students and graduates, and it raised our profile with employers.

Today, 20 years later, we have exhausted the lift from our current buildings. Our classrooms in Cheit Hall are booked solid, not just during the week but in the evening and even on the weekend. We had 1,300 degree-program students in 1995; now we have 2,200. There is no room to grow or expand into the opportunities we face. So it is time to create a new inflection point.

Considering the shift toward online education, some might say why build on campus?

I anticipate that Haas may increasingly explore hybrid models of teaching that combine online learning with learning together in the classroom. Like all leading schools, Haas is experimenting diligently in the area of top-quality synchronous and asynchronous digital education.

For example, Haas has been offering one of its most popular courses, Prof. Cameron Anderson’s Power & Politics, as a hybrid. It’s been a huge success, and not just with students. Anderson himself says that he has learned a lot about how to customize learning and claims that he will never teach in the classroom in the same way again.

I don’t believe that online education will ever completely replace the need to come to campus to meet people, learn from each other, and have an experience together. That’s why our North Academic Building will offer different styles and sizes of classrooms, study rooms, etc. It will also have the infrastructure to support all the latest educational technologies.

Is there a financial case to be made for this new building?

Absolutely. Our estimates put the financial lift from the new building at about $6 million in net resources a year. That is the equivalent of $100 million in endowment.

More than 20 percent of our revenues currently come from our (non-degree) executive education program. Exec Ed has lacked the room to grow in the form that the clients want, namely, room that is part of the Haas School proper. Having more classrooms will definitely help.

How does the building reflect the mission and culture of Berkeley-Haas?

Our mission is to develop leaders who redefine how we do business—and who do so responsibly. Environmental stewardship is a key aspect of responsible business. It was important for us to construct a building that meets the latest standards in environmental conservation. We designed the North Academic Building to meet certified LEED Gold status and we may be able to raise it to Platinum status as we complete construction.

The North Academic Building is also designed to encourage community, both within Haas and within the greater community that surrounds us. Overlooking the San Francisco Bay Area from our magnificent event space will give you a sense of perspective of the innovation ecosystem of which Haas is a part. Our new building and the newly renovated courtyard that connects it to our existing buildings will play a central role in boosting new connections and new ideas.

Read more here.

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On any given day, a child’s little hands touch hundreds of surfaces and other people – all laden with germs that can make him or her sick.

Teaching children in disadvantaged regions about the importance of hand washing to prevent infections is the primary goal of Hygiene Heroes, a curriculum-based healthcare program developed by Prof. David Levine at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The program needs a “helping hand” and has launched a crowdfunding campaign on Berkeley-Haas Crowdfund, the business school’s own fundraising platform. Hygiene Heroes hopes to raise $8000 by Feb. 16. 

Through interactive styles of learning, such as stories, games, and songs, Hygiene Heroes teaches children in Asia, Africa, and South American how to practice good personal hygiene and safe water usage. Levine’s team of UC Berkeley (including Haas) undergraduate researchers seeks travel funds to send them to partner schools in Chennai, India, this summer. There, the students will train local teachers and serve as global liaisons. Funds raised will also allow the team to purchase needed classroom supplies for the children.

“The last two summers we piloted our lessons in Chennai,” says Prof. Levine. “The children enjoyed our material and, more importantly, adopted healthier habits. We have adapted the curriculum to the communities’ feedback and look forward to returning and helping more children.”

Eventually the research team plans to share its curriculum with nonprofit organizations for global distribution.

Previously, Prof. Levine, along with Brett Green and William Fuchs, both assistant professors at Berkeley-Haas, raised $16,000 to fund their research on safer cook stoves for rural communities in developing countries.

Berkeley Crowdfund launched in 2014 to “help and attract engagement and financial support for research and innovation, community activity, and entrepreneurial ventures that typically fall between the campus’ normal funding methods and models.”

Four teams of Evening & Weekend MBA students were recently challenged by PayPal to improve a task people dread: pumping gas.

The project was one among many assigned by companies to EWMBA students during their required Mid-Program Academic Retreat (MPAR), an intensive weekend-long course halfway through the three-year EWMBA experience that allows students to apply their classroom learning to real world challenges.

The retreat was organized to run in parallel with the inaugural Berkeley Roundtable on Applied Innovation and Design (BRAID) conference, at the Silverado Resort in Napa, Ca., Jan. 16-18.

Combining the two events allowed company innovation executives to draw fresh ideas from business students, while the students were able to test their mettle and network. A dozen faculty members, two dozen innovation executives, 250 students, and a dozen staff members participated.

BRAID is a joint program of the Haas School of Business’ Institute for Business Innovation, and Berkeley Engineering’s Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation, with additional faculty participation from the School of Information and The Blum Center for Developing Economies. 

The goal is to provide executives from corporate innovation organizations with the opportunity to connect with a community of practitioners, facilitate their own professional and organizational development, and collaborate with students and faculty across Berkeley on a range of innovation projects and issues related to human-centered and design-based innovation practices.

A growing group of BRAID corporate members include PayPal, W.L. Gore, Hearst, Siemens, Kaiser, AutoDesk, Citi, Panasonic, and Ford. While some of the companies are established Bay Area innovators, others have just recently set up innovation “outposts” in Silicon Valley, a growing trend.

“There’s a lot of exciting applied innovation and design-based work happening at Berkeley and in the greater Bay Area, and growing student interest and demand for getting exposure and hands-on experience,” says Haas Lecturer and BRAID Executive Director Dave Rochlin, who founded the roundtable last fall with Haas Senior Lecturer Sara Beckman. (pictured, top) “Running the MPAR course alongside the BRAID conference provided the students with that experience, as well as a front-row seat to the most cutting-edge methods and frameworks used in customer-centered design and innovation.”

Through the MPAR course, four student teams were assigned to each of 10 separate BRAID company projects in December. Each team was asked to conduct research and develop insights over the break, and worked with the companies’ executives to develop solutions, tapping into what they learned in their core Problem Finding, Problem Solving course, which teaches design thinking and creative problem framing.

At the conference, the roundtable members participated in separate sessions on Friday, and joint sessions with students to mentor them on their work on Saturday.

PayPal, which posed the gas pumping challenge, left the conference with ideas for improving the gas-purchasing experience, including ways for customers to better manage their fuel budget and save money.

The student team winning this year’s MPAR Cup trophy for their creative solution for PayPal included Tejkiran Balijepalli, William Huang, Jon Moreno, Ravi Prakash, and Bryan Shieh.
 

When Dean Rich Lyons partnered with faculty, students, alumni, and staff to articulate Berkeley-Haas culture, the aim was to capture the school’s essence.

What emerged were our four Defining Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself.

Launched in February 2010, the Defining Principles culture initiative has touched all aspects of Haas: admissions, curriculum, staff hiring and reviews, alumni relations, and day-to-day operations. We asked our chief culture evangelist, Dean Rich Lyons, to reflect on some the shifts that have taken place over these five years, and what lies ahead.

