Institute for Business Innovation
News & Features
IMIO Reborn as Institute for Business Innovation
Prof. Michael Katz to Lead Institute
How to Build Competitive Advantage:
Prof. David Teece’s new book outlines how firms innovate in the global marketplace
New Leadership for the Lester Center
IMIO hosts ISNIE 2009, June 18-20, 2009
Blum Center Launches Initiatives, Funds Educational Programs
IMIO Provides Direct Aid to Students Across Campus
Fisher Center is co-founder of Software Business Community
IMIO Sponsors Summer Institute in Competitive Strategy
Fisher Center and CMU Sponsor Major Conference on Mobile Technology
Blum Center to Support Developing Economies
New Chesbrough Book Shows Companies How to Foster Innovation
COI Creates Berkeley Innovation Forum
Intel and Lester Center Create Technology Entrepreneurship Programs
Research Program Receives Continuation Funding
Management of Technology Program Continues Strong Enrollment
Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Blazes Trail in Intellectual Property
Institute Provides Support for Visiting Scholars & Graduate Education Research
Fisher Center for Information Technology is Back in Business
Intel and Lester Center Create New Global Technology Challenge at Haas
Intel and Haas School to Train Entrepreneurship Faculty Across the Globe
Prof. John Morgan Shows Sellers How to Boost Profits on eBay
Institute Reborn as Institute for Business Innovation
From an announcement by Dean Rich Lyons on September 11, 2009:
I am pleased to announce that the Institute of Management, Innovation, and Organization (IMIO) is being renewed and reborn as the Institute for Business Innovation (IBI). Professor Michael Katz, who became the second director in the unit’s 25-year history on July 1, will continue in his leadership role of the new institute.
The change to IBI reflects the critical role that innovation plays in successful business strategy. Internally, it also underscores the central role that IBI plays in our school’s mission to support pioneering research and to educate the innovative business leaders of tomorrow. The expanded institute will help us increase our school’s momentum. We are fortunate to have the inspired leadership of Prof. Katz to help us achieve our ambitious goals.
The Institute will continue to house approximately ten centers and programs, including the Fisher Center for the Management of Information; the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; the Center for Open Innovation; and the Management of Technology program, which is a joint program with Berkeley's College of Engineering. The Institute is also expanding to include Haas@Work, the school's highly successful applied innovation program, and Cleantech to Market (C2M), an innovative collaboration between scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and students, including Berkeley MBA students.
Prof. Katz will develop IBI as the central hub, or one-stop shop, that connects faculty, students, and outside companies interested in promoting, managing, and benefiting from innovation. He is also planning to have IBI pursue efforts in the areas of business model innovation, innovation leadership, and innovation in health care and the life sciences. IBI’s integrative role will be substantial.
Prof. Michael Katz to Lead Institute
Professor Michael Katz will become the second director in the history of the Institute of Management, Innovation, and Organization (IMIO) at the Haas School starting July 1. One of his top priorities will be to expand the Haas School's connections to the outside business community.
"Michael's decision to lead IMIO is very exciting news and will have profound implications on our progress in attracting top faculty and students in the future," says Dean Rich Lyons. "His willingness to lead our key innovation institute -- a driver of innovation, groundbreaking research, and experiential teaching at Haas for many years -- will help us move the school to another level."
As director of the institute, Katz will oversee about ten centers and programs, including the Management of Technology program, a joint program with Berkeley's College of Engineering; the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation; and the Center for Open Innovation. Haas@Work, the school's applied innovation program in which students drive innovation in larger organizations, also will be linked to the institute after Katz takes its helm.
Katz aims to promote the institute as the central hub, or one-stop shop, that connects faculty, students, and outside companies. While many centers under IMIO are already working very closely with the business community, Katz's goal is to create even more opportunities for students and faculty alike to work directly with people in the business world.
"I want the outside world to better understand how much Haas is doing and let people from the outside have a single point of contact so they'll know where to go within Haas to talk to various experts or seek help with some business problem," Katz explains.
Katz also wants IMIO and its centers to do more to bring the latest from the Haas School to the business community through forums and other outlets, thus fulfilling the public service role of Berkeley's mission as a public university. "I often find that people in a university setting approach things differently than in the business world," he notes.
In addition, Katz sees a huge opportunity to duplicate the success of the Management of Technology program through a collaboration with life sciences departments on campus, which would also capitalize on the Bay Area's large biotech industry. Katz says, "It's always a good thing for everyone concerned when Haas reaches out to the rest of the campus and draws on the expertise there."
