Haas Innovations Shine in Big Ideas @ Berkeley

Grand Prize Winners, Cashify

A team of Haas Undergraduates won the Big Ideas @ Berkeley grand prize and two other Haas teams took first place in their categories, all emerging from an original field of 160 teams and 550 students across 75 majors and 5 UC campuses.

Cashify, a team made up Shuonan Chen, Justin Chu, both BS 13, and Virgina Chung, BS 12, took home $7,500 for winning their category and $5,000 in grand prize money for their plans to develop an online “edu-tainment” platform designed to teach new students about finances.

As part of the Cashify curriculum, users will complete tasks for points that can be put toward purchases, such as campus supplies or event tickets. “We’ve all seen fellow students really struggle with their finances,” said Chu. “Our goal is to reach as many minds as possible and make learning about personal finances accessible, fun and useful.” (Read more about Cashify in this post on the Undergraduate Student Blog.)

 

Emmunify, First Prize in Maternal & Child Health category

Emmunify, a team made up of MBA students Sanat Kamal Bahl, Anandamoy Sen, and Erik Krogh-Jespersen, all second-year students in the Evening & Weekend MBA Program, and members from the Schools of Information and Public Health, won first place in the Maternal & Child Health category and took second in the grand prize competition. Their venture simplifies the immunization process for villagers and health workers in rural India through SMS text and voice messaging technology and has the potential to decrease the number of preventable child deaths. (Read about this team’s win in the UC Berkeley Digital Health Hackathon.)

AMASS Media, with Haas team members John Chang, Clayton Yan, and Hannah Yang, all BS 12, and Carolyn Kao, BS 14,  won in the Creative Expression for Social Justice category. AMASS will connect nonprofits with amateur and early-career videographers seeking to build portfolios to create a way for both to advance their agendas and bring greater public awareness to social justice issues.

Now in its sixth year, Big Ideas @ Berkeley aims to encourage student engagement with the world, helping them develop innovative projects with the potential to solve pressing societal problems in communities at home and abroad. The competition is made possible through the generous support of key donors, including the Andrew and Virginia Rudd Family Foundation.

Cashify photo L. to R.: Judge Andrik Cardenas, Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership; Haas Undergrads and Cashify team members Justin Chu, Shuonan Chen, and Virginia Chung; Team Mentor David Williams, UCB’s Financial Aid and Scholarships Office; and Judge Andrew Rudd, chair of the Rudd Family Foundation.

Emmunify photo: Emmunify’s Berkeley MBA students are Sanat Kamal Bahl (far l.), Anandamoy Sen (3rd from r.), and Erik Krogh-Jespersen (far r.), all MBA 14. They are pictured with their Public Health partners Jessica Watterson, Professor Julia Walsh, and Emily Murphy.

 

Student Energy Innovations Advance in DOE Competition

Alex Wooten, David Hirsch, and Paul Maa in Shanghai representing their venture, [Temporary Energy]

 

Berkeley MBA students are on two teams advancing to the regional finals of First Look West (FLoW), a national clean energy business challenge. Their ideas for bringing solar energy into low income homes and more easily finding ways to make buildings energy efficient will go head-to-head with 22 other competitors at USC on May 7.

Tom Spooner, and Jonathan Lim, both MBA  14, are part of BEEMS, an interdisciplinary Berkeley team pitching Building Energy Efficiency Mapping Services. The startup is based on licensing a an indoor mapping technology developed at UC Berkeley and, according to Spooner, “offers a fast, cheap, and effective service to assess energy efficiency opportunities in existing buildings.”

David Hirsch, Paul Maa, and Alex Wooten, all MBA 13, make up [Temporary Energy], focused on “making solar as easy as renting furniture.” With guidance from solar and energy experts at Berkeley and Haas, the team plans to improve access to solar for low income households by removing such barriers to entry as expensive permitting.

Temporary Energy recently became the first team from Berkeley-Haas to participate in China Europe International Business School’s (CEIBS) Innovate China case competition. Participation offered networking with investors, students, and government officials, as well as a visit to a special economic zone outside of Shanghai to learn about incentives for businesses there.

Berkeley-Haas was also well represented in the 2012 FLoW competition, with Will Greene, MBA 13, and his teammate Will Regan, a Berkeley Physics PhD candidate, winning the $40,000 third prize for Xite Solar, which has developed a new class of solar cells that could make solar a major source of energy production.

Winning Approaches: Understanding Both Patient and Physician Pain Points

Second Place in Emory’s Leadership in Healthcare Case Competition: Felice Espiritu, Christine Chu, Alana Tucker, and Alex Leung.

The competition: Emory Leadership in Healthcare Case Competition at Goizueta Business School, Feb. 15.

The outcome: Second place.

The team: Alex Leung, MBA 15 in the Evening & Weekend MBA Program, and Christine Chu, Felice Espiritu, and Alana Tucker, all MBA/MPH 14.

The field: Included Emory, Vanderbilt, and USC, with Vanderbilt coming in first.

The challenge: Provide a recommendation on whether to implement a Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) system at a hospital in the Emory Healthcare system (CPOE provides for electronic entry of physician instructions for patient care). In the final round, the top three teams presented their recommendation and strategic plan to hospital physicians to gain buy-in for CPOE implementation.

A winning approach: “We addressed the impact of a CPOE on both patient care and physician workflows,” says Tucker. “Physician resistance appeared to be the biggest hurdle, so we conducted root cause analysis to understand underlying concerns and developed corresponding recommendations.” The team’s ideas included providing on-the job training rather than classroom training to save physician time and engaging peer champions to promote adoption. In Round 2, Berkeley-Haas was the only team to create an entirely new presentation in the hour allotted. “We completely tailored our tone, presentation format, and content to physicians rather than hospital administrators,” says Tucker.