Q: Can you share an example of how the environment Haas feels different than it did five years ago?

A: One of the things that we've had to get used to is what I will call the discomfort in the Defining Principles. Let’s take Question the Status Quo. It's easy to say we all appreciate it and embrace it, but it's hard to do. It's especially hard when somebody questions a status quo that you put in place. Many of us—including me—have asked: "Are we fully ready for this?"

Some people have said that if you go back five or 10 years, we were so consensus-oriented that it was hard to voice a contrarian view. That can lead to groupthink, and to stasis. If we want to be really dynamic, constructive disagreement is part of it. In senior leadership team meetings, I've seen more of a willingness to put somebody's idea out there and say, "Wait a minute. I have a different view."

This also maps into our interactions with the broader campus. Intellectually, we are very good at questioning the status quo at Berkeley. But operationally, the university can be a pretty bureaucratic place. I think people at Haas are really taking up the challenge and asking the kinds of questions that we talk to our students all the time. Questions like, "Isn't there a better way to do it?" The campus sees it too. They see us changing the rules by which we're governed.

Q: Haas now has five years worth of graduates who grew up with the Defining Principles. How are you seeing this reflect back on the school?

A:  I see it all the time. Here's an example: we hand out our "culture cards" that list the Defining Principles. When I go to see a donor or alum I always ask, "Do you know about the culture work we've been doing?"

Many, many of them say, "I've got the culture card on my desk." Or they have it in their wallet or purse. It's not just that they're aware of it—they are using it, and they have an appetite to be guided by it. They're proud of it.

Another example: I was at lunch recently with some venture capitalists who don't know the school very well, and I handed a culture card to them. They said, "This describes the kind of people we like to fund."

Questioning the status quo is the first principle on the list, and most entrepreneurs are very good at that. But these VCs also know that if you can't build a team as an entrepreneur, you won't be successful. Confidence Without Attitude—they said that's exactly what they'd like to see more need of. Students Always and Beyond Yourself fit in as well.

Q:  You've said the DPs codified a culture that was already here, and also that they are aspirational. Thinking ahead, what’s next?

A: We've got a very strong culture, it serves us, we're proud of it. The question is to what end? If our value proposition is producing a distinctive type of leader, how is our culture driving that outcome?

If the culture is driving what we're doing at the highest level to produce a distinctive type of leader, it's a different value proposition. We're only part of the way there to really linking culture to the leadership profile or leadership archetype that we're standing by as a school. That's part of the aspiration for us.

Q:  What's your top advice for other institutions working on cultural change?

A: There are three bits of advice I give to everybody.

Number one: Culture is a long-cycle project. We are five years in and we are maybe 60 percent of the way to achieving the full benefits.

Number two: You need urgency. Change management efforts founder because there isn't a sense of urgency or a clear case for why it's important. You need to establish the case, and maintain that urgency over a long period.

Number three: Who owns it? If somebody senior—preferably the most senior person—isn't 100 percent committed, you probably won't get there.

Jon Sebastiani and his team came into the 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class with several key observations, Haas Lecturer Steve Blank writes in Forbes:

• Snack foods were a large  ~$35 billion, but the moribund food category was starving for innovation and modernization
• Meat snacks were a $2.5 billion subcategory of snacks. So there was plenty of data that proved that Americans loved to snack and loved meat snacks.
• There was an opportunity for a new company “Jerky 2.0.” in the snack food market
• Jon believed his competition was the conventional “Meat Guys” (the existing beef jerky companies).

Read more of Blank's article here.

Jon Sebastiani and his team came into the 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class with several key observations, Haas Lecturer Steve Blank writes in Forbes:

• Snack foods were a large ~$35 billion but the moribund food category was starving for innovation and modernization
• Meat snacks were a $2.5 billion subcategory of snacks. So there was plenty of data that proved that Americans loved to snack and loved meat snacks.
• There was an opportunity for a new company “Jerky 2.0.” in the snack food market
• Jon believed his competition was the conventional “Meat Guys” (the existing beef jerky companies).

Read more of the article here.

After a whirlwind of global internships, intense research projects, and international competitions, 67 students in the Berkeley Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) Program are expected to graduate March 20.
 
The commencement will be held at 11:30 a.m. at Andersen Auditorium.

Suni Harford, (pictured below), managing director and Citigroup’s regional head of markets for North America, is the scheduled commencement speaker. A leader in finance for more than 20 years and an advocate for women leaders in business, Harford was named to American Banker’s 2014 25Most Powerful Women in Finance list. Jason Shoup, MFE 06, head of U.S. investment-grade credit strategy at Citi, will return to Haas to introduce Harford.

The MFEs capped the year on a high note recently, taking second place among 50 rivals in the Rotman International Trading Competition, the largest trading competition in the world. The competing team in Toronto Feb. 19-21 included Tanya Gupta, Tong Lu, Yi Lu, Xie He, Maoqi Wang, and Wontai Cho. The same team also took first place in the Optiver Options Case for the second straight year, earning a cash prize.

During their program, 65 of the class’s 67 students were placed in internships from New York to Hong Kong to London, working in industries including hedge funds, investment and commercial banking, asset management, and financial services. Employers included RBC, Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Standard & Poors, Dow, Charles Schwab, and Blackrock.

At commencement, students and faculty will welcome Harford, who began her career at Merrill Lynch after earning an MBA from Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business. In 1995, she became co-head of Citi's fixed income capital markets origination business, moving on to global head of fixed income research. In her current role, she oversees the North American sales, trading, and origination businesses of Citi's securities and banking franchise. Harford is also the co-head of Citigroup’s global women’s initiative, Citi Women.

She serves on several boards, including the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, the world’s largest post-trade financial services company, and the Forte Foundation, a national non-profit dedicated to increasing the number of women business leaders. She is also involved with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Veteran’s Employment Advisory Council and represents Citi as a founding member of Veterans on Wall Street.
 
MFE Program Executive Director Linda Kreitzman will present the MFE Defining Principles Awards.

The Evening & Weekend MBA Program again ranked #1 among part-time programs in the US for the third year in a row in the annual US News & World Report, published March 10. The Full-time Berkeley MBA program ranked #7 for the eighth year in a row. The Berkeley MBA for Executives remained at #9 among EMBA programs rated in the specialty rankings.

Among other specialty rankings, the Berkeley MBA placed as follows:

#3 in nonprofit
#5 in entrepreneurship
#7 in finance
#7 in international (tied with Harvard Business School)
#8 in management
#10 in marketing

The full-time MBA rankings are based on program data provided by participating schools and on polls of business school deans and directors of accredited MBA programs, as well as of corporate recruiters and company contacts. The peer and employer polls are weighted by .25.