Katz, who holds the Arun Sarin Chair in Strategy and Leadership at the Haas School, is an expert in network economics as well as antitrust and regulatory policy. His work focuses particularly on how such policy affects innovation and network industries such as telecommunications, credit card networks, and computer software.
He has been on the Haas faculty since 1987, but has been on leave to teach at NYU's Stern School of Business for the past two years. Katz will be teaching competitive and corporate strategy at the Haas School.
Katz also brings unique government experience to the position. He has been appointed to serve in federal government in Washington, DC, two times, first as chief economist of the Federal Communications Commission from 1994 to 1996 and then as deputy assistant attorney general for economic analysis in the Department of Justice's Antitrust Division in 2001.
As director of IMIO, Katz will be following in the footsteps of Haas Professor David Teece, who stepped down last June after 25 years as director of the institute and its predecessor, the Center for Research in Management.
This story originally appeared in the Haas NewsWire dated April 27, 2009.
How to Build Competitive Advantage:
Prof. David Teece’s new book outlines how firms innovate in the global marketplace
Chances are if you earned a MBA degree in the past 15 years, you’ve read the work on “dynamic capabilities” by Professor David Teece at the University of California. In Teece’s new book, he continues his masterful integration of ideas to form the quintessential framework for understanding how firms build and maintain competitive advantage in global markets.
The intent of Dynamic Capabilities & Strategic Management: Organizing for Innovation and Growth, is to inspire the uninitiated and stimulate those familiar with Teece’s theories to deeper insights.
“This is a capstone that can pull together the intellectual grit that constitutes what every business school tries to teach,” says Teece, the pioneer of the dynamic capabilities perspective. Teece currently holds the Thomas W. Tusher Chair in Global Business and is Director of the Center for Global Strategy and Governance at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
Professor David Teece
Considered an authority on the theory of firm and strategic management, Teece coined the term “dynamic capabilities” more than a decade ago. The focus: how firms innovate in the global marketplace and how they need to be managed in order to survive in rapidly changing business contexts. Capabilities refer to a business enterprise’s ability to mold assets to respond to changing technologies and markets. Published in 1997, Teece’s seminal paper Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management (Strategic Management Journal, 1997) was recognized by ScienceWatch as the single most cited article in all of Business and Economics from 1995 to 2005.
In his new book, Teece integrates multiple disciplines, giving his readers a framework for thinking about top management decisions. He draws on economics, finance, organizational behavior, marketing, strategy, and decision theory. Teece describes the book as providing an integrating framework for applying all of the disciplines taught in the business school curriculum, “The management literature is just full of fads and fashions as people jump from one silver bullet solution to another. This book stands back and says, ‘All right. We've had a hundred years of business history and social science research on the business enterprise. What does this scholarship bring to the understanding of long run business performance, and how does it all tie together?’"
Teece introduces readers to three classes of capabilities that he describes as sensing, seizing and managing threats/transforming. The framework identifies mechanisms by which entrepreneurially managed firms can sense or identify opportunities; seize these opportunities and capture value from innovation; and, the capacity to transform internally not only to survive, but to thrive. The framework is both theoretical and practical at the same time.
One premise behind Teece’s 25 years of research is the need to study competition in the ecosystem. Teece believes that the industry is no longer a satisfactory unit of analysis as it is also necessary to observe the role of government, educational institutions, and other players in the ecosystem. Teece’s work focuses on managing assets and building capabilities within firms. He maintains that building the organization’s capabilities, rather than the individual’s, is the key to competitive advantage.
For example, Teece cites the efforts by several major airlines to launch their own separate, no-frills carrier to compete with Southwest Airlines successful low-cost business model. One airline restructured by paring down its management team, targeting female customers, instigating new boarding procedures and adding more seats to each aircraft. A competitor used existing planes and personnel to create an offshoot brand. Teece says these restructurings are a perfect example of dynamic capabilities working together by modifying business models and redeploying hard and human assets simultaneously.
Citing Adam Smith’s book on the Wealth of Nations, Teece says, “I’m trying to do for the firm what Adam Smith tried to do for the nation. Believe it or not, nobody is really trying to build a comprehensive framework to explain wealth creation and maintenance by firms, despite the importance of the subject. I’m trying to explain the essence of what it takes to build and sustain competitive advantage in a highly competitive world”.
