Sneha Sheth & Andrew Hillon Big Ideas Pitch Day

Berkeley-Haas startups rose to the top among a record-breaking 266 applications to the 2016 Big Ideas@Berkeley competion, with two teams taking top honors in their categories.

Dost and LiftEd were also among six finalists selected for the Big Ideas Grand Prize Pitch Day, where Dost placed first for Global Impact and LiftEd took second for Campus & Community Impact.

The Big Ideas competitors represented 750 students from 16 different universities. The competition, launched in 2006, is an annual contest aimed at providing funding, support, and encouragment to "innovative and high-impact student-led projects aimed at solving problems that matter to this generation."

1. Forty-one teams were awarded prizes across nine different categories, with amounts ranging from $1,000 to $10,000.
2.  
3. The Berkeley-Haas winners:

• LiftEd, co-founded by CEO Andrew Hill, MBA 16 (pictured), took first place in the Information Technology for Society category, and second in the Campus & Community Impact category on pitch day.

  LiftEd makes an iPad application that helps education professionals accurately measure and reliably report the progress of special education students. The app enables teachers to personalize student learning goals, analyze learning trends to make real-time adjustment to teaching methods, and share progress with school districts and parents. The team also won the grand prize at the LAUNCH competition last month.
   

• Dost, which includes founder and CEO Sneha Sheth, MBA 16; Sindhuja Jeyabal, MIMS 16, I School; and Devanshi Unadkat, PhD candidate, School of Education, won first place for Global Impact at Pitch Day. Dost was a first-place Big Ideas winner in the "Mobiles for Reading" category. The team created a mobile phone platform that helps break the cycle of illiteracy by delivering early education content and activities to low-income moms. The Dost platform sends mothers pre-recorded voice messages with tips on learning activities and child development. It also collects data on the users’ demographic profiles and goals in order to customize the content. Dost also won second prize in the social startup category at LAUNCH and was a GSVC finalist this year in Bangkok.

Bacon-infused chocolate? Been there. Gingerbread Guinness ice cream and cricket salsa and cookies are where it’s at. Not to mention workplace vending machines that stock local coffee and kombucha.

Those were among the latest food trends showcased at the inaugural Berkeley-Stanford Food Innovation & Design Symposium.

The sold-out gathering, held at the Jacobs Institute for Design Innovation at UC Berkeley on May 26, brought together entrepreneurs, scientists, investors and academics to share the latest on food entrepreneurship, science, design, and technology, as well as the global-local food movement.

“Berkeley is a pioneering, creative hub of food innovation, and food activism,” said symposium organizer Soh Kim, who serves as executive director of Food Design Research at Stanford University. “It was the perfect place to launch the FoodInno conference.”

In recent years, a host of food-related startups have come out of Berkeley and Haas—including Caviar, Krave Jerky, Revolution Foods, Back to the Roots, Boba Guys, Farmcation, and Byte.

To organize the symposium, Kim tapped into her Berkeley-Haas ties. As a Berkeley PhD student, Kim had sought out Henry Chesbrough, director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation. Chesbrough advised her in the development of her thesis about how Chez Panisse founder Alice Waters used open innovation—Chesbrough’s pioneering theory that companies benefit by drawing from both internal, external, and collaborative ideas and technology.

Chesbrough has applied his paradigm to industries from technology to consumer goods to food—including a case study of Spain’s quirky El Bulli restaurant. Kim, working with Chesbrough and Prof. Alice Agogino, published her Chez Panisse/Building an Open Innovation Ecosystem case in California Management Review in 2014.

After Kim (pictured) landed the Stanford job, she continued to collaborate with Agogino, a UC Berkeley mechanical engineering professor who also lectures at Haas on innovation and product design, and Prof.  Larry Leifer of Stanford Design on FoodInno.

This year’s speakers included Andrew Chau, BA 04, MBA 11, who is opening his fifth Boba Guys location in San Francisco this month. Chau discussed everything from the high cost of labor at his locations to why the time he spent working at Walmart and Clorox was integral to helping him become an entrepreneur.

Rob Trice, founder of The Mixing Bowl and Better Food Ventures, which invests in food-tech startups, said the food industry “is the last great vertical that hasn’t been digitized.” Trice warned that food-delivery services have been overhyped and oversaturated, but there are plenty of other innovations for investors to discover.  

The Mixing Bowl co-sponsored the Food Founded 2016 event last month in San Francisco, where Megan Mokri, EWMBA 16, founder of Byte, won the judge’s choice award. Byte supplies local food in RFID-enabled refrigerators supplied to companies like Sephora, Autodesk, and CBS Interactive.

Keynote speakers included Michael Frost, director of the Nordic Food Lab, and William Rosenzweig, who invests in food startups, including Rev Foods, as managing partner of Physic Ventures. Rosenzweig, founder and dean of the Food Business School, launched The Food Venture Lab at Berkeley-Haas last July.

FoodInno also hosted a juice hackathon that a team of undergraduates won by creating a healthy breakfast drink alternative to coffee.

Juice Hack Winners: John Lim, Nina Krishnan, Osvaldo Romero, Ellen Chan, Melanie Silva.

A beer hackathon, which will be open to the public, is planned for November. The 2017 FoodInno Symposium will be held at Stanford next spring.

Photos: Po Bunyapamai

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.

By Krysten Crawford

Farmcation
Co-founders: Grace Lesser and Caitlyn Toombs, MBA 16s

Grace Lesser and her husband gave “localvore” a whole new meaning when they set out a year ago to plan their wedding. They spent the summer before their August nuptials raising 65 chickens, along with beets, carrots, salad greens, kale, tomatoes, potatoes, and herbs that they served to 240 guests on their big day.

 “We poured our blood, sweat and tears into turning over an acre of land,” says Lesser, who cultivated her wedding feast on the non-working farm she grew up on in western Massachusetts. “It was amazing.”

The appreciation Lesser gained for the hard work and low margins that define small farming today also planted the idea for Lesser’s new company, Farmcation.

Formed late last year with her friend and classmate Caitlyn Toombs, Farmcation helps small farmers connect with urbanites eager to experience firsthand where and how the food they put on their tables is grown. 

Photo by Kim Heath

Farmcation works with small farmers to host on-site events, including guided tours and prepared meals. The company’s first event, held in April, drew 30 people to Terra Firma Farm in Winters, Ca. “We want to help bring people closer to their source of food, to be more conscious consumers, and to create a better sense of community through food,” says Toombs.

Lesser and Toombs are, in many ways, a perfect pairing. Both are self-described foodies (Toombs, a New Jersey native, keeps a detailed spreadsheet of her top Bay Area meals) who worked in international development before starting at Haas in 2014. 

Lesser, who in addition to her MBA is set to earn a master’s degree in public health in December, is interning this summer at Denver-based WhiteWave Foods, which distributes Earthbound Farms, Horizon Organic, and Land O'Lakes products. She lived in Rwanda for four years before coming to Haas, where she designed public health and agriculture programs to improve population health, particularly focused on nutrition.

At Haas, Lesser and Toombs bonded over their social impact backgrounds. But it wasn’t until they took Jorge Calderon’s Impact Startup Disco, a one-unit weekend course on entrepreneurship, that they devised a business plan. Farmcation officially launched in December, after Lesser and Toombs won a $5,000 grant from the Dean’s Startup Seed Fund.

During the spring, Lesser and Toombs did extensive customer research and outreach to local farmers. Lesser relied on a UC Berkeley public health course on food entrepreneurship and innovation, “Eat. Think. Design,” and a team of interdisciplinary students, to further develop the company’s business model.

Now, Lesser and Toombs are fine-tuning Farmcation’s business model while planning a second event at a Northern California farm.

“There is so much about this business that was nurtured during our time at Haas — through courses and so many support structures,” says Toombs, who is set to join Google in August. “We think Farmcation has a lot of potential.”