Placement success is weighted by .35: starting salary and bonus (40 percent of this measure) and employment rates for full-time 2014 graduates at graduation (20 percent) and three months later (40 percent); Student selectivity (.25): average GMAT and GRE scores (65 percent), average undergraduate GPA (30 percent), and the proportion of applicants accepted by the school (5 percent).

The part-time ranking is based on average peer assessment score (50 percent of the overall score); average GMAT score and GRE scores of part-time MBA students entering in the fall of 2014 (15 percent); average undergraduate GPA (5 percent); work experience (15 percent); and the percentage of the fall 2014 MBA enrollment that is part time (15 percent). The average peer assessment score is calculated from a fall 2014 survey that asked business school deans and MBA program directors at each of the nation’s 323 part-time MBA programs.

The EMBA and other specialty rankings are based solely on ratings by peer schools.

Find the full report here. (Registration required).

Ulrike Malmendier, the Edward J. and Mollie Arnold professor of finance at the Haas School of Business and a UC Berkeley professor of economics, is one of five professors to receive the 2015 Distinguished Teaching Award.

It is the highest teaching honor UC Berkeley bestows.

The awards, announced this week by Chancellor Nicholas Dirks, follow a rigorous selection process that begins with nomination by the department chair or dean of the professor's school.

Then a selection committee of the Academic Senate narrows down the nominations, receives recommendations from students, and visits the nominees' classrooms.

“It’s incredible news that I am being honored with this award,” said Malmendier, who specializes in behavioral economics. “I am very touched by what the students said about their experience in my class."

Malmendier is a member of the Haas Finance Group as well as the UC Berkeley Department of Economics, and teaches corporate finance in the MBA and PhD programs. Her body of research explores everything from the impact overconfidence has on CEOs when they are making economic decisions to how macroeconomic experiences affect risk-taking.

Considered one of the rising academic stars in her field, Malmendier was honored in 2013 with the prestigious Fisher Black Prize from the American Finance Association, presented to the top financial academic under the age of 40.

“Ulrike embodies the spirit of this award for all of the independent, rigorous thinking, enthusiasm, and energy she brings to the classroom," says Dean Rich Lyons, a Haas finance professor who won the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award in 1998. “She has broken new ground with her innovative research and her students have reaped the benefit of her economic insights."

In teaching evaluations, Malmendier has received accolades. In 2014 student reviews of her corporate finance class, she was described as an enthusiastic and engaging lecturer and received praise for explaining difficult concepts “clearly, with memorable examples.”

"I was shocked by the care with which Ulrike planned and designed every single one of her classes, employing several learning methods to make sure that every single topic was assimilated in the easiest way by her students," one student wrote. "Even when this aim required her to spend hours in the preparation of business cases, of investment games, or the collection of specialized and up-to-date business materials, she was eager to do whatever would help her students grasp as much as possible from every single class."

Malmendier says she was drawn to teaching at Berkeley for its openness to modern, non-traditional ideas, and research questions. She adds that she loves the diversity of the students she teaches.

“From the highly motivated, intellectually curious, and diverse group of undergraduates, to the intellectually top-notch PhD students, to the evening MBAs I am teaching, who never fail to impress me with their devotion and hard work--attending my lectures from 6 to 9:30 p.m., after a long day of work,” she says. “They are all really incredible!”

Economics was not Malmendier’s first calling. Born and raised in Germany, Malmendier received a PhD in law at the University of Bonn in 2000 and is an expert in Roman law. After earning a PhD in business economics at Harvard University in 2002, she shifted her academic focus, which she shares today with her husband, Berkeley economics Professor Stefano DellaVigna. The couple have collaborated on several research projects together.

Before joining Berkeley as an assistant professor of economics in 2006, Malmendier taught at Stanford. Through her academic career, she has visited and taught at her alma mater, the University of Bonn, Princeton University, and the University of Chicago.

Malmendier is the twelfth professor from the Haas School to receive the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award. In addition to Dean Lyons, others have included Prof. Sara Beckman in 2001, former Dean Earl Cheit in 1989, former Dean Laura Tyson in 1982, and former Associate Dean Andrew Shogan in 1979. Marketing Prof. Teck Ho received the top teaching award in 2010.

The other Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award Winners this year are Kathleen Donegan in English, Daniel Feldman in Molecular and Cell Biology, Francine Masiello in comparative Literature/Spanish and Portuguese, and Lev Michael in Linguistics.

- By Seung Y. Lee

The push for a more globally competitive American workforce has led to calls for increased incentives for people to join educational and training programs.

While critics question if the training efforts are worth it, new research from the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business argue that they are an effective option for employers.

A one-time outcome-based financial incentive, if based on proven psychological techniques, could help workers embrace a long-term and sustained interest in training says Teck-Hua Ho, the William Halford Jr. Family professor of marketing at Berkeley-Haas.

“In a constantly changing work environment, workers must commit and continue to participate in training in order to stay relevant and competitively employable,” Ho wrote in a study:Can a One-time Incentive Induce Long-Term Commitment to Training?

The paper, co-written by Catherine Yeung of the National University of Singapore, highlights the dilemma faced by many U.S.-based small- and medium-sized businesses. They need highly-skilled workers to compete, but, unlike big corporations, many of them do not have the resources for comprehensive, sustained, mandatory programs.

In many cases, small- and medium-sized businesses must look to outside organizations or the government to provide training and must rely on employees’ self-motivation to actively participate in it, Ho and Yeung wrote.

The problem is that workers’ participation in such training is likely to be low because courses are undertaken at their own discretion, potentially leaving them and their employers out-of-touch with the needs of the market, the authors said.

However, based on a field study conducted in collaboration with a non-profit vocational center, Ho and Yeung found that workers could be convinced to commit to long-term training based on incentives that are presented as a reimbursement to absorb out-of-pocket expenses instead of as a cash reward, in combination with a requirement to make a non-binding commitment to take specific courses of their choosing.

The field study involved 4,000 workers, some of whom were offered a one-time cash incentive of $60 to take two, two-day courses, each of which costs $30, within four months. The $60 incentive was either presented to the workers as a reimbursement to absorb the out-of-pocket expenses of taking the training courses, or as a cash reward for taking them.

Regardless of how the incentive was presented, workers only received it if they completed both courses within four months. Some of the workers were also asked to make a non-binding commitment to undertake training by specifying which two courses to take and when to take them.

The study found that workers who received a one-time incentive on average completed six times more courses than those who did not. Tracking these workers for another nine-and-a-half months in which no incentives were offered showed that only those who had received the one-time incentive as a reimbursement to absorb out-of-pocket expenses and made a non-binding commitment to specific courses continued to stick with the training program.

Ho and Yeung said their work was based on known studies on the use of incentives to influence behavior, such as programs used to encourage people to exercise, lose weight, and, in developing countries, to send their children to school.

At a time of rising worries that American workers are falling behind better-educated and better-trained employees in Asia and Europe, they state that the study presents important options for employers and government.