Dynamic Capabilities is geared primarily toward an academic audience. Many of the chapters are shaped from papers already published in leading academic journals. Teece says, however, the practice of building capabilities and figuring out business models to capture value is an essential and very practical managerial skill needed in today’s fast paced business environments. In the future, Teece plans to present his work in a book specifically written for the business professional.
David Teece is the former director of the Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization (IMIO) that encourages, promotes, and facilitates interdisciplinary research on matters of management, organization, policy and technology. Professor Teece is also the cofounder and vice chairman of Law and Economics Consulting Group, Inc. (LECG).
David Teece: http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/teece.html
Dynamic Capabilities & Strategic Management (Oxford University Press, 2009)
This story originally appeared as a Research Story in the Haas Newsroom.
New Leadership for the Lester Center
Haas School Dean Rich Lyons announced Thursday, June 11 that Jerry Engel, currently executive director of the Lester Center, is to become co-faculty director of the Lester Center, effective July 1, 2009. David Charron, currently associate director, will become acting executive director while a permanent executive director is being recruited. These changes were detailed in an e-mail from Dean Richard Lyons to the Haas community on 6/11/09. The full text of the announcement follows:
Dear Colleagues,
Jerry Engel will step down as executive director of our Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation and take on the role of faculty co-director starting in July. Jerry helped found the Lester Center in 1991 and has served as executive director since then, having built a globally recognized and vibrant hub of entrepreneurial activity on campus.
Jerry will shift from his day-to-day management of the center to focus on strategic cross-campus collaborations, including entrepreneurship initiatives developed with the College of Letters & Sciences and the departments of law, information, journalism, and engineering. He will continue to teach and focus on further developing the Haas School's top-ranked entrepreneurship curriculum. He will chair the professional entrepreneurship faculty and strengthen its teaching program. He will also chair the New Venture Creation and Venture Capital Program, including the new Launchpad Initiative, which offers incoming Haas students a structured approach to venture creation from idea to initiation.
Jerry has personally helped many dozens of budding entrepreneurs launch successful businesses. He has brought the venture capital community’s support and collaboration to campus, has created many career opportunities for his students, and has trained faculty how to teach entrepreneurship – here at Haas and at universities around the world.
The Haas School will start a search for a new executive director. In the interim, Dave Charron, the Lester Center’s associate director, will serve as the acting executive director.
The Lester Center is a major asset to our school and a prominent differentiator. I thank Jerry for building Haas’ lively entrepreneurial community. Jerry and I look forward to working together to ensure the Lester Center and our entrepreneurship program will continue to thrive.
Sincerely,
Rich
______________________
Rich Lyons, Dean
Haas School, UC Berkeley
______________________
IMIO Hosts ISNIE 2009 Conference
The Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization is hosting the ISNIE 2009 Conference on June 18-20, 2009, at the Haas School of Business. For detailed information, please see the websites for ISNIE, ISNIE 2009, and the conference program.
ISNIE, the International Society for New Institutional Economics, supports the New Institutional Economics, an interdisciplinary enterprise combining economics, law, organization theory, political science, sociology and anthropology to understand the institutions of social, political and commercial life. NIE borrows liberally from various social-science disciplines, but its primary language is economics. Its goal is to explain what institutions are, how they arise, what purposes they serve, how they change and how - if at all – they should be reformed. ISNIE encourages rigorous theoretical and empirical investigation of these topics using approaches drawn from economics, organization theory, law, political science, and other social sciences. The Society makes a special effort to encourage participation from scholars around the world, with membership from over 46 countries. ISNIE is committed to young scholars as well as those from developing and transitional economies.
A message from the Chair of the XIII Annual Meetings of ISNIE:
Dear ISNIE fellow members:
Welcome to Berkeley, to the Haas School of Business, and to the XIII Annual Meetings of the International Society of New Institutional Economics.
This Conference is brought to you by the Program Committee, who was faced with the difficult challenge of selecting the program from a record level of submissions. The current program shows the strength of our Society. We have participants from Earth’s all continents, from South Africa, to Uruguay; from Russia, to Slovakia; from Brazil to Israel; and from Singapore, to Italy. The topics covered in the conference also show the reach and vigor of our Society. To our traditional topics, we have added this year novel analyses of violence, social institutions, political conflict, personality and culture. A wonderful and refreshing set of interests.
