Opportunity recognition

Also, Haas Asia Business Conference April 6!

Friends - this past week was spring break on the UC-Berkeley campus. This time last year, I snuck in a brief trip to Japan.

No Japan travel this year. Rather, this year I spent most of the week on campus, participating as observer and guest lecturer in a block week version of Opportunity Recognition in Silicon Valley, an entrepreneurship course for evening/weekend MBAs. More on that below. The campus itself seemed to be taking a breather, though I enjoyed seeing various self-guided campus tours (with the docents out on vacation).

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As one of the original co-founders (way back in 2001), I am delighted to share that the Haas Asia Business Conference is back for Year 18!

Last year, a team of MBA students rebooted the franchise after a brief hibernation. I was delighted to attend - it felt like a reunion, and simultaneously a new beginning. It was particularly fun to meet event organizers from the mid-2000s, who have gone on to leadership roles around the world.

This year the Haas Asia Business Club, led by co-presidents Ran Jiang and Vaibhavi Sharma (both of whom I have in class this semester!), is back with a new installment: Rising Asia - Shaping the Moment, Navigating Challenges & Opportunities!

The event will be from 9am-5pm Saturday April 6th in the Spieker Forum of Chou Hall (North Hall) at the Haas School of Business.

Speakers include:

• keynote: Jeetu Patel - Executive VP and GM at Cisco, Ex-CPO and Ex-Chief Strategy Officer at Box

• keynote: Howie Xu - Al/Data Executive, Stanford Guest Lecturer, CEO TrustPath, Greylock EIR, Founder VMware Network

• fireside: Sora Lee - Global Head of Product Marketing | SMB Creative Solutions at TikTok

• fireside: Amy Chou - Founder; Career & Life CoachFounder at Dream. Plan. Do. Live. Coaching & Consulting; Ex TikTok & Google Sr Leader

• Eddy Chan - Founding Partner of Intudo Ventures

• Janne (Jun) Huang - Brand and Ecosystem at Alibaba

• Yangqing Jia - Founder of Lepton AI

• Sanjay Nath - Co-founder & Managing Partner at Blume Ventures

• Mayank Makar - Founder and CEO of Rivi

• Alissa Miky - CEO & Founder of Cashi Cake Inc. ( dba : Misaky.Tokyo/ OoMee)

• Niraj Rai - Founder and CEO of SproutsAI

• Bratin Saha - VP and General Manager at Amazon

• Pavan Sondur - CEO and Co-founder of Unbxd Inc.

• Founder and team of Silkroad Innovation Hub

• Lu Zhang - Founder & Managing Partner at Fusion Fund, Serial Entrepreneur & Board Member, Young Global Leader with WEF(Davos), Lecturer at Stanford University

• Holly Zheng - Chairman of BlueFocus International, Founding Partner of EnvisionX Capital

I’m looking forward to the event. Tickets are on Eventbrite. Hope to see you there!

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Back in fall 2000, in my third semester as an MBA/MA-Asian Studies student, I took a class that changed my career trajectory. That was Opportunity Recognition in Silicon Valley, taught by now-Senior Consulting Lecturer Andrew Isaacs. It was the second installment of the class (X-Men, second class?). Drew went on to teach the class some 50 times, for thousands of students.

Following that class, I had the pleasure to work with Drew as one of the advisors on my master’s thesis back in 2001, along with Tom Gold (Sociology), and Steve Vogel (Political Science). That was a comparison of new venture formation in Silicon Valley and in Japan. When I was getting started, Drew made the simple suggestion that made all the difference - read AnnaLee Saxenian’s Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 before I do anything else.

That was Trajectory-Shaping Moment Number 2.

Readers of this newsletter (not to mention former Clusters students) will recognize this diagram, which is my own rendering of Saxenian’s taxonomy of how Silicon Valley functions.

I talked about Saxenian in a prior post, about giving a talk on industrial clusters while visiting Tokyo. (That post got read by the good folks at MIT AgeLab, leading to contributing a chapter on Longevity Hubs in Japan for their upcoming book: Longevity Hubs: Regional Innovation for Global Aging.)

Following personal experience with wildfire, Drew relaunched his Climate Change and Business Strategy class. That course has since been versioned throughout the various degree programs at Haas. In fall 2024, Haas, in partnership with the Rausser College of Natural Resources, is launching a new five-semester MBA combined with a Master in Climate Solutions. This follows Haas integrating sustainability into the Core MBA curriculum starting in 2023.

Suffice it to say, 25 years into teaching, at a time when a lot of instructors start cutting back, Drew’s got a lot on his plate. There aren’t a lot of business school instructors with a planet science background - thankfully, one of them is at Haas!

So I am delighted - and honestly, more than a bit humbled - to announce I will be taking over teaching of Opportunity Recognition in Silicon Valley this fall, 24 years after I took the class. The first installment will be for the EWMBA program, in a Flex-cohort friendly time and configuration. I had a great time participating in a block week version of the class this week, and am very excited for the fall ahead.

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With spring back in the air today, I’ll close with a tune from Tito Puente and his Golden Latin Jazz All-Stars, circa 1992 - their version of Freddie Hubbard’s Little Sunflower.

Onward and upward!

Jon