“While managers and policy makers know that incentives can motivate workers, many are not aware of the importance of incorporating psychological techniques into the design of an effective incentive program,” Ho and Yeung wrote.

- By Benjamin Pimentel

It’s not much harder or more expensive to send a tweet or a Facebook post to hundreds or even thousands of people than to just a handful. So you’d think that the ease of communicating with lots of people via social networks would result in more and more people sharing their thoughts, political views, and cat videos.

But that’s not the case, says Associate Professor Zsolt Katona at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (pictured, left). The flood of tweets and posts washing across cyberspace has created a huge imbalance in the number of people creating content and the number of people who receive it. That imbalance stems from some content creators giving up on actively contributing to social networks, while others choose to send out more and more messages to users in an effort to be noticed.

In a new research paper, Competing for Attention in Social Communication Markets, Katona and co-author Ganesh Iyer, Edgar F. Kaiser Chair in Business Administration at Berkeley-Haas, (pictured, right) suggest a seemingly counter-intuitive thesis: The cheaper and easier it becomes to reach large numbers of people via social media, the fewer “content creators” choose to participate and the more cluttered the networks become.  If it were as difficult to post messages to large numbers of people as it was just a few years ago – before the rise of mobile messaging apps -- more users would create content.

Although more and more people are participating in social networking, a smaller percentage of users are actively creating and sharing content. Industry reports estimate that just 10 percent of Twitter users broadcast 90 percent of the network’s tweets, while only a tiny fraction of the 55 million users who blog post daily, notes Katona.

The relative scarcity of message creators has been noticed before. But what hasn’t been understood are the mechanisms responsible for the imbalance of senders and receivers and the implications for the social networking industry.

The research suggests that social networking is a bit like a market: People who create and send content are investing effort to win customers--in this case the “receivers” who will view their content.

But unlike businesses that use social networking as a marketing tool, individual senders aren’t looking for a definable economic reward. They want status, or the satisfaction of being heard. Instead of actual sales, senders measure their payoff by the number of receivers who listen to them, while the effort required to reach them is the cost of sales, say the researchers.

Social distance between senders and receivers largely determines the effort required to reach them. If a social network is small, and each sender targets just a few receivers, there’s not much competition for attention; receivers aren’t getting many messages.  On the other hand, senders aren’t getting a large payoff so they only make a minimal effort to be heard.

That changes when senders attempt to increase their payoff by targeting people who are more socially distant. Receivers, who once were the recipient of messages from only a few senders, are now targeted by many senders, leading to increased competition for attention. And the more distant the receiver, the harder it is for the sender to craft relevant messages, say the researchers. 

As competition grows, some senders decide the payoff isn’t worth the trouble and drop out, and others decide not to enter the market, which explains why the proportion of senders to receivers is so low. It may also explain why some users turn away from popular social networks and are looking for more intimate places to share items with just a handful of people, say the researchers. 

Facebook recognized this trend and modified its algorithms to present users with more news from people who are close to them. There have even been attempts to create new, more intimate social networks from scratch, although they have so far met with limited success. 

When messaging costs go down, senders decide they can target more and more people and compete with other senders by sending messages more frequently. “But what is interesting is senders are worse off by making this choice,” say Iyer and Katona. Too much messaging creates clutter and lowers payoffs for everyone in the market.

When the cost and difficulty of messaging increases, senders have less incentive to compete by creating a flood of messages. That, in turn, makes it more likely that users will read a sender’s message, meaning his or her payoff is higher and senders are more likely to stay in the network.  

The paper’s conclusions are based on mathematical modeling of social networking behavior along with an analysis of empirical data from a 2011 study of real-world social networks in a French primary school. It will be published in Management Science later this year.

- By Bill Snyder

Haas Marketing Professor Emeritus David Aaker, widely considered the father of modern branding, has been selected for the 2015 Marketing Hall of Fame for his outstanding lifetime contributions to the field.

Aaker is one of four inductees chosen this year, and the only academic honored by the American Marketing Association’s New York chapter. Winnowed from more than 100 nominees, Aaker joins Shelly Lazarus, chairman emeritus of Ogilvy & Mather; Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia, Inc., and Trevor Edwards, president of Nike Brand, Nike, Inc.

“I am honored to be among such an accomplished and illustrious group,” says Aaker, who is vice chairman at the strategic brand and marketing consultancy firm Prophet. “I’m gratified because it represents how my work impacts on the way marketing is practiced in companies.”

Aaker’s pioneering work focused on defining brand equity and detailed ways to build and manage brands and portfolios. He has published more than 100 articles and 17 books on the theory and practice of marketing, including eight on branding, that sold more one million copies and were translated into 18 languages. He has won awards for best article in the California Management Review and twice for best article in the Journal of Marketing.

“Dave’s reputation and intellectual impact is as global as it gets,” says Haas Dean Rich Lyons. “A huge amount of what I've learned over the years about what an enterprise's identity is, why it matters, and how great leaders can shape it, I’ve learned from Dave's books and talks.”

While Aaker enjoys reading academic research, he says that he writes primarily for marketing managers. His first brand book, Managing Brand Equity (1991), gained attention because “it defined brand equity at a time when there was no accepted definition,” he explains.

His second book, the bestselling Building Strongs Brand (1995), developed his brand identity model, The Aaker Model, which is used by hundreds of firms to build and strategically manage brands.

Other influential books followed on brand leadership, portfolio strategy, and relevance. His latest book, Aaker on Branding: 20 Principles That Drive Success, was published last year.

“Today, Dave’s books, articles, and blog posts enjoy an almost cult-like following in the United States and abroad,” says Michael Dunn, MBA 90, Prophet’s chairman and CEO who recruited Aaker in 1999.

Scott Galloway and Ian Chaplin, both MBA 92, founded Prophet, incorporating many of Aaker’s principles. Dunn, Galloway, and Chaplin were among the many students Aaker taught at Berkeley-Haas between 1969 and 1999. “It's impossible to overstate Dave's contribution to the theory and practice of marketing,” Dunn says.

While at Haas, Aaker helped then-interim Dean Lyons develop and refine what principles Berkeley-Haas should stand for over time. That campaign, as well as Aaker’s other contributions to the field, are described in The Plato and Newton of Branding, a feature article in last year’s California Magazine’s Faculty Giants series.

The annual Marketing Hall of Fame honor is presented to active marketing practitioners with a minimum of 10 years experience. The criteria include: developing marketing innovations which have dramatic impacts on business results, raising marketing’s profile in business overall and mentoring, and inspiring the next generation of marketers.

The 2015 Marketing Hall of Fame ceremonies take place May 21 in New York. Only seven professionals and two professors, Aaker, and Northwestern University’s Philip Kotler, have received the lifetime award, which was started last year.

Aaker will share his views at the Dean’s Speaker Series on Wednesday, April 1, at 12:30 p.m., in the Wells Fargo Room. His talk is part of the David Aaker Distinguished Speaker Series.