We have been very lucky to receive strong support from various sponsoring organizations. In particular, we want to thank the Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization for providing the logistical and administrative support that made this conference possible; the Haas School of Business for granting the use of their excellent facilities; and various units at Haas and elsewhere at Cal for providing much needed financial support. We are also grateful to our corporate sponsors – LECG LLC and Bodega Catena Zapata, for providing important financial support. All supporting organizations are recognized in the back cover of our conference program.
The Program Committee is honored to present to you the program of our 2009 Annual Meetings.
Enjoy!
Pablo T. Spiller
Chair, Program Committee
Jeffrey A. Jacobs Distinguished Professor
of Business and Technology
Walter A. Haas School of Business
University of California, Berkeley
Blum Center Launches Initiatives, Funds Educational Programs
The Blum Center funded $430,371 for educational programs in developing economies during AY 2006-07 and 2007-08. The first projects were the East Africa Healthcare Initiative and the Initiative on Safe Water and Sanitation. The former are focused on Uganda and Rwanda; the latter project includes support for a portfolio of activities in six countries: India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico. Both projects address poor health status, which are both a leading cause and a debilitating impact of global poverty. Consistent with the Blum Center's objectives, each project employs UC Berkeley-developed technologies and expertise, and both provide hands-on service-learning opportunities for students. The projects also leverage existing partnerships in host countries to increase the likelihood of success, broaden impact and promote sustainability.
The Blum Center has since launched a portfolio of initiatives that focuses on enhancing the welfare of the poor in developing regions through the development, testing and diffusion of low-cost, energy related, technologies that meet real needs, emphasize energy efficiency and minimize negative environmental impacts such as CO2 emissions. Another new portfolio of initiatives addresses the opportunities of cellular phone service and new computing and communications technologies to expand and improve health-related services to rural populations.
The Blum Center’s inaugural course offering, an eight-week, two-unit class - titled "Global Poverty: Challenges and Hopes in the New Millennium", in fall 2006, generated so much student demand that it had to be relocated twice to accommodate more than 200 undergraduate and grad-student enrollees.
The Blum Center coordinated the creation of a new undergraduate program, beginning fall 2007, that seeks to motivate and prepare students to become active in alleviating poverty worldwide. The "Global Poverty & Practice" minor is housed in the International and Area Studies Teaching Program. It forms a response to strong student demand for a globally-based curriculum and will serve to cement UC Berkeley's reputation as an "engaged university" that focuses on research, education and service for the benefit of society.
IMIO Provides Direct Aid to Students Across Campus
In academic years 2006 through 2008, the IMIO distributed $582,987 in direct student aid in fellowships supporting many campus departments including the Haas School of Business, i-School, EECS, PEIS, BioEngineering, Public Health, Public Policy, Energy and Resources, City and Regional Planning, Environmental Design, Economics, Agricultural and Resource Economics, Jurisprudence and Social Policy, and Mechanical Engineering.
Fisher Center is co-founder of Software Business Community
The Fisher IT Center has become a founding member and sponsor of the new Software Business Community web site (http://www.swbcommunity.org/swbc/index.php/Main_Page ).
The Software Business Community is dedicated to uncovering the unique challenges of the business of software, including software suppliers, service providers and product companies heavily dependent on software, major users of software, firms providing services to all these participants, and the software industry as a whole. It provides a forum where individuals and organizations with various complementary perspectives, such as suppliers, service providers, and end-users can come together to create and archive a relevant body of knowledge. The community takes various perspectives, including relevant academic disciplines (economics, management, software engineering, the social sciences, and others), the expertise and experience of managers and practitioners, empirical and field research, and theory. The ultimate goal is to make software businesses of all types, and the software industry as a whole, more successful, and the successful use of these services more attainable.
IMIO Sponsors Summer Institute in Competitive Strategy
IMIO sponsored the Sixth SICS-Summer Institute in Competitive Strategy in July 2008 at the Haas School of Business. SICS provides a setting which enables researchers interested in competitive strategy in marketing to meet and discuss research in this area for an extended period, exchange ideas, and engage in collaborative work. The research area is competitive strategy broadly defined, including both theoretical and empirical work. Topics covered included pricing, price discrimination, brand equity, brand strategies, brand extensions, product design, new product development, advertising, promotion, distribution channels, sales force management, e-commerce, customer relationship management, strategic alliances, customer retention, lifetime value of customers, customer equity, and psychological phenomena relevant for competitive strategy.