Byte
Co-Founder: Megan Mokri
Evening & Weekend MBA, 16

The typical office vending machine is turning into a culinary adventure of a much healthier and savory sort, thanks to Megan Mokri’s company, Byte.

What Byte offers that most other vending machine suppliers don’t? Fresh salads instead of Cheez-Its. Breakfast burritos instead of Pop-Tarts. Blue Bottle coffee instead of Coca-Cola. Byte is the fresh food solution for the 99 percent of offices that have no fresh food on-site.

“It’s like having a little Whole Foods in your office,” says Mokri.

Just one year old, Byte already counts among its customers Chevron, Bain & Company, Autodesk, Virgin America, and cosmetics retailer Sephora.

Mokri and her husband and co-founder, Lee Mokri, got the idea for Byte while running a meal delivery service in Marin County called 180Eats, which launched a year after Mokri enrolled at Haas in 2013.  It was during their search for a way to offer around-the-clock meal deliveries that they discovered the latest in smart refrigeration technology.

They ran a pilot program using technology that relies on a modified Android computer tablet with a credit card reader. Wireless (RFID) technology detects what items are taken out of the refrigerator and then automatically charges the card that was swiped.

It didn’t take long for the duo to realize that they had a potential “billion-dollar business" in the making, says Megan Mokri. Earlier this year they sold the assets of 180Eats and closed on a non-cash deal for the smart refrigeration technology developed by a company called Pantry. Mokri’s Evening & Weekend classmate Ben Purvis joined the team as vice president of operations. Today, Byte is backed by $750,000 in angel funding and has about 20 full-time employees.

Mokri, who is also mom to two-year-old daughter Isla, says the Evening & Weekend MBA program was perfect for her. “I could have my cake and eat it, too, in terms of still being in the industry without losing two years to go to school,” she says.

During her program, Mokri was awarded two fellowships, the Hansoo Lee Fellowship and the Turner Award, which helped her juggle tuition and startup costs. She also credits an entrepreneurship class taught by Chris Puscasiu and the Food Venture Lab, a course first offered last fall that is taught by William Rosenzweig, for helping her to learn by doing.

“Having the resources of Haas when you inevitably hit hard times, not just professors but also fellow students who are starting their own businesses, was incredible,” says Mokri. “It’s an amazing program.”

Read more about Farmcation.

Read more about Byte.

Go into any Walmart and you can always find a good deal on everything from household supplies to casual clothing.

While Walmart stores in California may offer a wide range of organic vegetables, others in Colorado carry a wider variety of fishing and sporting gear.

In order to learn more about its 140 million weekly U.S. shoppers and their expectations, Walmart Chief Information Officer Karenann Terrell embraced the giant retailer’s pervasive use of data to drive inventory systems, ensuring merchandise will be available in the stores demanding it.

Terrell has been named the fifth winner of the 2016 Fisher-Hopper Prize for Lifetime Achievement in CIO Leadership, presented annually by the Fisher CIO Leadership Program at the University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

The prestigious award recognizes CIO leadership excellence in information and technology management. This year’s award nominees included Terrell and three other respected CIOs: Kim Hammonds of Deutsche Bank; Matt Carey of Home Depot; and Kim Stevenson of Intel.

Terrell’s ability to scale big data and technology to modernize the 54-year-old retailer’s global backend system is an excellent example of CIO leadership, according to the Fisher-Hopper Prize 14-person selection committee.

"A primary motivator for us is to serve customers seamlessly from app to site to store. Consumers want a frictionless experience," said Terrell.

Terrell will be honored at the Renaissance CIO banquet and award ceremony on September 29, 2016, at the UC Berkeley Faculty Club on the Berkeley campus. The banquet follows a day-long conference, “Landmark CIO Community Event,” to be held at the University Club at Memorial Stadium and sponsored by the Fisher CIO Leadership Program. Featured conference speakers include Merrill Lynch CIO DuWayne Peterson and Raytheon CIO Rebecca Rhoads, winner of the 2015 Fisher Prize. 

The Fisher CIO Leadership Program provides CIOs, Berkeley-Haas students, and faculty with seminars and research insights about the evolving role of CIOs and the application of information technology to business strategies. The program also provides monthly roundtable discussions for senior IT executives on such topics as intellectual property protection, big data, and IT security.

Many students received special honors at the 2016 commencement ceremonies, as they brought to a close their education in the classroom but not their lifelong connection to Berkeley-Haas.

In addition to recognizing students with top academic records, each class also honored classmates who best embody each of the four Haas Defining Principles, which define the school's culture:

Question the Status Quo: We lead by championing bold ideas, taking intelligent risks and accepting sensible failures. This means speaking our minds even when it challenges convention. As leaders and creative thinkers, we thrive at the world's epicenter of innovation.

Confidence Without Attitude: We make decisions based on evidence and analysis, giving us the confidence to act without arrogance. We lead through trust and collaboration.

Students Always: We are a community designed for curiosity and lifelong pursuit of personal and intellectual growth. We know that there is always more to learn. We strive to engage with others in continuous pursuit of knowledge and growth.

Beyond Yourself: We shape our world by leading ethically and responsibly. As stewards of our enterprises, we take the longer view in our decisions and actions. This often means putting larger interests above our own.

Berkeley Leader awards were given to students in the MBA classes who best embody all four Defining Principles.

Photo: Full-time MBA award winners Olivia Anglade, Jen Fischer & Sarah Tait

Full-time MBA Awards

Academic Achievement Award: Libbey Davis Hunt, GPA 3.938

Question the Status Quo: Olivia R. Anglade

Confidence Without Attitude: Jen Fischer

Students Always: Sarah Elizabeth Tait 

Beyond Yourself:Franklin Lehmer Russell

The Berkeley Leader Award: Daniel Gelbard Fishman & Angela Diane Steele
 

Photo: Daniel Fishman & Angela Steele

Undergraduate Awards

Outstanding Academic Achievement: Sofia Mimi Pardini

Question the Status Quo: Amy He

Confidence Without Attitude: Bryce Jared Schierenbeck

Students Always: Tai Tran

Beyond Yourself: Jessica Ou

Award winners William Morgenstern, Elvina Hewitt, Angela Cheng, Jack Shao-Wei Song, Melissa Althea Tsang, and Sara Narayan, and student speaker Luis Bellon

Evening and Weekend MBA Awards

Outstanding Academic Achievement: Sara Narayan, GPA of 3.956
 
Question the Status:Quo: Elvina Hewitt 

Confidence Without Attitude: William Morgenstern

Students Always: Angela Cheng

Beyond Yourself: Melissa Althea Tsang 

The Berkeley Leader Award: Jack Shao-Wei Song 

For more on the EWMBA commencement and award winnersclick here.

A group of C-level executives and economic and government leaders —including Google X CEO Mike Cassidy, Infosys CEO Vishal Sikka, and India's Ambassador to the U.S. Arun Singh—will explore India's growing role in the global economy at the US-India Conference next month at Berkeley-Haas.

The invitation-only conference, to be held July 8 at Andersen Auditorium, is co-sponsored by the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation and the All India Management Association.

The event builds on the success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's successful visit to Silicon Valley last September.

While collaboration between the US and India countries is well established in the information technology sector, there's great potential in emerging areas such as digital infrastructure, e-commerce, clean energy, defense, healthcare, smart infrastructure & urbanization, education and skill development, says Solomon Darwin, executive director of the Garwood Center.

"India is growing faster than any other nation in the world and it is creating a great opportunity for US firms to accelerate their markets to the subcontinent," Darwin says. "We're so proud to be hosting the first US-India conference at Berkeley-Haas."

More details about the agenda and speakers can be found here.
 

Photos by Jim Block

By Laura Counts

He put the earth in your pocket, and now he’s unleashed pocket monsters on the earth.