- Steven Cohen

Isabelle Lee, BS 16, and three classmates are working to make Ahmedabad, India, safer by making it smarter.

With 6.5 million residents, Ahmedabad faces a high crime rate with an understaffed police force, says Lee, who is enrolled in the Building Smart Cities course at Haas. After traveling to Ahmedabad, Lee's Team Oakland (pictured below with Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, center) recommended security technology, including video cameras and a video command center.

“Safety-wise, Ahmedabad is better than cities like Delhi, but we realized it’s still lacking in the safety department,” Lee said. “We didn’t want to just advocate for more police.”

The 19 undergrads enrolled in the course are developing frameworks to help transform four of India’s developing cities into smart cities. They are also working with Bay Area mayors to determine how smart city ideas could be applied locally. While the smart cities concept is interpreted differently around the world, it broadly refers to city departments that are using digital technology and public/private partnerships to reduce costs and resource consumption, improve quality of life, and enhance engagement with residents.

Working on their cases, students combined the Open Innovation concepts learned in their class with the latest, most cost-effective technology options from companies. (Open Innovation is Haas Adj. Prof. Henry Chesbrough’s pioneering idea that advocates sharing technologies your organization doesn't use with others, and bringing in innovations from others to use in your organization.)

The teams spent the first three months identifying issues in India, ranging from public safety to resource management to traffic reduction in the four cities. For the second half of the course, students shifted focus to their Bay Area work.

During their winter break, the undergrads traveled to India for two weeks, stopping at existing and developing smart cities and meeting with government, academic, and business leaders.

“Indians think frugally and their approaches are different for smart cities in India than for those in the U.S., but there are cross benefits to be found in technology and design,” says course instructor Solomon Darwin, the Executive Director of the Garwood Center, who was invited to India’s first Innovation Round Table on March 7 and 8.

From crops to congestion

On March 5, the students presented their solutions for India to a global panel that questioned and commented on the presentations. The panel members included Venkatesan Ashok, the Consul General of India; Gunso Kim, CIO of the Seoul Metropolitan Government; Robert Locke, a senior vice president of corporate development at Tyco; and Miguel A. Gamiño, CIO of the City of San Francisco.

Team San Jose presented a case for the city of Vizag, where Darwin grew up. The city has experienced 650 percent population boom  in the last decade; the students explored the cost and feasibility of using technologies from Cisco and IBM, among others, to address congestion, pollution, and safety.

Team Berkeley proposed a network of wireless sensors in an effort to make farm crop yields more profitable in the city of Ajmer.

Saundarya Mehra, BS 16, and Team San Francisco presented on the Gujarat International Financial Tec-City (GIFT), a smart city currently under construction, which aims to be a financial hub. The team looked at security, safety, energy conservation, and design.

“What we learned in India was that Smart Cities don’t have to be high-tech,” Mehra says. “They can simply have the right infrastructure, city design, and government engagement with the public.

Shifting to the Bay Area

Last month, the teams met with Mayor Tom Bates of Berkeley and Mayor Schaaf of Oakland at Haas to discuss smart cities and Open Innovation.

Bates, noting Berkeley's enthusiasm for innovation, discussed ongoing concerns: aging infrastructure, maintaining a strong educational system, environmental stewardship, and promoting living and working downtown.

Meantime, Schaaf defined four major issues the city faces: community safety, sustainable infrastructure, food and housing, and government transparency. She noted the need for better policing and community-oriented public/private safety programs—which says aligned with the issues they worked on for Ahmedabad.

Lee says her team plans to meet with Schaaf a few more times before her team again presents its final case before the judges on April 15.

From the India trip to the final presentation, both Lee and Mehra agree the class has provided a once-in-a-lifetime experience to travel, network, and learn about the growing global smart cities movement.

“This program has not only given us to opportunity to fly to India, but also enabled us to meet these incredible people who are passionate about making a difference,” Lee said.

Related: Students Tap the Power of Watson

Two Haas alumni CEOs--the former CEO of Jack in the Box and the CEO of networking giant Belden--are scheduled to speak at the Berkeley-Haas Undergraduate, Evening & Weekend, and Full-time MBA commencements.

Linda Lang, BS 80, retired CEO of Jack in the Box, Inc., will speak at undergraduate commencement Tuesday, May 19, at 9 a.m. at the Greek Theatre.

John Stroup, MBA 95, CEO of $2.5 billion networking and connectivity giant Belden Inc., will speak at the Full-time MBA and the Evening & Weekend MBA commencement May 22 at 2 p.m. at the Greek Theatre.

Since 2005, Stroup has served as president and CEO of St. Louis, Mo.-based Belden, a Fortune 1000 company that designs and manufactures cables, connectors, servers, and routers.

Stroup attended the Haas evening program while working full time at precision-engineering manufacturer Parker Hannifin in Rohnert Park—and raising a young family. Before joining Belden, Stroup worked as a group executive at design and manufacturing company Danaher, and as general manager at Scientific Technologies Inc. 

Belden has a rich history. Founded in 1902 by Joseph Belden, the firm started as a manufacturer of magnetic copper wire used for telephone coils. Thomas Edison was an early customer. In the past decade, Belden's value has increased from $1 billion to $5 billion; it has made 14 acquisitions, and it has developed an active strategic-planning process. Stroup says his "measure everything" credo at Belden has brought a fresh energy to the company.

"When I arrived at Belden, I discovered there really wasn't any strategic planning being done," he said. "Now there is, but we're still learning. In a planning meeting, people bring up their pet projects. I want to encourage their ideas, but I also want to help us all link our projects to the overall strategy."

Lang joined Jack in the Box in 1984, taking on different roles in marketing, operations, and finance as she worked her way up in the company. In a 2004 interview, she recalled her first job: managing eight clerks who processed invoices for burgers, fries, and wrappers. After holding various officer positions, she was promoted to CEO in 2005.

Lang said she loved working at the company, partly because of Jack, the company’s entertaining ping-pong-ball-headed television ad star. As CEO, she was involved with fending off a host of fast-food competitors, developing high-quality, innovative products, increasing franchise ownership from 25 percent in 2005 to 77 percent by 2013, and improving food safety programs. She retired in January 2014.

Prior to Jack in the Box, Lang held various positions in accounting and finance at Bechtel Corp. She was named by Hispanic Business as one of its 2008 Women of the Year and a Big Brothers Big Sisters of San Diego County's Person of the Year.

The Haas School set a policy a few years ago to invite our most distinguished alumni to speak at MBA and undergraduate commencement ceremonies. We do so to celebrate the powerful alumni network that new graduates will soon be joining, and to honor Berkeley-Haas alumni who have demonstrated innovative leadership and can speak to the benefits of Haas culture in their careers.
 

Patrick Awuah, MBA 99, has received the 2015 Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award, for his work as an educational leader who founded Ashesi University in Ghana.