Fisher Center and CMU Sponsor Major Conference on Mobile Technology
Acknowledging the rise of handheld mobile devices as a dominant computing platform both in the United States and abroad, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of California at Berkeley sponsored “The Mobile Future: Technology Revolutionizing Our Lives.” a conference gathering leading academics, researchers, pundits and industry experts to discuss their visions of this mobile future, along with technology and business models for achieving them. The conference was held on April 22 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California, and attracted widespread press and blog coverage.
2008 Conference Overview
2008 Conference Presentations
2008 Conference Highlights/News and Blog Coverage
2007 Conference
Blum Center to Support Developing Economies, Tackle Global Poverty
The Blum Center for Developing Economies, housed at the Institute, was initiated in April 2006 through a $15 million gift from Haas alumnus Richard C. Blum that includes a $5 million challenge grant. Serving as the nexus on the Berkeley campus for cultivating targeted new education programs and convening resources to combat global poverty, the Blum Center focuses on implementing solutions extrapolated from cutting-edge research while engaging students in transformative service programs. With a focus on developing innovative projects in specific countries, Berkeley students will explore the tremendous potential and challenges created by international aid. George Scharffenberger is the center’s executive director.
The Blum Center has two purposes: (1) address the needs of the poor in developing countries by leveraging the depth and breadth of the University of California; and (2) prepare students with theoretical and applied knowledge, enabling them to contribute to global efforts to end extreme poverty. The Center also focuses on encouraging entrepreneurship that can enhance the development of effective and sustainable solutions. It draws on the expertise from faculty at other University of California campuses to assemble multidisciplinary teams to work on projects in the field. For more info: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/
"I believe UC Berkeley can have a singular effect in the fight to alleviate human suffering," said Blum. "If you look at the dangerous political divisions in today's world, you will find that most extremism has its roots in poverty and lack of education. We hope that our center will help train the next generation of leaders to be dedicated to alleviating poverty in the developing world."
The Center is endowed by Haas alumnus and UC Regent Richard C. Blum
The Blum Center has selected its first project initiatives — the East Africa Healthcare Initiative and the Initiative on Safe Water and Sanitation. The former will be initially focus on Uganda; the latter project includes support for a portfolio of activities in six countries: India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico. Both projects address poor health status, which is both a leading cause and a debilitating impact of global poverty.
Consistent with the Blum Center's objectives, each project employs UC Berkeley-developed technologies and expertise, and both provide hands-on service-learning opportunities for students. The projects also leverage existing partnerships in host countries to increase the likelihood of success, broaden impact and promote sustainability. For more information: http://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/initiatives/
New Chesbrough Book Shows Companies How to Foster Innovation
In a new book that already has drawn glowing reviews, Henry Chesbrough, executive director of the Center for Open Innovation (COI) and adjunct professor at the Haas School, calls on companies to break down their walls to foster innovation. Just released in December, Open Business Models: How to Thrive in the New Innovation Landscape, already has received a Wall Street Journal review calling the book, "one that B-school students and lay readers alike will enjoy." BusinessWeek also included it on its list of the 10 best innovation and design books of 2006.
Chesbrough argues for companies to look outside their boundaries for the best ideas and to capitalize on their own unused ideas through licenses and sales to other firms, even competitors. This new open approach requires new performance metrics, new processes, and changing long-held views about innovation and intellectual property. Such change is essential in today's world of rising technology development costs, shorter product life cycles, and widely distributed knowledge, argues Chesbrough. Open business models are illustrated with detailed case studies of Proctor & Gamble, IBM, and Qualcomm, and a framework of six business model types -- with examples such as Wal-Mart, Dell, and Apple -- and a diagnostic test to enable managers to open up their own companies. It builds upon Chesbrough's earlier book, Open Innovation: The New Imperative for Creating and Profiting from Technology; both are published by Harvard Business School Press.
For more on COI: http://openinnovation.haas.berkeley.edu/
COI Creates Berkeley Innovation Forum
The Center for Open Innovation has initiated a new membership organization, the Berkeley Innovation Forum (BIF), to facilitate an academic and corporate partnership with a focus on innovation. In brief, the mission of the BIF is to create a community of innovation leaders that meet to exchange ideas and practices. Through an environment of non-competing companies, BIF members will explore new ways to advance the management of innovation by engaging openly with one another.
The Berkeley Innovation Forum is developing alternatives to the study of innovation, avoiding fundamental flaws in the usual approach of business schools. The study of business is not a science in the academic sense of the word, yet business schools organize as though it was. A far better model is the model of medical schools, which pursue fundamental research on the biological mechanisms of disease, and join that research to clinical practice that translates research breakthroughs into new therapies for patients. In a small way, the BIF, if it is successful, will help to close the gap between innovation theory, and innovation.