John Hanke, MBA 96 and CEO of Niantic Labs, is the driving force behind Pokémon Go, the hottest craze to hit smartphones—ever. Since its release just a week ago, the “augmented reality” game has sent millions of phone-toting players to the streets on the hunt for animated Japanese characters that pop up with the help of location services. The crush of downloads nearly crashed Niantic’s servers, and the number of active users is nearly on par with Twitter.

It’s one of those moments, The New York Times declared this week, “when a new technology—in this case, augmented reality or A.R., which fuses digital technology with the physical world—breaks through from a niche toy for early adopters to something much bigger.”

Yet it’s not the first time Hanke has propelled a breakthrough technology into the mainstream. As an MBA student at Haas in the mid-1990s, he co-founded a company that developed one of the first online games to allow hundreds of people to play together in a virtual environment.

Hanke went on to co-found Keyhole, which bridged the gap between geospatial data visualization on high-end computers and the navigation apps we all carry in our pockets. Google acquired Keyhole in for $35 million 2004, and Hanke stayed on to lead the development of Google Earth, Maps, and Street View. He then launched Niantic Labs inside Google to focus on next-gen games, and spun it out as a separate company last year.

"John represents many of the best attributes of entrepreneurship and Berkeley-Haas: Leadership through continuous cycles of innovation, without attitude or bravado, creating value for society and all who collaborate with him," said Jerome Engel, founding executive director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, who recently wrote a business case that explored Hanke’s decision to separate from Google. (Hanke made a surprise visit to Engel's executive education class last month for the debut of the case.)

The success of Pokémon go is, for Hanke, a realization of the vision he came to Haas to achieve.

“My essay to Haas was written about the opportunity in the space of interactive gaming and technology,” Hanke said in 2014 Haas video. “I wanted to build applications that would deepen people’s involvement in their town or community, to encourage people to actually meet up in the real world.”

Watch the full video here.

Niantic Labs’ first augmented reality game was sci-fi based Ingress, which—like Pokémon Go—takes advantage of the cameras and GPS on every smartphone. Gamers must visit places of cultural significance, such as statues or historic buildings, to open virtual “portals” and capture territory. Yet the real magic—and Hanke’s motivation in developing the games—is in what happens offline.

"It gives people an excuse to meet other real people. It's incredibly rewarding for me to see these people coming together and to see the happiness, the joy that people are getting from exercising, exploring their city, and making new friends," Hanke said in the video interview, referring to Ingress.

Niantic's other app, FIELDTrip, acts as a guide to historic and cultural sites.

The concept of digitally enhanced social interaction has exploded with the new game: As of July 12, more than 5,000 people had RSVP'ed to the Facebook invite for a "Pokémon Go Crawl" in San Francisco on July 20, with 22,000 more responding as "interested."

Pokémon Go brought A.R. mainstream through the appeal of cute animated characters—Pokémon translates as “pocket monster”—beloved by those who came of age playing the video games and trading cards in the late 1990s. Niantic developed the game in conjunction with Nintendo, which partially owns the Pokémon franchise, and Pokémon Co.

Hanke credits Berkeley-Haas for helping him cultivate not only the skills, but also the mindset to become a professional entrepreneur.

Photos by Jim Block

By Krysten Crawford

Probal Banerjee had a hunch. It was Day 3 of “The Innovative Organization,” a semiannual course for executives at Berkeley-Haas, and the participants had dived deeply into one of the most cutting-edge companies in Silicon Valley: mobile game maker Niantic, which spun out of Google last year. On that June day, the New York Times happened to have posted not one, but two, stories about Niantic and its forthcoming game, Pokémon Go.

Banerjee and other program participants had spent two intensive days studying Niantic, the internal startup’s break from Google, and its CEO, John Hanke, MBA 96. The group of about 20 execs—which included Banerjee, a business intelligence architect at Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, and top-level managers from Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, RAND Corporation, and Gilead Sciences, to a name a few—had all come to Haas to learn how to innovate.

Some had signed up for the Berkeley Center for Executive Education course—taught by Jerome Engel, who founded the school’s world-renowned Lester Center for Entrepreneurship two decades ago—looking for fresh ways to work within their companies. Others had come because they had startup dreams of their own.

Would you stay or would you go?

The question for students was whether Niantic’s spin-off from Google had been the right move for both companies, the employees behind the games, and Hanke. Students had all read a hot-off-the-press 14-page case study written by Engel—recently published as a Berkeley-Haas Case Study—and they had discussed at length the pros and cons of the move.

As he sat in the back of the Helzel Boardroom, Banerjee’s hunch was that the man seated to his left, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and an untucked button-down, was Hanke. But Hanke wasn’t on the agenda and nobody had mentioned he might be there. The prospect was both exciting and nerve wracking, he recalls.

That’s because Hanke, MBA 96, is an A-list celebrity in Silicon Valley. A serial entrepreneur, he embodies the spirit of innovation at the heart of the region’s success. Among his many successes: co-founding Keyhole, which developed the technology that became Google Earth, Maps, and StreetView. Hanke then led Keyhole through its acquisition by Google in 2004, and guided the search giant’s 2,000-employee “geo division” through iterations of its mapping products. He founded Niantic inside Google in 2010, and built a team that’s at the forefront of the convergence of technology’s most dominant trends—mobile, maps, social media, and gaming.  

Hanke was dubbed “Google’s Greatest Idea Man” by Inc. magazine in 2012. All this, years before Pokémon Go exploded on the scene.

Engel pointed out that what makes Hanke so successful is not only his ability to look at the larger trends in the economy, society, and deduce what's really happening. Hanke also has a special quality: “People who own the opportunity have repeatedly invited this guy to be their adult supervision. He’s seen as leader who can make big decisions, and they are willing to accept him as a leader,” Engel says.

The Reveal

As it turned out, Banerjee guessed right about the inconspicuous stranger. Just as the participants were voting on whether they would have struck out on their own or kept Niantic in the fold, Engel called out to the mystery man. “Which side are you on? Should Niantic stay with Google or go?”

Hanke stood up and gestured, somewhat sheepishly, “Go.”

“Oh my god,” Carole Cuffy, vice president of communications at HM.Clause, the world’s fourth largest seed company, recalls thinking when she realized that Hanke was in attendance. “This is amazing!”

Hanke, left, gets a round of applause

What followed was a remarkably candid interaction. Hanke spoke plainly about the enormous leg-up Niantic got as part of the Google behemoth, including an instant global footprint thanks to Google’s vast resources and engineering talent. He was equally upfront about the personal, structural, and operational drawbacks he and his team experienced as part of a massive organization whose main line of business isn’t gaming.

Niantic’s multiplayer games are based on a new entertainment model that relies on augmented reality or A.R., which superimposes virtual objects onto physical ones to lure players off their couches and into the real world. Niantic’s first game, Ingress, has been downloaded more than 15 million times in more than 200 countries. Niantic went solo last summer, and—in conjunction with Nintendo—released Pokémon Go last week. In its first week, the game looks to be the most downloaded app for both Android and Apple phones ever.

The decision to spin Niantic out of Google was, Hanke explained, “incredibly challenging, [although] in retrospect it’s ridiculously obvious that that was the right thing to do.”

Front-Row Seat to What's Next

Banerjee calls Hanke’s appearance the highlight of the five-day program—which also delved into the major trends driving 21st century innovation, the different forms innovation can take, the venture capitalists' perspective, and companies that have successfully embedded innovation into their DNA.

Roy Brown, manager of business pursuits at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, echoes that sentiment. “I’ve reviewed hundreds of business case studies and tried to put myself in the situation, but nothing brings a case to life like having the actual entrepreneur speak about the critical decisions,” he says.

For Engel, the Niantic case and Hanke’s experience as a professional entrepreneur highlight why Silicon Valley is a cluster of innovation.