The award is bestowed annually to UC Berkeley alumna or alumnus with a distinguished record of service to his or her country. It is one of the university’s most prestigious honors, given by the Haas International Award Committee of UC Berkeley.

“Your contributions to Ghana exemplify Berkeley’s highest values,” Chancellor Nicholas B. Dirks wrote in a March 16 letter to Awuah. “Your work to bring international recognition to Ghana by founding Ashesi University have made you one of the most renowned citizens of Ghana. The range of impact is extensive and has significantly impacted the well-being of the Ghanaian people.”

Awuah founded Ashesi University in 2002, after graduating from Haas. While at Haas, he came up with the idea to build a university in Ghana and turned it into a project in the school's International Business Development (IBD) Program. Ashesi means “beginnings” in the African language Twi, and the name embodies the school’s ambitions. “We’re trying to train leaders of exceptional integrity, who can lead a renaissance in Africa,” Awuah said in a 2012 article in Berkeley-Haas magazine. “There have been times when it has seemed like Mission Impossible, but magic is happening.”

In 2009, Awuah won the Aspen Institute's John P. McNulty Prize, a $100,000 grant that recognizes the most outstanding, innovative, replicable, and self-sustainable projects to address social problems. In 2012, Haas honored Awauah with the school’s Leading Through Innovation Award, established to celebrate Haas alumni who embody the school’s emphasis on innovative leadership and serve as exemplars to others in the Berkeley-Haas community.

Awuah grew up in Ghana, leaving home in 1985 with $50 in his pocket and a full scholarship to Swarthmore College. He rose through the ranks at Microsoft from engineer to program manager. The birth of his first child inspired him to shift his focus back to Africa and consider how he could make a difference there.

With Ashesi, Awuah aimed to create a new kind of liberal arts university focused on quality, ethics, and personal empowerment; a university that would spark new enterprises, new solutions, and a model for other universities in Africa. Since its founding, the university has built a 100-acre hillside campus and graduated hundreds of students. Under a 10-year plan, Ashesi’s goals included recruiting more students from Africa beyond Ghana; expanding academic programs to include engineering and applied sciences, management and economics, and law and society; and planning for succession.

The Elise and Walter A. Haas International Award includes a cash prize of $15,000, an engraved medallion, and paid travel expenses to the awards presentation, to be held at University Commencement May 16, 2015. Established in 1964 by Mr. and Mrs. Walter Haas, Jr., Mr. and Mrs. Peter E. Haas and Mr. and Mrs. Richard N. Goldman, the award acknowledges their parents’ devotion to the university and their interest in international affairs.

Research from four Haas faculty members is featured in the latest issue of Berkeley-Haas’ quarterly management journal, the California Management Review (CMR).  

The issue includes contributions from Adjunct Prof. Henry Chesbrough, Professors Toby Stuart and Teck-Hua Ho, and Jerome Engel, senior fellow at the Lester Center.

Chesbrough’s case, Engaging with Startups to Enhance Corporate Innovation, presents a framework for large companies to follow if they want to create pockets within their organizations that innovate like startups. The paper addresses various strategies, including venture funding/corporate incubation, along with novel forms of collaboration with several new types of startup programs.

For some, the word “drone” might evoke futuristic fleets dropping books and groceries at your doorstep. Others see stealth military aircraft engaged in top-secret unmanned missions. In his research, 3D Robotics: Disrupting the Drone Market, Stuart focuses on the positive view of drones, digging into 3-D Robotics CEO Chris Anderson’s pioneering entry into the consumer drone industry. Anderson, former editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, has grown his company to over $20 million in sales in just five years.

Engel in his research asks whether the Silicon Valley model of innovation could be replicated to work around the world. For his new case, Global Clusters of Innovation: Lessons from Silicon Valley, Engel gathered 20 global entrepreneurship educators, civic leaders, and business executives and asked them to consider whether the framework could apply in Latin American, Europe, and Asia, considering differences in policymaking, university structure, and venture investment.

Finally, Teck-Hua Ho’s, How a One-Time Incentive Can Induce Long-Term Commitment to Training, describes an effective method of driving voluntary employee engagement in training programs. While rates of voluntary participation in such programs are typically very low, Ho’s research demonstrates that by employing simple incentives with the right psychological framing, employees will develop an enthusiastic commitment to their own self-improvement.

Published quarterly, California Management Review is a top-ranked management journal that serves as bridge of communication between those who study management and those who practice it.

The full issue is now available online. An alumni discount is available.

In addition, condensed versions of each of these articles will be made available to all Haas faculty, students, alumni, and board members through the new CMR Executive Digest initiative.

It's a typical day in the Berkeley-Haas Innovation Lab, and teams of students are busy with Post-its and whiteboards, developing a “Collaborative Map” of their groups' strengths and challenges. At one table, however, there's frustration. The students, tasked with developing a market entry plan for an ultra-efficient flywheel battery developed by Berkeley scientists, have had trouble agreeing on roles and even finding times when they can all meet.

It's already two months into the course, and a team process diagnostic—part of the new Teams@Haas curriculum—has confirmed these collaboration challenges have stymied their progress on the project.

"We haven't even had a chance to all meet face-to-face," says one student in the cross-disciplinary team, which includes three evening and weekend MBAs, one full-time MBA, and two public policy students—all with conflicting schedules.

"I had assumed that summarizing our meetings was something you'd take on," says one student to another.

"We all come from such different backgrounds, and every one of us thinks differently, so it's making our negotiations challenging," observes another.

Flash forward two months, and the Flywheel Battery team has just nailed its final presentation at the Cleantech to Market Symposium—the grand finale of the course. The audience gave it the "Rocked It" award for most engaging presentation, and the overall "People's Choice" award. 

"I think the 'Collaborative Mapping' session was a turning point for us," says team member Nilesh Murthy, EWMBA 15. "A lot of us had been thinking about these problems but not talking about them. That day we got it all out in the open."

Defining the Skillset

There's no doubt that majority of work in most organizations today is done by teams, and collaboration skills are highly prized by employers. Yet how many teams fail for reasons that have little to do with lack of expertise or ideas, and lots to do with competing priorities, different expectations, unclear decision-making—and festering resentments? For most of us, collaborating and leading teams takes practice.

That's the idea behind Teams@Haas, a new curriculum rooted in scientific research that shows shared goals, effective coordination, and a climate that supports interpersonal risk-taking enhances team performance. “Collaboration is more than a buzzword—it involves a specific skillset that can be learned and developed,” says Lecturer Brandi Pearce, who holds a Ph.D. in. Organizational Behavior.

"In teams, we often think about the task, and forget about the process of how we are going to get there," says Pearce, who spearheaded the curriculum, now in its second full year in the core Full-time Berkeley MBA experience. "We don't take time to reflect: how can we give and receive feedback? Are our goals aligned? How are we going to make decisions? Have we created a team climate in which members feel safe?