Intel and the Institute’s Lester Center Create Technology Entrepreneurship Programs
The Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation is the primary locus at Berkeley for the study and promotion of entrepreneurship and innovation in management and new enterprise development, and is expanding its programs to include a global focus. A major facet of this increased global outreach is the Intel Technology Entrepreneurship Education Initiative. Developed and implemented in 2005-2006 by the Lester Center in collaboration with the Intel Corporation, the initiative has two key thrusts: first a “train the trainer” program, Technology Entrepreneurship Education: Theory to Practice, where key Haas School entrepreneurship faculty share the Haas approach to entrepreneurship education with leading technology faculty around the world. Second is the Intel+Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge, a business plan competition with global reach that forms a “virtual laboratory’ for entrepreneurial experimentation in technology commercialization.
Research Program Receives Continuation Funding
Prof. John Freeman, the Lester Center’s Director of Research and Helzel Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation is pleased to announce that the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City has agreed to continue funding of the entrepreneurship program’s research into the Causes and Consequences of Entrepreneurship in the United States.
In the first, two-year phase of the project, the center granted research awards to 17 professors from the Haas School, Boalt Hall School of Law, the Departments of Economics, Sociology and Political Science, the School of Public Health and the i-School. These grants have supported inquiry into opportunities for women, minority and immigrant entrepreneurs. They have also examined how the effects of patent law, venture capital investment strategies, social networks and organizational growth have affected entrepreneurial activity.
Following the successful model of the first two years, the Lester Center and Prof. Freeman will continue to seek out researchers from across campus whose fields of interest can be slightly refocused to include studies on entrepreneurship. The new grant will allow the center to award over 15 grants during the next two years. The Center thanks the Kauffmann Foundation for this opportunity to expand basic research on entrepreneurship and to help develop theories that can improve the economic climate for start-up companies.
Management of Technology Program Continues Strong Enrollment
The Management of Technology (MOT) Program, a joint effort between the College of Engineering, the Haas School of Business, and the i-School, and supported by the Institute, focuses on the operational and organizational issues associated with managing new product development and commercialization. The MOT Program is the largest interdisciplinary program on campus based on enrollments, which have remained stable at between 1400-1500 students per year for four years. Forty-seven MOT courses were offered in Spring 06/Fall 06. The total number of MOT approved courses is 60, which includes 11 core and 50 related. The total number of MOT certificates issued in the academic year 2005/2006 was 84.
In summer 2006, the ten graduate students chosen as Mayfield Fellows interned at venture capital-funded Silicon Valley high-tech start-ups. For the fourth year, nine graduate students from the College of Engineering, the Haas School of Business and the School of Information with an interest in technology, business and China’s high-tech economy were selected as MOT China Fellows. For more information: http://mot.berkeley.edu/.
Berkeley Center for Law and Technology Blazes Trail in Intellectual Property
The Berkeley Center for Law and Technology (BCLT) continues its leadership in Intellectual Property law issues. The 2008 U.S. News & World Graduate School Report has ranked the IP Law Program of Boalt Hall School of Law first in the nation. The Boalt Hall Program, led by BCLT's 7 Faculty Directors, has been #1 in the U.S. for the past 10 years. For more information: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/institutes/bclt/.
A sampling of BCLT’s recent IP programs includes:
· In February, 2006 and July, 2006 BCLT hosted the US Patent & Trademark Office regarding the US PTO’s Proposed Changes to Patent Claims & Continuations.
· August 10-11, 2006 the IP Scholar’s Conference sponsored by BCLT, DePaul, Cardozo and Stanford, brought over 120 IP faculty to Boalt for a 2-day conference.
· In connection with the School of Information (SIMS) Distinguished Lecture featuring Fred Schneider, SIMS, BCLT and SLTPPC sponsored a Trust Privacy Workshop on October 5-6, 2006 at Boalt Hall.
· BCLT, Santa Clara Law School and SVIPLA hosted an evening program for patent practitioners, PTO Rulemaking Event, on October 26, 2006, followed by the Patent Policy in the Supreme Court and Congress conference on October 27, 2006.
· Pam Samuelson, Deirdre Mulligan, and Ken Goldberg were co-chairs of a symposium entitled, Unblinking: New Perspectives on Visual Privacy in the 21st Century, sponsored by BCLT, TRUST, CITRIS, CNM, and UC Berkeley College of Engineering, held on November 3-4, 2006.