"Certainly John, and dynamic entrepreneurs like him, are the heroes of our innovation culture. But his accomplishments demonstrate something even more profound than entrepreneurial excellence: What’s extraordinary about entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley is the way large companies and young companies collaborate to accelerate innovation.”

It’s “that process of open innovation that makes Silicon Valley unique. It is absolute magic,” Engel says.

Engel, right, listens as Hanke shares insights with the class

By Pamela Tom

As a physical therapist at San Francisco General Hospital, Samantha Delehant, EWMBA 18, knew that a better understanding of patient data could help improve care. Data from patients' wearable sensors, integrated with their medical records and genetic information, could be used to create a more detailed picture of their overall health. "That could allow patients to receive proper treatment faster," she says.

Delehant is now among a group of students learning how to apply big data to business in a new Berkeley-Haas program for MBA students: Data Science and Strategy. Housed under the Institute for Business Innovation and developed by Senior Lecturer Gregory La Blanc, the program includes a cluster of courses, an ongoing lecture series coordinated with the Haas Data Science Club, and site visits to companies known for leveraging big data—from Google to small startups.

The courses, which La Blanc has been building up since he first offered Data and Decisions with Assoc. Professor Lucas Davis six years ago, have proved popular from the start. Data Science/Data Strategy debuted in spring 2015 with a full house of 60 full-time and 60 part-time MBA students. Applied Data Analytics, taught by Lecturer Dave Rochlin, executive director of Haas@Work, gives students hands-on experience on big-data projects with Accenture. La Blanc's newest course, Analytics for Workforce, Workplace and Wellness, showed how data can be collected and used to solve traditional management problems such as hiring, retention, and productivity.

“In the past, HR departments relied on anecdotes and folk wisdom for most of their decisions,” La Blanc says. “Now we have the ability to collect data on productivity and look for ways to intervene and evaluate how to redesign the workplace, plus monitor employee wellness.”

At the Google campus in nearby Mountain View last month, La Blanc and his class (pictured) got an inside look at how the company uses data in its People Operations unit. Berkeley-Haas alumni working at Google showed students how they build more effective teams by homing in on how leadership can be identified, measured, and promoted.

Beyond HR management, students say big data has massive implications for other areas of business—including marketing, operations, and product development.

“Every decision we make is built around information that we are gathering from our players, often in real-time, and how we react can create better experiences for them,” says Jason Lars Bergquist, EWMBA 17, a product manager at Electronic Arts.

Mike Sutherland, EWMBA 2016 and VP of technology sales & business development at sales support startup Groove, said understanding data is "a critical component and trend that we need to take advantage of as future business leaders to make sure we are always making decisions based on numbers and facts."

Berkeley-Haas is increasingly integrating data science education into its curriculum. In 2013, Asst. Professsor Minjung Park launched a Marketing Analytics course, which focuses on understanding and using data in marketing.

The Berkeley Master of Financial Engineering (MFE) program launched a big data lab three years ago.

MFE Program Executive Director Linda Kreitzman says an increasing number of job recruiters now require data analytic skills.“Industry has forced all of the schools that offer a quantitative finance education to include more data analytics coursework,” she says.

By James Daly

What makes a seasoned leader? Increasingly, it’s a career that spans the corporate, public, and nonprofit sectors, gleaning important lessons and perspectives from all three. Such a varied path not only broadens your professional seasoning, but can also lead to greater satisfaction.

That’s the finding of a new study by Paul Jansen and Nora Silver (pictured) at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business. Their research—the result of observing the career arc of more than 2,000 executives—showed that holding diverse roles across a wide variety of entities creates a strong foundation for managing the complex leadership challenges of modern organizations.

The report highlighted the work of many executives who led careers built not on a singular scramble to the top, but created a path that zig-zagged up the mountain, enjoying the view each step of the way.  Moreover, a number of the executives ended on top of a mountain that was entirely different than the one they targeted early in their careers.  

“A wide variety of experiences and organizations not only accelerates their careers, but often creates more satisfied people,” said Silver, an adjunct professor and faculty director of the Center for Social Sector Leadership.

A career "guided by curiosity"

Alberto Ibarquin, for example, is the former publisher of the Miami Herald who also serves on the board of PepsiCo and American Airlines. More recently, he was appointed CEO of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, a large nonprofit foundation designed to create engaged communities. Ibarquin said his career was guided by curiosity rather than strategic intent. “I never had a master plan,” he said. “I built on myself, thinking about what kind of activity this new role would engender, whether it would allow continuous engagement with the community, and whether it is an organization I might want to lead someday.”

Multisector experiences help build a wide professional network which “helped to create a flow of very interesting opportunities,” Ibarquin said. Exposure to a wide range of leaders and problems is becoming an essential executive skill, he noted.

Experience in varying sectors also creates more internal satisfaction. Roger Ferguson was an attorney and business consultant who later became vice chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, and headed the insurance company Swiss Re. 

Most recently, he became CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA), the leading provider of financial services in the academic, research, medical, cultural, and government fields.

Such a wide range of experience “has been transformational for me,” Ferguson said. “It helped create a breadth of perspective and a network that differentiated me from other financial leaders and serves me well in my current role.” 

Evolving careers

In researching the report, the authors accessed a variety of sources. They started with the Leadership Directories database, examining the careers of Fortune 200 company CEOs and management team members, as well as a random sample of 300 elected and appointed public sector officials (from federal to state), top nonprofit sector 100 foundation presidents, and top 100 nonprofit executive directors. Information was supplemented by public materials, including online research and bios on company websites.

The data revealed that about half of the leaders had some cross-sector experience.  Subsequent interviews showed many larger firms—like Cisco, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America—actively encourage cross-sector experience as they groom future leaders, suggesting not only that the avenues for leadership development are broadening, but that the nature of careers themselves are evolving.  Being able to see through the eyes of others leads to more informed and empathic leaders, Silver said.  

"Small sacrifices"

But there may be downsides. The number one constraint cited by leaders was time. A cross-sector career may also not allow the deep technical and professional understanding of an organization that the singular devotion to a field or company provides. And those who’ve grown accustomed to the sometime lucrative salaries in the private sector salaries may be discouraged by the comparatively skimpy compensation packages from a nonprofit organization.

But those may be small sacrifices. “There is no longer a stable career marketplace,” Silver said. “To have a great career you sometimes need to get out of your comfort zone and tap into the opportunities you only ever see by having a diverse network.”

Read the full report

A new undergraduate program that integrates the study of engineering and business launched today at the University of California, Berkeley. The Management, Entrepreneurship, & Technology Program (M.E.T.) will be taught at Berkeley’s top-ranked Haas School of Business and College of Engineering.

The M.E.T. Program is designed to give students a seamless understanding of technology innovation, preparing future leaders who will create real-world impact – be it at new start-ups, at social impact ventures or within established companies.

“Our industry partners tell us they face a significant gap in their search for talent - those with technical backgrounds need the expertise to bring a great idea to market, while those with business backgrounds must have a stronger grasp of the technologies that drive innovation,” says S. Shankar Sastry, dean of Berkeley Engineering. “We want to close this gap.”

The M.E.T. Program is looking for inquisitive, self-motivated students from diverse backgrounds with a passion for finding and solving big problems. The Berkeley application website for fall 2017 enrollment opens today.

M.E.T. students will enroll in one program but earn two Bachelor of Science degrees, one in engineering and one in business administration. The integrated curriculum consists of liberal arts, engineering and business courses and can be completed in four years.

“The long-term purpose of this program is to develop leaders with an integrated mindset and tools to address our largest challenges and opportunities,” says Rich Lyons, dean of Berkeley-Haas. “Their M.E.T. education will greatly expand their capacity to shape parts of our future that we cannot even see today."

