Community programming
Berkeley Asia Business Conference; SkyDeck Demo Day 🚀; Chancellor Lyons and more
(slightly edited for clarity post-launch)
Friends - happy Earth Day! It has been too long since my last post. (Not for lack of topics to write about; I have a backlog!) Spring has definitely sprung here in the Bay Area - the air on the trails here in Marin has that slightly dry quality, even as muddy areas remain from earlier deluges. The pic below is from last weekend.
A warm welcome to new subscribers! Some of you are current or recent students; others came viaBabbage🙇♂️ . Thanks for being here! By way of introduction, in this newsletter I generally cover themes related to my instruction:
Strategy for the Networked Economy
Clusters: Locations, Ecosystems and Opportunity
Business in Japan
Competitive Strategy
We are coming down the homestretch of the spring semester. This coming week is Week 6 of two sections of Strategy for first-year full-time MBAs; earlier this month, I wrapped up Year 10 of Strategy for the Networked Economy (S4NE), taught this semester over Zoom so as to be able to offer it in the Flex cohort of the evening/weekend MBA program. Being back fully online (and fully synchronous) and leaning back into digital delivery has been, honestly, more fun than I anticipated. Big thanks to a good group of students for making it so.
I ended up dialing into final presentations for S4NE from campus - below is the post-class view on a cool, intermittently rainy night earlier this month.
Thanks also to my colleague, Design Thinking faculty Jeff Eyet; Jeff helped me sort through the strengths and weaknesses of the various virtual whiteboard options - ultimately I used Miro boards in multiple S4NE classes this semester. TL;DR: when it works, it really works.
On April 6, a group of Berkeley Haas MBA students organized the 18th Asia Business Conference. Like last year, the event had a strong feeling of community - many of the speakers were alums who were delighted to return. Here, the Entrepreneurial Spirits panel, as conference co-chairs Ran Jiang and Vaibhavi Sharma take in their own team’s handiwork, and panelists Alissa Miky, Eddy Chan and Pavan Sondur field questions.
This year’s theme was Rising Asia; we chose the same theme for different reasons back in 2001. Back then, Asia was coming out of financial crisis, and China and Vietnam had yet to enter the WTO.
As co-founder, I gave closing remarks, which I’ll re-iterate here: big thanks to the sponsors, the speakers, and, of course, the student organizers. I’m looking forward to seeing them on stage soon.
April 10 was Demo Day for SkyDeck Batch 17. I made quick time to Zellerbach Hall after wrapping up afternoon section of Strategy. The sun was shining and the entrepreneurs were pitching - even the skateboarders in the square outside felt Berkeley.
As a reminder Berkeley SkyDeck has multiple program tracks:
the main Berkeley SkyDeck cohort program;
SkyDeck Milano, SkyDeck’s first European outpost
the Innovation Partners Program (IPP), which accelerates startups curated by international partners such as JETRO and ITRI
the Incubator aka Pad-13, which is a hot desk program
April 10 was thus Demo Day for the 17th cohort (Batch 17) in the main Berkeley SkyDeck program.
The depth and breadth of startups - SkyDeck founders generally aren’t trying to solve laundry, and there’s a lot of deep tech - is what makes SkyDeck fun as mentor - wait, someone’s working on what?? And Batch 17 did not disappoint. Of the 21 presenters, I’ll pick a couple to highlight, given the likely interests of readers of this newsletter:
NeuroAge Therapeutics: like the name implies, NeuroAge is working on measuring, and ultimately combating, brain aging. CEO Christin Glorioso had me riveted. Conversation at the company’s booth indicated they are using three different measures - an online cognitive test, blood tests, and MRIs, to provide estimates of cognitive, and ultimately ways to reverse that age.
Sun Metalon: CEO Kazuhiko Nishioka started with two words: “green steel”. (As opposed to One. Word.) The company works with partners to decarbonize metal manufacturing, which accounts for, in Nishioka’s telling, 10% of global CO2 emissions. Sun Metalon is a returnee, having received initial investment from Berkeley SkyDeck in 2021. Since then, the company has raised capital from Globis, Scrum Ventures, and other investors.
Best wishes to our presenters - and congratulations to the SkyDeck team! 🚀
April 10 marked another occasion: Rich Lyons, former dean of the Haas School of Business and currently Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer for UC-Berkeley, was named the next chancellor for UC-Berkeley. He will take over for outgoing chancellor Carol Christ on July 1. The timing of the announcement was appropriate, in that Rich is on the Berkeley SkyDeck board of directors in his current role, and SkyDeck was founded during his tenure as dean of the business school.
Rich is probably best known for codifying, along with associate dean Jenny Chatman, the four defining leadership principles of Berkeley Haas: Question the Status Quo; Confidence without Attitude; Students Always; and Beyond Yourself. They are literally carved into the building, and we as faculty are evaluated on whether we embody these principles. It was a prescient decision that has paid dividends.
Since stepping down as dean Rich has focused on what in Clusters class I might call developing and harnessing the spillovers from the hive of activity that is the UC-Berkeley campus. Campus can be federated, and Rich helps bring people together. I suspect that will continue as chancellor. I want to thank outgoing chancellor Christ for her service.
In closing, my favorite sign on campus. This one’s by the business school. On this particular day, it was unoccupied.
Onward and upward,
Jon