Commencement week
Plus, a talk on semiconductor clusters in Tokyo 5/28
Friends - this past week was commencement week on the UC-Berkeley campus. While protests at the general commencement ceremony made the news, both undergraduate business and MBA commencements were eventful only in the time-honored way - a celebration of achievement, by students, faculty, administrators, and, of course, families and loved ones.
The calm before the commencement
(And yes, there really was a mock proposal on stage during the undergrad business commencement on Wednesday. A roar went out from the crowd when people realized what was happening. Alas, it was only mock.)
During Wednesday’s undergraduate business commencement, students heard from Jasvinder Khaira (BS ‘04), managing director at Blackstone. 22% (!) of the graduating undergraduate business class were “firsts”, i.e., first in family to attend college. Onward and upward!
Our MBA commencement speaker was Monica Stevens, also a member of the Haas board, who encouraged students not to shy away from difficult conversations, and to find curiosity partners who can engage you in dialogue, and push back as necessary.
Monica Stevens, MBA ‘96, executive search consultant, Spencer Stuart, and Dean Ann Harrison
I had about 145 students across three classes in the spring 2024 semester, and another 55 between two courses in fall 2023. This after about 150 students in spring 2023. Which made for a lot of journeys to celebrate between the undergrad and MBA commencements!
And while, at times, they may find themselves in the waiting place - we’ve all been there - to them, I’ll share this stanza of Seuss:
Somehow you’ll escape all that waiting and staying
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing
Onward and upward!
Shifting gears, I’m happy to share I will give a talk on semiconductor clusters and the economics of fabrication on Tuesday May 28 in Tokyo. This will be co-hosted by the Tokyo chapter of the Japan Society of Northern California, and TMIP, Mitsubishi Estate’s enterprise networking community. Hope to see some readers of this newsletter there!
As a topic, this will pick on a lot the themes of Clusters class:
the historic role of semiconductors in seeding innovation clusters
the employment multiplier from semiconductor fabrication
the increased attention by government to economic security and where fabrication takes place
the economics likely required for new fabs (especially in “cold start” sites like Columbus, OH, and Chitose, Hokkaido) to be sustainable
I surfaced some of these themes in a post in March.
Hopes are high, of course, in both Japan and the US that new large-scale fabs will turn into anchor employers. Here, a vision of what success can look like - the Portland-area Silicon Forest, which derives its roots from Tektronix and Intel setting up in Hillsborough in 1974.
Should be fun. Thanks to TMIP and JSNC for putting the event together.
In timely fashion, the Marketplace podcast has done a fun series of episodes on the Chips Act - calling it a “long game” being played by the Biden Administration - that help highlight how important administrative continuity will be in making these fabs successful.
The story of Sega Sammy Holdings has had many dramatic moments along the way. It merits a book someday. (I volunteer!) Thus, it a delight to see one interesting historical footnote covered in the WSJ - how $5M extended to NVIDIA by Sega (by then-president Shoichiro Irimajiri) in the 1990s helped bridge NVIDIA to its next product, and subsequent public offering in 1999. This despite NVIDIA backing out of its contract to deliver product to Sega for its Dreamcast consoles. Sega ended up sourcing from Imagine Technologies; NVIDIA then developed a new chip, the RIVA 128, that would be compatible with DirectX.
Another fork in the road in the story of both companies.
Onward and upward,
Jon