Each M.E.T. cohort will be small, about 30 students at first, allowing for close mentoring relationships and a tight-knit community. Opportunities to pursue internships, career coaching and other enrichment will provide students with ample opportunities for hands-on learning in innovation and entrepreneurship.

At the same time, students will have access to the extensive resources of Berkeley-Haas, Berkeley Engineering and Berkeley as a whole, from student clubs and start-up incubators to alumni networks around the world.

Both Berkeley Engineering and Berkeley-Haas maintain robust relationships with Silicon Valley and other innovation hubs around the world. Their undergraduate programs hold top-tier national rankings by U.S. News & World Report.

Students in the M.E.T. Program choose between two tracks, each one opening up a wide range of career options:

• Business + Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences (EECS):  By combining study in these two areas, students can pursue interests in creating new technologies, software or mobile apps, as well as ventures that take these products to market and deliver significant social impact.
• Business + Industrial Engineering & Operations Research (IEOR): In this dual-degree program, students can hone their expertise in building and managing complex systems, such as financial networks, energy grids and healthcare delivery, and improving their reliability and cost-effectiveness.

The UC Berkeley application process closes on Nov. 30, 2016, for fall 2017 freshman admission. Applicants are able to mark their preference for this program and the track of their choice on the
Berkeley application.

More at met.berkeley.edu.

By Pamela Tom

Ellen Evers, assistant professor of marketing at Berkeley-Haas, is an avid Pokémon Go player.

Evers also studies consumer behavior, which makes her a perfect person to ask about Pokémon Go's marketing strategy—and what it will take for Pokémon Go to stay on top. (John Hanke, MBA 96 and CEO of Niantic Labs, is the driving force behind Pokémon Go.)

Here's our interview with Evers.

Pamela Tom: What's the attraction to Pokémon Go?

Ellen Evers: Pokémon Go is especially popular with millennials. This age group is the most willing to spend money on free-to-play games. The game’s popularity with 20-35 year olds is largely due to the nostalgia factor. The original Pokémon game (Nintendo Gameboy), the TV show, and the collectible card game all came out in the late '90s and were hugely popular. Most of us growing up in the '90s watched the show, played at least one of those games, and have really good memories of it. The current game allows us to revisit our childhood and relive those memories. For those of us who have children, there is another benefit: we can play this game with our kids and connect with them over a shared love of the game—like a modern version of going fishing with dad.

PT: You’ve studied consumer behavior toward collecting. How does collecting play into the success?

EE: Having an organized set of things to collect with clear structure and goals is inherently motivating, and as long as you feel you are making reasonable progress, it feels very rewarding. That’s what Pokémon Go offers to capture gamers’ attention and loyalty.

There’s another factor to Pokémon Go’s popularity: the game makes reality feel a bit magical. Whereas other games are clearly in a different space from reality—computer games happen on the computer and board games happen at a table—Pokémon Go takes reality and superimposes this entire augmented world on it. Whereas going to the supermarket would normally be a boring and predictable chore, now all of a sudden you can run into a virtual creature in aisle three. It makes the mundane parts of our lives a bit more fun.

PT: The game seems like a marketer's dream, reaching a broad variety of consumers. How can Pokémon Go help other companies improve their marketing strategies?

EE: Other companies can learn how to leverage the immense appeal of nostalgia and collecting when developing new products. Pokémon Go also offers opportunities for other companies to reach consumers through the app, especially since the user base has a decent disposable income.

For example, lunch places and bars can spend a little bit of money on placing a lure via the app — an item that attracts Pokémon in the game and which costs about one dollar per 30 minutes — in front of their place to attract more players to their establishments. Or, they can offer a 10% discount to whoever is currently in charge of the Pokegym, places where players can fight other players. The strongest person "owns" the gym until a stronger player comes along and takes over.

These cheap and easy strategies indicate that the restaurant is welcoming to players, and add some extra fun and competition to the game, attracting additional customers.

PT: Pokémon Go is so popular. How does it remain on top from a marketing perspective?

EE: Pokémon Go faces a few challenges in the future. The current game is fun but extremely limited in terms of what a player can actually do. Essentially players are repeating the same tasks over and over. Those tasks can quickly stop being fun, turning the game into a chore, what gamers call “the grind.” This monotony has caused the downfall of many other mobile gaming hypes up to this point——Farmville, Candy Crush, etc.

It's therefore important that Pokémon adds not only more content soon but also different content. This could be adding certain quests (tasks people do in a certain time limit for additional rewards); adding some narrative or storyline; or adding a social component (fight your friends).

While collecting and completing collections is inherently pleasurable, this is only true to a certain degree. One reason why collections are so motivating is that there is some frustration with missing a few things in your collection. Resolving this frustration feels good. Making it too difficult to complete a subset of Pokémon, or even making it impossible leads to frustration, and can cause active players to disengage.

PT: Any other obstacles?

EE: At the moment gamers are happy to spend some money on Pokémon Go, and will put in effort and spend money to try and catch all the Pokémon. Pokémon Go may forge successful partnerships with other companies as long as gamers feel like they don’t need to spend money at this partnering company just to be able to enjoy the game. While partnerships can work, Pokémon Go has to be careful that gamers do not feel like the game is trying to trick, force, or manipulate them into spending money on things they don't want from these partners.  

By Krysten Crawford

When Cristy Johnston-Limón was hired as executive director of Oakland’s Destiny Arts Center in 2011, the nonprofit was facing eviction from its shared space at a local charter school.

For more than 25 years, the respected center had offered classes—from hip hop to kung fu to karate—to thousands of kids, encouraging violence prevention through the performing arts.

But its future was in jeopardy.

The board had shied away from a plan to purchase and build out an 8,000-square-foot warehouse in North Oakland: with just enough money for a down payment on a new building, some directors and advisors were worried about crushing loan payments.

Even before her first official day on the job, Johnston-Limón began scouting sites. “After touring more than 50 potential sites, I knew this one was it and I did everything in my power to make it happen,” Johnston-Limón said.

It was a tough sell, but Johnston-Limón, EMBA 16, didn’t give up. The daughter of Guatemalan immigrants who grew up in San Francisco’s Mission District, Johnston-Limón has always figured out how to navigate life’s challenges—as a teenager turning away from gangs, as a young urban neighborhood activist, as a first-generation college student at UC Berkeley, and now as a student in the Berkeley MBA for Executives Program.

Working with Destiny Arts board member David Riemer, Johnston- Limón met repeatedly with the the board, listened to what they had to say and calmly countered every argument against the building plan. “We kept laying brick after brick after brick,” until the skeptics got the reassurance they needed, says Riemer, an Executive-in-Residence at Berkeley-Haas. “Cristy is a leader with an incredible combination of confidence, ambition, passion, and vision.”

Johnston-Limón in front of a mural at a Destiny Arts Center studio

By 2013, Destiny Arts had moved into the new center, which boasts high ceilings; clean, bright studios; peace murals; a black box theater; and meeting spaces.

"A few nerves"

As an EMBA student, Johnston-Limón is working to gain the business skills required to ensure Destiny Arts Center’s future in a nonprofit environment increasingly focused on ROI.

She admits to having had a few nerves when she arrived at Berkeley-Haas last year. In particular, she worried that, for all her strengths in communication and leadership, she didn’t have the quantitative skills required to keep up. She also learned, on her first day, that she was the only Latina and the only head of a nonprofit in her cohort of 69 students.

A natural bridge-builder, she responded by becoming the first vice president of diversity for the EMBA Program, working closely with administrators and peers in the full-time MBA program on plans to foster more inclusion within the student body and faculty.

“Cristy brings an intense focus on diversity to her fellow students and the program overall,” says Jamie Breen, Assistant Dean of the EMBA program. 'She has taken a leading role, working with other diversity leaders at Haas to ensure we provide our students with the skills required to lead diverse workforces and find and develop talent.”