· Robert Barr, Pam Samuelson and Peter Menell presented at Boston University at a Software Patent Conference, sponsored by BCLT, Boston University, Computer & Communications Industry Association, MIT Sloan School of Management, Public Patent Foundation and Research on Innovation on November 17, 2006.
· The University of Texas School of Law, BCLT and Stanford University Law School hosted the Seventh Annual Advanced Patent Law Institute in San Jose on November 29-December 1, 2006.
· On December 7-8, 2006 BCLT and LexisNexis hosted Copyright – From Traditional Concepts to the Digital Age, held in San Francisco.
· The Fourth Annual Telecommunications and IP Conference was sponsored by BCLT and Seoul National University in Hawaii on January 12-13, 2007.
· BCLT co-sponsored FTC/DOJ Hearings at the UC Berkeley Haas Business School, on January 30 - 31, 2007.
· On February 16, 2007 BCLT hosted the Federal Circuit Bar Association.
· March 9-10, 2007, BCLT hosted our Annual Symposium on Copyright, DRM Technologies and Consumer Protection, sponsored by BCLT, BTLJ and the Institute for Information Law at the University of Amsterdam (IViR).
· The Eighth Annual IP Retreat for Federal Judges was held in Berkeley in May 2007, co-sponsored by the Federal Judicial Center and BCLT.
· The Seventh Annual IP Scholars Conference, sponsored by BCLT, DePaul, Stanford and Cardozo will be held on August 9-10, 2007.
· • The Seventh Annual IP Scholars Conference, sponsored by BCLT, DePaul, Stanford and Cardozo will be held on August 9-10, 2007.
Institute Provides Support for Visiting Scholars, Graduate Education and Research
In 2005-2006, the Institute sponsored nine Visiting Scholars from Italy, Austria, Japan, Brazil, Korea, and the US.
The Institute also distributed $355,000 in direct student aid, including 112 paid research fellowships supporting many campus departments including the Haas School of Business, School of Information, EECS, PEIS, BioEngineering, Public Health, Public Policy, Energy and Resources, City and Regional Planning, Economics, Agricultural and Resource Economics, Jurisprudence and Social Policy, and Mechanical Engineering.
Fisher Information Technology Center is Back in Business
The Institute of Management, Innovation and Organization of the Haas Business School at U. C. Berkeley has named a new leadership team for the Fisher Information Technology Center. Dr. David Teece, Director of the Institute, has appointed Jackson Grantham to serve as executive director of the Fisher Center, and Dr. Terrence Hendershott and Dr. John Morgan of the Haas School to serve as faculty directors.
The Fisher IT Center, previously known as the Fisher Center for the Strategic Use of Information Technology, promotes interaction between corporate executives including CIO-level managers and U. C. Berkeley faculty and students through the many programs and services within the Haas School of Business and U. C. Berkeley. For example, the Fisher IT Center supported the recent very successful student-led >play Digital Media conference in November. The Fisher IT Center serves professional and academic communities of interest in information technology by promoting dynamic interactions between corporate practice, research, and instruction, and by encouraging the professional development of participating information technology professionals, students, and faculty. For more information about the Fisher IT Center, click here.
As executive director of the Fisher IT Center, Jack Grantham is responsible for planning and launching the re-birth of the Center in service to corporate executives, as well as to U. C. Berkeley faculty, researchers and students. He is dedicated to ensuring that the Fisher Information Technology Center draws on the resources of U. C. Berkeley to create relationships between these groups so as to effectively maintain and grow products and services, programs and activities, conferences and symposia which strengthen their research capabilities, relevance, and interaction. Mr. Grantham can be reached at grantham@haas.berkeley.edu or 510-642-6145.
Prior to his appointment at Berkeley, Grantham served for 15 years as Chief Information Officer and Director of Customer and Operations Support for the Research Libraries Group (RLG), a non-profit data services firm to higher education and a spin-off from Stanford University. Prior to his role at RLG, Grantham was founder and president of ATAC Business Services and general manager for Ikoss Corporation, implementing trust accounting systems for the Union Bank of Switzerland’s Trust Bank in Tokyo, Japan. A former Vice President in the Trust Systems group at Bank of America in San Francisco and Vice President of SunTrust Banks in Atlanta, Grantham has had many roles in IT, ranging from executive, to manager, systems analyst or programmer, for forty years. Named as outstanding student from his MBA graduating class, Grantham holds an Executive MBA from St. Mary’s College, Moraga, California, and a BS degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco.