A Mobile Curriculum

Teams@Haas is unusual in that it's not a stand-alone course, but rather a modular curriculum woven throughout the MBA program. "At each step, students get to build on their skills," Pearce says. "They’re continually re-exposed to the concepts and have multiple opportunities to practice on different projects and in different contexts. Over time, they become independent in using the tools and leading teams."

The curriculum also reinforces the behaviors associated with the school's Defining Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Students Always, and Beyond Yourself—which have become deeply ingrained in Haas culture since their launch fives years ago. Pearce recently offered staff a Collaborating in Teams workshop, based on the same curriculum.

In the MBA program, students are encouraged at the beginning of every team project to develop a structured Collaborative Plan that outlines their goals, how they want to coordinate work, and how they will create a climate that supports learning and innovation.

Building trust and aligning goals can be especially tricky, says Dan Wong, MBA 15—part of the first cohort of students to go through the full Teams@Haas curriculum.  

"In our planning session, we pulled apart everyone's goals and motivations. For example, maybe the project at hand is my #1 priority, but you have a different priority. Who am I to say what that is?" he says. "Being brutally honest about your goals, and accepting other people's, takes maturity. But it's a much better scenario to know up front than to find out along the way."

Week Zero Launch

As soon as the students arrive at Haas for orientation week ("Week Zero"), new MBAs are assigned to study teams that they'll work with over the next four months. During the fall, they learn about scaffolds that can support their team dynamics, particularly in fluid, interdisciplinary and intercultural team contexts. Students also begin developing a mindset, capabilities, and interpersonal leadership skills needed to foster effective collaboration—including how to constructively give and receive feedback. Professional development coaches work with them throughout the two-year MBA program.

The next skillset is to practice collaboration in an innovation context. Debra Underwood, MBA 02, an executive coach who worked with six teams in the core Problem Finding, Problem Solving course last fall, said she saw her teams put the skills to good use.

"Halfway through the semester, they revisited their original plan, using the Collaborative Mapping technique to reflect on what was working and what wasn’t," Underwood says. "What was amazing is that based on what they learned, my teams that weren’t doing well pivoted. It changed their trajectory, and they got to a much better place."

Taking it Outside

The Teams@Haas curriculum culminates in the applied innovation courses, where students work with outside clients. In addition to Cleantech to Market, courses include International Business Development, Lean Launchpad, Social Sector Solutions, Real Estate Investment Analysis, and more. Every Berkeley-Haas MBA student is required to take at least one applied innovation course.

Shaila Narang, MBA 15, served as her team's lead in the Cleantech to Market course. The group's client was an India-based startup working with the Berkeley Center for Green Chemistry on a recycled roofing product for slum housing. The team was cross-disciplinary and international—with students from India, London, and Canada, and studying chemistry, public policy, and business. Though the group got along well from the start, they weren't operating efficiently—until the coaching sessions turned things around, she says.

"(Pearce) really brought out the subtle differences in our communication styles, across countries and disciplines," says Narang. "It gave me a good understanding that we may speak different languages, but when we pay attention to our differences, they make our team stronger."

Crowdfunding is changing the future of finance by fostering the exchange of capital through new technology channels and by providing a more equal playing field for funding investors and recipients. A new partnership at the University of California, Berkeley, now provides a premier hub of education, research, and learning engagement on all topics related to crowdfunding.

Researchers at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership established CrowdBerkeley for the purpose of better understanding crowdfunding.

Fung Institute engineers have been aggregating databases from global crowdfunding platforms to provide researchers, policy experts, and government agencies with the tools to advance knowledge on technology models and to facilitate innovation and networks in crowdfunding. For example, CrowdBerkeley’s public research will provide evidence of crowdfunding trends such as participant demographics.

Berkeley-Haas faculty and researchers in finance and social enterprise will use the data to study how crowdfunding is impacting traditional financial models and paving the way for innovation and new ventures.

CrowdBerkeley is led by Prof. Lee Fleming, faculty director of the College of Engineering’s Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership; Adair Morse, assistant professor, Berkeley-Haas Finance Group; and Prof. Laura D’Andrea Tyson, director of the Haas School’s Institute for Business and Social Impact (IBSI) as well as Dr. Richard Swart, an internationally recognized thought leader in crowdfunding who has joined IBSI as Scholar in Residence, and Ben Mangan, executive director of the Berkeley-Haas Center for Social Sector Leadership (formerly known as the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership).  

“The goal of CrowdBerkeley is simple: we aim to leverage the excellence of UC Berkeley to learn, educate, and inform entrepreneurs, policymakers, and researchers on how crowdfunding can shape the economy and society,” says Tyson. “We will pursue this work in a way that reflects the long-standing tradition of the University of California at Berkeley as a university of innovation.”

Crowdfunding got its name from the process of crowds of people investing relatively small amounts of money online to fund new ventures and individuals—bypassing traditional investors and lenders. The growth of crowdfunding continues at a rapid pace, and the practice is expanding to new markets and to new places around the globe each day.

"Berkeley Master of Engineering students have already crowdfunded a startup in the 3D printing space.  Capstone projects have included writing and characterizing classifiers for risk analysis, sponsored by Prosper, a peer-to-peer lending firm in San Francisco,” says Fleming.

CrowdBerkeley enhances an already active study of crowdfunding on campus. Berkeley-Haas has held more than a dozen campus teach-ins where Berkeley academics and students network and collaborate with alumni and industry partners working in crowdfunding. The business school is also redefining finance education by including crowdfunding models, both current and evolving, in the MBA curriculum.
 
“We care about training our students so they will be best positioned to understand the future of finance from the standpoint of policy, regulation, and tech,” says Morse who teaches the “New Venture Finance” MBA course.

In the course, students learn how to raise equity without traditional investors, create credit and loan models without brick-and-mortar lenders, and understand the implications of new currencies such as Bitcoin, an open source payment network that utilizes technology to conduct peer-to-peer transactions instead of banks to do business.  Berkeley-Haas students have launched several crowdfunding companies, including Indiegogo and WeFinance.

The third annual CrowdBerkeley academic symposium is currently accepting paper submissions on crowdfunding research and will gather academics, practitioners, and policy makers to discuss crowdfunding and crowdfund investing on Sept. 18 to 19, 2015, at UC Berkeley.

The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation is the primary sponsor of CrowdBerkeley.

(CrowdBerkeley is not affiliated with Berkeley Crowdfunding, the campus’ crowdfunding platform for Berkeley students, faculty, and staff to launch their own crowdfunding campaigns.)  
 

This is part of an occasional series of articles spotlighting students and recent alumni who are working with Berkeley-Haas to start a new business or social enterprise.

WeFinance
Willy Chu, MBA 15
Co-founder and CEO

Though crowdfunding is becoming a crowded space, WeFinance is the first platform focused on truly peer-to-peer loans, co-founder Willy Chu says.