Johnston-Limón, who is 39 and the mother of a 2-year-old daughter, never shies away from discussing issues of social justice. In July, while sitting at a local pub with classmates after a long day of EMBA classes, news broke of the shooting of five white police officers in Dallas, the latest shock in a summer of extraordinary race-based violence nationwide.

Johnston-Limón immediately started engaging her group in a discussion about the events, sharing her insights as a leader on the front lines.

“When I see an opportunity to help people talk about and understand the issues around diversity in a way that’s useful and productive, I grab it,” she says.

Before she graduates in December, Johnston-Limón plans to host a voluntary training on how unconscious bias deters inclusion and gets in the way of great decisions. Partly because of her efforts, the curriculum for incoming EMBA students in the fall included bias workshops.

From “super nerd” to activist

Johnston-Limón was an overachiever early in life.

As a kid growing up in San Francisco’s Mission District, she was a star student who turned to music to escape gang life, domestic troubles, and the trauma of eviction notices as rents skyrocketed. A self-described “super nerd,” she walked to the bus stop with a cello strapped to her back for the cross-city ride to a school in a better neighborhood.

The weekly staff meeting at Destiny Arts Center

As a teen, she felt pressure to join a gang, and even dropped out of high school at one point. But her cello—and her passion for learning—kept her on track.

At 19, she joined angry street protests against The Mission’s gentrification that was pushing out longtime residents.

Even then, she says she sensed that dialogue instead of violent confrontation was the answer and that desire for peaceful justice propelled her to major in political science at UC Berkeley.

A post-graduation year as a legislative aide in Sacramento led her to return to San Francisco to work on a pilot program aiming to revitalize one of the city’s struggling neighborhoods: the Excelsior District.

For her work, she received a national community leadership award for the pilot program, which has since become a citywide initiative for transforming local San Francisco neighborhoods.

Working to create opportunities

Johnston-Limón's younger brother, Jon, hasn't fared as well over the years.

He joined a Mission District gang and, after several drug-related infractions, is serving a 15-year prison sentence, she said. “My brother didn't have the opportunities I did," she says, tearfully. "Having my best friend in prison has been a motivating factor in my work with youth, advocacy work, and our programs that serve incarcerated youth, which I’ve expanded while at Destiny Arts Center."

At Destiny, which is an acronym for "De-Escalation Skills Training Inspiring Nonviolence in Youth," Johnston-Limón works to create new opportunities for kids in a city impacted by high drop-out rates and violence. Over the last five years, she has more than doubled the number of children served by boosting Destiny Arts’ operating budget from $800,000 to $3 million. More than 4,000 students—ranging from age three to 24—now choose from 800 classes annually.

Meantime, at Berkeley-Haas, Johnston-Limón and classmate Alejandro Maldonado are developing an app that aims to help teaching artists connect to parents looking for activities for their kids.

“One reason I love having her as a co-founder is because, even when things don’t go perfectly, she’ll manage to turn them around,” Maldonado says.

For Johnston-Limón problem-solving at work and in her community is about building upon what she’s learned throughout her life. It may sound hokey, she jokes, but she’s hoping to inspire a desire to build a better world in her classmates, too.

“I’m striving for the children we serve to ensure they have safe, inclusive spaces to thrive,” she says. “I’m striving to create the kind of world where everyone feels valued, included, and loved. Who doesn't want that?"

All photos: Noah Berger

Ryan Murphy after winning the gold medal in the 200-meter backstroke.
Credit: USA Today/UC Berkeley

While most Haas undergrads return to class this week with successful internships under their belts, senior Ryan Murphy is returning with three gold medals from the Rio Olympics.

Murphy, BS 17, won both the 200m and 100m backstroke. He also swam to victory in the 400m relay medley with Olympic legend Michael Phelps, Cal alum Nathan Adrian, and Cody Miller. Murphy kicked off the medley, finishing at 51.85, faster than the Olympic record of 51.97 he set when he won the earlier 100m individual backstroke race.

The victories were the culmination of Murphy’s childhood dream. As a 3^rd grader in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., Murphy penned a book titled “My Swimming Life.” He wrote: "I hope my swimming life continues and I become an Olympian when I grow up. I hope I will break the world records. I want to be the best swimmer in the world."

Murphy was one of 41 UC Berkeley athletes—including 18 swimmers—who competed at the Rio Olympics this summer. The Cal contingent brought home an astounding 21 medals, including eight gold medals, which put the university on par with the countries of Italy, Australia, the Netherlands, and Hungary. Other Haasies who competed in Rio this year included freestyle swimmer Lauren Boyle, BS 11, and gymnast Ryan Patterson, BS 16.

Murphy took time out from preparing for the first day of classes to chat with Berkeley-Haas News Editor Kim Girard.

Kim Girard: How did it feel to win your first gold medal?

Ryan Murphy: It’s kind of weird when you get to that point when you’ve achieved your lifelong dream. It still really hasn’t set in. The biggest difference I’ve noticed in myself since winning is I haven’t really slept that much because I’ve been super busy and I swear I’m not tired! Just the excitement and the adrenaline is still going. It was cool to see my parents’ reaction (when I won). I was getting interviewed by NBC and they had a little monitor of what was being shown to the U.S. and they cut right to my parents’ reaction after I finished, which was really cool.

KG: You just seemed so calm and collected after winning.

RM: Yeah, I’ve been telling a lot of people this—the Olympic Trials are a much more pressure-packed meet than the Olympics. There were more people in the stands and it’s a little bit different when you’re fighting to swim another day versus “the season’s going to end no matter what” at the Olympics. It’s a different atmosphere and that prepared us all super well, just to be able to deal with that.

KG: How about your second medal? Did that win feel any different?

RM: I honestly didn’t think I’d win the 200m backstroke, but that’s the event I really trained for. The 100m back comes a little more naturally to me, so the 200 is the one I have to really work for. It’s the one that meant a lot because I know what’s gone on behind that whole race and what I did in coming up with the best strategy to win it.

Photo: USA Today

KG: You won your third gold swimming backstroke in the 400m relay medley with Michael Phelps. What was that experience like?

RM: I’ve always loved relays. It’s cool being in the ready room with that many people. I’m someone who just feeds off the atmosphere. There’s just so much intensity. You take it all in and use it to your benefit. And you’re swimming with guys who you’re buddies with. We had three weeks in camp before the Olympics so everyone on the team got pretty tight. Being on a relay with Michael…I think every swimmer looks up to Michael, but to be in a race with him and watch how he approaches things and the level of emotion he has going in and the emotion he has afterward was really cool to see.

KG: Does Phelps really eat as much as he says he does? And do you eat that much?

RM: No, I don't. Michael's one of these guys: it’s just hard for him to keep on weight. He’s just got that gift. I can put on weight super easy so I try to watch what I eat. I got on a nutritional plan this year. I eat until I am full and that works for me. He doesn’t count calories anymore. He just eats.

KG: What’s one of your most memorable moments from Rio?

RM: The USA seating area was right above where NBC did interviews. So immediately after the race, they pull you in for these interviews. After the 200m back I looked up and in the front row was actor Matthew McConaughey. He was like “Yeah! Great job dude, that was sweet!!” He was holding an American flag. That was just super cool for me.

KG: What’s it like to come back to life as a student after winning gold medals?

RM: It’s cool. I’m just doing the same things I’ve always done. It’s cool that we’re in this place where I can still be a normal kid. I’m just hanging out with my friends doing normal college stuff. I’m 21 now and I can go into the bars and people are looking and whispering and pointing or coming up and asking for a picture. That’s obviously different for me, but it’s pretty cool. Obviously I don’t think of myself as any different than I did before. So it’s funny for me but I’m enjoying it.