Intel and Lester Center Create New Global Technology Challenge at Haas
Co-hosted by the Haas School's Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, an affiliate of the Institute, and by Intel Corporation, the Intel+Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge (IBTEC) seeks to identify ventures that promise the greatest positive impact on society through the commercialization of new and truly innovative technologies.
"In IBTEC, two powerful technology institutions, UC Berkeley and Intel Corporation, form a public-private partnership to recognize the best and brightest new technology commercialization business ideas," said Jerome Engel, executive director of the Lester Center. "This year's pilot event sets the stage for what will become an important international technology-business competition focused on engaging private enterprise and institutions of higher education in collaborative efforts."
For more information, go to http://www.entrepreneurshipchallenge.org/.
Intel and Haas School Join Forces to Train Entrepreneurship Faculty Across the Globe
Intel and the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation, an affiliate of the Institute, are joining forces to drive job creation and economic competition. The partnership aims to boost entrepreneurial know-how in emerging technology hotbeds around the world with a new "train the trainer" program for entrepreneurship faculty. Part of Intel's Higher Education initiative, the new "Technology Entrepreneurship – Theory to Practice" program offers a teaching curriculum that was developed and will be taught by faculty of the Lester Center. The goal of the program is to foster entrepreneurship education around the world, helping to create innovative business people with cross-disciplinary skills, technical expertise, and the ability to seize market opportunities.
Intel will fund and organize the two-day seminars to be held in five venues in Brazil, China, India, and Europe over the next 18 months. Attending each seminar will be 15-20 faculty members from several colleges and universities in those regions. "The program will provide a framework and curriculum that college faculty can adapt to their local situations, building on a proven approach, ultimately encouraging entrepreneurship around the world," says Jerome Engel, executive director of the Lester Center, who will be leading the program.
The program will include classroom exercises and other learning tools that university professors can use to educate technical graduates on the basics of entrepreneurship. Attending faculty are encouraged to share how they will apply their newly gained knowledge on the process of commercializing technology to their curriculum with faculty at other schools. This will allow faculty worldwide to view, use, modify, and refine various approaches to an entrepreneurship curriculum.
Prof. John Morgan Shows Sellers How to Boost Profits on eBay
eBay sellers can boost profits by setting a low opening bid price and charging higher shipping charges, according to recently published research by Haas Professor John Morgan.
Morgan and co-author Tanjim Hossain, an assistant professor at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, held 80 auctions of new music CDs and Xbox video games to test how consumers respond to different price schemes. In the eBay study, they varied the opening bid price and shipping charges on identical CDs, ranging from Britney Spears to Nirvana, and video games, including Halo and NBA 2K2.
In theory, dividing a price into these two pieces should have little effect on overall demand for a good, the economics professors note. A perfectly informed and fully rational consumer will merely add together the two parts of a price to obtain the total out-of-pocket price for an item and then decide whether to buy and how much to bid based on this total price.
But that’s not what happened in their eBay auctions. Instead, they found that lowering the opening bid price while raising shipping charges attracts earlier and more bidders and ultimately leads to higher revenues compared with doing the reverse. Those findings suggest consumers pay less attention or even completely overlook shipping costs when making bids, the professors conclude.
In addition to applying to auctions, the results could have implications for fixed-price retailing, including electronics and books, where it’s also common marketing practice to divide a price into two pieces. Framing the same price as the total of different attributes may significantly affect consumer behavior, Morgan says.
Their findings were published in an article, “...Plus Shipping and Handling: Revenue (Non) Equivalence in Field Experiments on eBay,” in the latest edition of Advances in Economic Analysis & Policy.
The eBay study is just the latest piece of research on Internet pricing from Morgan, who has been investigating the subject since the late 1990s.
Working with two other professors outside of Haas, Morgan helped build what is probably today’s most comprehensive database of retail prices on the Internet. With that data, updated weekly at www.nash-equilibrium.com, Morgan and his colleagues found that pricing on the Internet varies dramatically, contrary to predictions that the vast wealth of price information online would eat away at profit margins and result in one low price for consumers.
More recently, Morgan compared auctions on eBay and rival Yahoo! with UC Berkeley Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics graduate student Jennifer Brown. After auctioning off identical Morgan Silver Dollars on both sites, they found that eBay auctions averaged almost 60 percent more bidders than Yahoo! and 30 percent higher sales prices on identical items.