“Many students are paying seven to 8 percent on their student loans—even higher if you’re international—and they have living and moving expenses,” Chu says. “They’re low-risk borrowers but their credit scores don’t reflect that, and they can’t refinance until they have more credit history. Meanwhile, a peer lender in these students’ network could earn four percent or more on their extra savings.”

WeFinance launched with two critical resources. First, it has a software platform built by co-founder and CEO Eric Mayefsky, a Stanford econ PhD grad and ex-Facebook product manager who spearheaded the concept. This platform fully automates disbursements and repayments between borrowers and lenders, allowing both parties to rest easy that payments are made on time. Second, WeFinance has been tested by Chu’s network of fellow Haasies, a dozen of whom have signed on as guinea pigs seeking funding.

Ton Chookhare, MBA 14, used the platform to refinance some of his higher-interest student loans, raising $5,000 in just a few weeks and lowering his interest rate from 8 percent to 4 percent. He already had accepted an offer with Kaiser Permanente, and was working on a side project involving custom suits made in his hometown of Bangkok, Thailand. “I think many people will be surprised at how willing people in their network are to offer financial support, especially when they’re getting much better returns while supporting someone they know and trust,” he says.

Chu says when he came to Berkeley-Haas, he thought he might end up working for a startup—but had no intention of launching his own. His thinking evolved while taking Entrepreneurship with Prof. Toby Stuart and Lecturer Rob Chandra. His new path began last summer when a Stanford MBA friend saw an email from Mayefsky seeking help with the venture. After a few months of working well together, Chu—who previously worked at Credit Karma and Kiva—became a co-founder. He’s focusing on marketing, partnerships, and growth while Mayefsky develops the technological infrastructure.

“I’ve benefitted from starting this in my second year, after I had a strong base, and I’ve been able to piggyback on my coursework and lessons learned from my peers who launched businesses last year,” he says. “In particular, New Venture Finance with Asst. Prof. Adair Morse has been useful.”

Chu’s goal is to expand WeFinance to 40 schools within a year, beginning with Stanford, Harvard, and Wharton. In addition to MBAs, the company will focus on law and other top master’s and undergrad program students.

Read more about WeFinance in TechCrunch.

California Artesian
Stewart Wells, EMBA 15,
Founder and CEO

Stewart Wells pulled three parts of his life together to form startup California Artesian: convenience stores, artesian water, and time spent in Asia as an F-16 pilot.

Wells, chief operating officer of a gas station/convenience store chain, uncovered a natural artesian aquifer during a routine well drilling on his company’s property. The water tasted surprisingly good and analysis later proved the water was very pure.

“Our artesian water, sourced from 7,000 feet elevation in the Sierra Nevadas, has a much softer and smoother taste than any type of purified or spring water because it has incredibly low mineral content,” Wells said.

Wells thought the water had immediate commercial potential. He determined that he could sell the it in two markets: Northern California natural food stores and in Asian markets, where he saw a demand for high-quality water and products from California during the time he spent time there in the Air Force.

Wells—an aptly named CEO of a water company— is taking full advantage of his classes at Haas to launch California Artesian. “Three instrumental classes were Finance, which allowed me to change my business model and estimate cash flow; Marketing, which gave me incredible insight into consumer preferences; and Strategy, where I assessed and dissected the competition.”

Another pivotal experience was the EMBA program’s Silicon Valley Immersion Week, led by Professor Toby Stewart, where students visited companies such as Facebook, Google, and Airbnb and talked face-to-face with company founders. “The founders were very candid, sharing stories about how they put their money on the line,” he says. “Sometimes they’re failing and trying again, sometimes succeeding. It was a priceless experience.”

TINE
Vik Thairani, CEO and co-founder, and Nivas Chervirala, CTO and co-founder, both MBA 13

Vik Thairani and Nivas Chervirala formed the idea for a startup over a unique libation—a bottle of their very own smart wine. The two, who met in Lecturer Naeem Zafar’s Entrepreneurship class, created a wine label that consumers could scan on their smart phones to grab information about a wine’s quality and authenticity.  The team’s original startup, which focused on wine labels, was a semi-finalist in the 2013 Berkeley Startup Competition.

That original wine idea has since evolved into a mobile application called TINE, (pronounced TINY), which works with TINE tags that the company designed that they mail out to consumers. “You can stick a TINE tag on anything, scan it with the TINE app, and add a video or audio message,” Thairaini explains. “When someone else scans the tag with the TINE app, your message instantly plays on their phone and you get notified. Think Post-it note meets YouTube.”

The TINE team earned a slot at UC Berkeley’s startup accelerator SkyDeck and is now producing TINE Tags that can be stuck on anything from a resume sent to a hiring exec to a birthday present to add a personal happy birthday song. The company has raised close to $1 million, including investments from a former Goldman Sachs partner, and Founder.org, a nonprofit run by Michael Baum, founding CEO of Splunk.

With that support, Thairani and the TINE team is focused on growing the company.  “One of the reasons I came to Haas was entrepreneurship—to meet the people and gain the skills I needed to form a company,” says Thairani. “It worked out perfectly.”

Honeit
Nick Livingston, EWMBA 14
Co-founder and CEO

After spending 10 years on all sides of the recruiting industry, Nick Livingston understood the frustrations of trying to interview and hire effectively from hundreds of resumes: You miss potential job candidates who are weeded out by keyword. You lack the time or resources to screen all candidates who could potentially be great.

“Most companies today are adamant about hiring for soft skills and culture fit,” says Livingston, the former director of global recruiting for TubeMogul, the digital branding company founded at Haas. “They are looking for talent that is enthusiastic, passionate, and well-spoken, but 85 to 90 percent of applicants are declined before any of those competencies can be considered.”

To address these pain points, Livingston founded Honeit with senior engineers James Craft and Kim Duong, who shared his frustration with today’s interview process.

The company developed a real-time live interview platform that helps agency and in-house recruiters streamline the candidate screening and submittal process.

Here’s how it works: Recruiters use the system to conduct live interviews with job applicants. Recruiters can then share recorded highlights from the calls with clients and hiring managers, to give them a better sense of the candidate’s enthusiasm, personality, and professional aptitude. “This has the potential to be a real game-changer in time and costs for companies” Livingston says.

Job seekers can also leverage Honeit's Interview Marketplace to book industry experts, who will conduct realistic “mock” interviews that can be used to help attract potential employers during their own job searches.

The company—currently part of SkyDeck, UC Berkeley’s startup accelerator—secured $120,000 in startup funding and is now preparing for a seed round, Livingston says. It's also partnered with the Hult Business School, and General Assembly, a programming, business and design boot camp. These platform partnerships allow students to conduct interviews with university’s alumni to help their graduates get hired.

One of the most valuable resources for Honeit, Livingston says, is SkyDeck. “Through SkyDeck we have access to great advisors who answer questions we might not be able to ask typical investors. That’s a pretty powerful resource.”

-Karen Sorenson and Laura Counts