Ryan Murphy, BS 17, (wearing gold) is welcomed back to campus by the undergraduate team.

KG: Why did you want to come to Haas and what are your plans for the future?

RM: I’m someone who likes being around successful people whether that’s in athletic standpoint or in the classroom. I think it might be Steve Jobs who said that talented people attract talented people. The more "A" people I'm around, the closer I get to being an "A" person. I just wanted to challenge myself. Business opens opportunities. It keeps a lot of paths open to me because I’m not sure what my long-term plans are in terms of a career. Right now my plan is just to continue to swim and try to get endorsements through swimming. The longer I swim, the more likely I am to continue doing something that includes swimming—combining the business background with my swimming experiences.

KG: So are you planning for the next Olympics?

RM: That’s the goal. Definitely going for 2020 and I have my fingers crossed for LA in 2024. That would be super cool if LA gets that bid. I’d definitely go for that, too.

Photo: Full-time MBA students run the three-legged race at the Cohort Olympics

Berkeley-Haas this month welcomed 876 new students, who bring to the classroom accomplishments as diverse as working on a robot currently on Mars, launching a social enterprise to turn recyclables into profit in a Nairobi slum, and sinking jump shots for the Cal Bears.

The new students began the evening & weekend MBA, full-time MBA, undergraduate, and PhD programs with immersive orientations.

Evening & Weekend MBAs

The incoming class of 252 EWMBA students arrived on campus July 29 for a packed “WE Launch” orientation weekend of work sessions, skits and team-building exercises, and an introduction to the Haas Defining Principles.

Courtney Chandler, assistant dean of the EWMBA program, said it was remarkable to see the class transform between Friday and Sunday. “So many students arrived as strangers, and after just a few days have become their own unique community, feeling confident about starting an intense, exciting three years of work together.”

All orientation events were held on the Haas campus, serving as an opportunity for students to get to know their cohort members and other first-years, professors, and second- and third-year students.

As a group, the students have a median of seven years work experience and work in 35 industries. They represent 184 companies including Google, Apple, Disney, Wells Fargo, Target, Oracle, Chevron, Salesforce, and Genentech. Seventy-one percent of the class is multilingual, hailing from 22 countries.

It’s an accomplished and eclectic group. Several students have been deeply involved in the sciences: one did clinical research examining the role of music in treating Alzheimer’s patients, another developed inhalable measles vaccines for the developing world, while another has 41 patents to her name.

Two students worked on Mars exploration projects—including one who worked on a robot currently on Mars. One is a photographer who chronicled the migration of Kazakh eagle hunters in Mongolia; another is a professional violinist who performs internationally. Among the many entrepreneurs in the group is a student who started her own fashion company designing headscarves for Muslim women.

Full-time MBAs

The full-time Berkeley MBA Class of 2018, also made up of 252 students, got their introduction to Haas in mid-August with a full week of orientation activities that ranged from lessons on the practicalities of MBA life to moments of inspiration and self-reflection to the all-out zaniness of the annual Cohort Olympics.

Each day of “Week Zero”—which was co-chaired by 2nd-year students Alison Underwood, Rachel Adams, and Mario Siewert—was centered around one of the four Haas Defining Principles: Question the Status Quo, Confidence Without Attitude, Beyond Yourself and Students Always.

For the Beyond-Yourself theme, for example, students heard from Revolution Foods co-founder and CEO Kristin Richmond, MBA 06, about how classmates pitched in with tasks large and small as she and classmate Kirsten Tobey launched their healthy school lunch company during their last semester at Haas. They also learned about the Teams@Haas curriculum, which is integrated throughout the program and gives students a skillset to lead in teams, and then spent the afternoon sprucing up the grounds at the Alameda Point Collaborative program for homeless families.

It was a fitting start: a recent admissions survey found that Haas’ unique culture is the No. 1 reason students choose the program. Full-time MBA applications for the incoming class were up 12 percent.

“This program does an unbelievable job focusing on a student development from a personal and professional perspective,” said student Reggie Davis. “You can go to any top business school to find a good job, but you come to Haas to find yourself and what drives you. Also, the students that I’ve met are the most talented, bright and self-aware people that I have ever come across.”

Nahry Tak is returning to Berkeley after earning her bachelor’s in art history here, and then working at the Trust for Public Land.

“While the MBA students at Haas are diverse on many fronts, I find that all of them share a concern for positively impacting others,” she said. “I recently heard Dean Rich Lyons say that Berkeley-Haas cultivates leaders who ‘instill purpose in those around them.’ This idea resonates strongly with me, and I am thrilled to return to the institution that I know will challenge me to become the best and most impactful version of myself.”

The incoming students have an average GMAT score of 717 and average GPA of 3.64.

Undergraduates

The Haas Undergraduate program welcomed 359 students at Monday’s orientation, with an address from Dean Rich Lyons, an overview of career services and the alumni networks, a social mixer and team-building activities.

The class is made up of 258 continuing UC Berkeley students and 101 transfer students. The program received the largest number of applications ever; the acceptance rate was 14.5%; and the yield was 98% for continuing students and 94% for transfers. The Berkeley students have an impressive average GPA of 3.65, while the average among transfers is 3.93. Nearly half of the new students are women.

This year’s group is especially athletic, said Assistant Dean Erika Walker. For the first time in at least 30 years, it includes two Cal Men’s Basketball players—guards Stephen Domingo (left) and Sam Singer (right). A member of the USA Softball Team, Jazmyn Jackson, is also in their midst (third in from the right).

PhDs

Thirteen new students began the Haas PhD program this summer, commencing advanced study in the fields of accounting, business & public policy, finance, marketing, and real estate.

Students in Haas’ two other degree programs, the Berkeley MBA for Executives and Master of Financial Engineering, began earlier this year.

Blockbuster, Kodak, Lehman Brothers, and Nokia are among a cadre of companies that failed to adapt to changes in their external environment—stumbles that are particularly prevalent in markets with high rates of technological innovation.

In order to stay ahead of the competition, Berkeley-Haas Professor David Teece suggests that it's essential for companies today to follow a strategic approach. The dynamic capabilities framework, developed by Teece and other management researchers over the past twenty years, describes how firms can learn to anticipate and respond to industry-wide changes.

The California Management Review’sSummer 2016 Special Issue contains a collection of articles on dynamic capabilities curated by guest editor Teece. The issue examines the framework in greater detail, from the perspectives of strategy, organizational design, and adaptation within fast-changing industries.

Samsung, a company highlighted in the issue, provides a perfect example of dynamic capabilities in action. When Apple’s iPhone became a global sensation in June 2007, Samsung was not a major player in the smartphone industry. As one of many companies that were unprepared for its arrival, the release of the iPhone hit Samsung hard. However, within three years, the company launched its first Android-based smartphone, the Galaxy S1. By the end of 2010, Samsung was rivalling Apple in its sale of smartphones. And by 2013, it had become the leading smartphone manufacturer in the world, with a 32% global market share. Nokia, a major player in the cell phone industry prior to 2007, didn’t fare nearly as well, as it couldn't figure out how to translate its vast research and development into must-have new products.

The full issue California Management Review is now available online and throughout the Berkeley-Haas campus.

In addition, condensed versions of each of these articles have been made publically available through CMR Executive Digest initiative.

By Krysten Crawford

Victoria Fiore, MBA 12, was drawn to Berkeley-Haas for its track record of cultivating future business leaders who make a social impact.

Today, she’s become one of those leaders.

As director of brand strategy & marketing at Emeryville, Calif.-based baby and kid's food maker Plum Organics, Fiore works for a company that is helping to redefine what it means to be a socially responsible business in the 21st century.

Victoria Fiore, MBA 12, at Plum Organics' Emeryville headquarters.

Plum Organics and other companies that have embedded sustainability into their DNA will be celebrating and mentoring at the first-ever “Best for the World Gathering” at Zellerbach Hall on Sept. 8 from 11 am to 4 pm. Attendence is free to students, faculty, and staff with a Cal ID at the door. An evening awards ceremony, performances, and happy hour will be held 7 pm to 11 pm. Tickets are $20 for all UC Berkeley students, faculty, and staff with the promo code gobears.

The event will showcase B Corporations—a designation granted to companies that meet rigid sustainability requirements set by a nonprofit overseer called B Lab. 

Organized by the Center for Responsible Business (CRB) at Berkeley-Haas and B the Change Media, the publishing arm of B Lab, the Best for the World event is expected to draw some 1,500 attendees. Featured speakers include Deval Patrick, managing director in impact investment at Bain Capital and the former governor of Massachusetts, as well as CEOs/co-founders of Patagonia, Ben & Jerry’s, The Honest Company, Revolution Foods, (founded by Kristen Groos Richmond and Kirsten Saenz Tobey, both MBA 06), New Belgium Brewing, and many others.

B Corp is to business what Fair Trade certification is to coffee or USDA Organic certification is to milk, and achieving the status isn’t easy. These companies must meet standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency. Out of about 40,000 companies which have applied, only about 1,800 have been granted certification.

"A growing number of companies are realizing that if they want to be around in 10 or 20 years sustainability has to be embedded in how they operate,” says Seren Pendleton-Knoll, program manager for the Center for Responsible Business, which was founded in 2003 to redefine business for a sustainable future. "Sustainability must be key from the C-suite on down."

By Krysten Crawford

Green Team: Case study co-authors Mohsin Alvi, MBA 16; Deena Malaeb, BS 17; and Jamaur Bronner, MBA 16

The legal cannabis industry is smoking hot: sales are projected to reach $6.7 billion this year and to top $21 billion by 2020, according to research firm IBISWorld. Twenty-four states now allow medical use of the drug, four states permit adults to partake for fun, and eight more—including California—will vote on legalizing recreational use in November.

As entrepreneurs and investors move in on the “green rush,” Haas is set to publish one of the first business school case studies on a cannabis enterprise.

The case, “Cannabusiness in Washington D.C.,” was spearheaded by two MBA students interested in exploring not only the business opportunities presented by the budding industry, but also the public policy and social justice issues that surround a substance that is still illegal under federal law. The study will appear in the Berkeley-Haas Case Series and the California Management Review in October.

Also kicking off next month: “High Margins,” a one-credit speaker series organized by students Cody Little and Jessica Sun, both MBA 17, with the help of Michael Katz, director of full-time MBA careers. Lecturer Greg LaBlanc is the faculty sponsor. Speakers include investors focused exclusively on the cannabis industry, entrepreneurs, and drug policy reform advocates.

“With legalization there is massive growth projected for the cannabis industry in this country,” Little says.

One goal of the speaker series, Little notes, is to connect legal cannabis pioneers with the talent they will need to succeed. Another goal, Sun adds, is “to normalize cannabis as a legitimate industry and career path for MBAs.”

A Promising Future—But Only for Some

Rui de Figueiredo, an associate professor at Haas who served as lead author on the case study, says the legal cannabis business is a ripe topic for business schools. There are challenges facing the fledgling industry that, taken together, are unique. These include questions about strategy, leadership, and—given that the federal government classifies marijuana among the most dangerous drugs—public policy.

(Industry proponents prefer to use the name of the plant, cannabis, over the term marijuana, which is associated with the plant’s criminalization and the illegal drug trade.)

“Basically, the legal side of the industry is starting from scratch,” says de Figueiredo. “You don’t typically see that in traditional business school cases and discussions.”

There’s another critical piece of the cannabis story that caught de Figueiredo’s attention—and that of co-authors Jamaur Bronner and Mohsin Alvi, both MBA 16, and Deena Malaeb, BS 17. To date, very few minorities have been able to break into the legal cannabis business, though they have been disproportionately affected by drug laws.

This troubled Bronner and Alvi, both management consultants who came to Haas through the Consortium for Graduate Study in Management, a nonprofit that works with select business schools like Haas and Fortune 500 companies to recruit underrepresented minorities and others who promote diversity into MBA programs and the upper ranks of management. Inspired by the Consortium’s mission, Bronner and Alvi wanted to make a concrete contribution to raising awareness of social justice issues in business.

They decided to write a case study and searched for a topic that was both novel and rife with diversity challenges.

During Bronner’s first winter break while Haas, a childhood friend took him on a private tour of a cannabis grower and seller in his native Colorado, which in 2014 became the first state to allow adults to buy weed for recreational use. There, he had a chance encounter with several top-level executives running the company. They were former private equity honchos—and they were all older, white, and male.

“It was a bit ironic that the people of color who were victimized or negatively impacted by the sale and distribution of marijuana aren’t the ones getting rich in places where it’s legal,” says Bronner, who is African American and a management consultant with The Boston Consulting Group. “It didn’t sit right with me.”

Alvi felt the same way. As a high school math teacher with Teach for America after college, Alvi, who is Pakistani-American, recalls some of this brightest students dropping out to deal drugs. They could be great employees at a legal cannabis business, he says, except that state laws bar anyone with a drug conviction from working in the business. “I thought, ‘Here we go again, boxing out minorities,’” says Alvi, now an operations manager at Google.

An Uphill Climb

The case study profiles Corey Barnette, a Duke Fuqua MBA and former Bank of America investment banker who is African American. Corey owns District Growers, a cultivation center, and Metropolitan Wellness Center, a dispensary in D.C.

The study describes what Barnette calls the “three pillars” of success as a cannabis entrepreneur: a qualified and capable team, political influence, and access to capital.

“Corey has all three pillars, but the road ahead won’t be easy,” says Bronner. For Barnette, the core business challenges facing cannabis businesses are compounded by his race. “He’s got to be a special type of leader in order to be successful.”

Bronner and Alvi credit Haas, and de Figueiredo in particular, for encouraging them to pursue the case study. They also received a $2,500 grant from the Eckles Diversity and Social Impact Fund to conduct their research.

De Figueiredo, who has served as Faculty Equity Officer at Haas, adds that a new case study with an African-American protagonist is a step toward providing another much-needed form of diversity.  “Most cases are about male, white protagonists,” he says. “As a teacher you don’t always realize that.”

The Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program (BHEP) and UC Berkeley Engineering have won a five-year $3.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to train and support entrepreneurs.

UC Berkeley is one of seven Innovation Corps "nodes" across the US that are supporting commercializing science and technology. UC Berkeley is serving as lead on the grant, partnering with UCSF & Stanford University. Two of the key activities the grant will support for students are:

• One-week "Immersive Short" courses offered eight to 10 times a year that introduce students to Lean Startup methods and customer discovery skills. Each team of two to four students must include a business and technical lead. The courses are taught by Berkeley-Haas Lecturer Whitney Hischier, along with UCSF staff, all whom are NSF trained. The next course starts Sept. 26.

•  Expansion of the Startup Marketplace to match MBAs with top faculty/researchers at UCB, UCSF/QB3, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab& government agencies for short consulting projects. These projects have led to continued paid or advisory work, and entry into the Immersive Short course as well as the national eight-week Lean Startup course, which comes with a $50,000 grant for customer discovery activities. 

Berkeley-Haas received a previous NSF grant, in 2013, for $3.75 million.

The team used feedback from students and instructors who participated in programs offered through the 2013 grant to improve the current programs, said Rhonda Shrader, director of the Berkeley-Haas Entrepreneurship Program.

“We found that students wanted shorter immersive courses that were less of a time commitment, and they wanted more opportunities in the Startup Marketplace to collaborate. That’s what we’ve tried to engineer,” Shrader said.

Now, MBA students are working with students all over campus, she said, "creating an environment for deeper collaboration.”