A winner because:  Judges hailed the team for understanding the pain points for both patient and physician and the resulting opportunities for a CPOE to improve their experiences. They also called out the team’s grasp of current healthcare regulations.

The H factor: “Not only were we able to bring our own work experience to the case, but we also tapped into the work experiences of our classmates,” says Tucker. “These included a physician who had practiced in the UK’s National Health Service and a former employee of a leading electronic health record software company.” Tucker also notes that Haas Healthcare Association activities, such as career treks, enabled their team of like-minded people to find each other from across programs.

 

Winning Approaches: Wharton Latin American Private Equity Competition

Winning at Wharton: Javier Aranguiz, Dani Alonso, Carlos Prada, and Alex Igoshin

The competition: Wharton Latin American Private Equity Competition, Feb. 2.

The outcome: Tied for first with Chicago Booth.

The team: Dani Alonso, Javier Aranguiz, Alex Igoshin,  and Carlos Prada, all MBA 14.

The field: In addition to Berkeley-Haas and Booth, Wharton, NYU, Ross, and HEC.

The challenge: Presenting an investment opportunity in Latin America to a committee of managing directors from leading firms including Acon, CVCI, General Atlantic, Amzak, and IIC (Inter-American Investment Corp.).

The winning approach: “For the first round, we proposed a buy-and-build strategy to assemble a sizeable regional multi-brand fast food chain,” says Prada. “This would start with the acquisition of one of the leading fast food chains in Chile, a platform for future strategic acquisitions in Colombia and Peru.” For the final round, Booth and Berkeley-Haas went head-to-head on a case seeking recommendations regarding investment in a Colombian private energy generation company under financial distress.

Won because: “Our investment opportunity had all the features of an attractive investment for a private equity fund,” says Prada, citing the proven business model, strong brand equity in Chile, and relationships with real estate developers. “The judges also found the proprietary nature of our deal appealing–we selected a below-the-radar target company, demonstrating familiarity with the market.”

The “H” factor: Leadership Communications and Finance were the main courses from which the team drew essential skills and knowledge. “We kicked off the first presentation to the judges with storytelling and had a clear outline that allowed the judges to fully understand the structure of our presentation,” says Prada. He also notes that the team’s diverse background was an asset, with Aranguiz having worked in public equity investments, Igoshin in private equity, Alonso in consulting and retail, and Prada in private equity and consulting. Igoshin says an understanding of team dynamics, honed through the Teams@Haas component of the Berkeley Innovative Leader Development (BILD) curriculum, played a role as well.

The benefits: “Hearing directly from the industry’s leading practitioners in Latin America about the rationale behind their investment analysis process, their motivations to invest in the region, their thoughts on the future of the industry in the region, and their firms’ career opportunities,” says Prada. “From fellow students—our future colleagues and industry leaders–we sought to learn from their experience and establish relationships for future deal sourcing.”

Winning Approaches: First AND Third Place, Kellogg Biotech & Healthcare Case Competition

First place winners Yelena Bushman, MBA 13, Kristian Lau, MBA/MPH 13, Ken Su, MBA/MPH 13, Brian Feth, MBA 13, Ji-Hong Boo MBA/MPH 13

The competition: Kellogg Biotech & Healthcare Case Competition, held on Jan. 26.

The outcome: Haas teams placed first and third.

The teams: First place: Yelena Bushman, MBA 13, of the Evening & Weekend MBA Program; full-time MBA students Ji-Hong Boo, Kristian Lau, and Ken Su, all MBA/MPH 13; and Brian Feth, MBA 13. Third place: In third place were Nick Mascioli and Darya Rose, both MBA 13; Anthony Baldor and Chris Burke, both MBA 14; and Alana Tucker, MBA/MPH 14.

The Field: A total of 38 teams applied, from which 10 teams were selected to compete: two teams each from Haas, Booth, and Kellogg, plus teams from Harvard and Cambridge.

The challenge: “We were asked by a large pharma to value the lead drug in development at a smaller biotech acquisition target,” says Brian Feth. “The drug was in development for obesity and had a number of risks that made the valuation not straight-forward. “

The winning approaches: Team Goldenbear Biosciences, which placed first, built a bottoms-up valuation model based on narrowing the potential patient population to an addressable market and ultimately to revenues. “Given the short timeline, and the nature of the deliverable (powerpoint presentation), we realized that the ability to communicate the process clearly would be far more important than getting every detail of the model perfect,” says Feth. “We spent the early part of the week preparing and reviewing the model together, and the latter half of the week building the story and populating slides. We did make sure to sense check assumptions and try and triangulate various assumptions against each other. It was clear that some teams had not done this by the unrealistic valuations they presented.”

What made them winners: “We were told by the judges that we had the best overall mix of logical valuation methodology, communication style, strategy, and patient understanding,” says Feth. “One judge told me that we built the model and told the story in exactly the same way that they would at Abbott/AbbVie.

The H factor: “Confidence without attitude helped us to present our findings and answer questions candidly and with confidence, as we would with a client or management,” says Feth. We were noted for discussing the “patient journey” which is something that has roots in the course Problem Finding Problem Solving, as well as being discussed regularly in pharma companies as a key element of their customer focus. Tucker says skills from PFPS and Leadership Communication also played a role in the third-place team’s strong showing and in their ability to put together a succinct and compelling story. “Most importantly,” she says, “we worked well as a team to test one another’s assumptions and come to consensus, which Haas emphasizes throughout the curriculum.”

Why it matters: “The increasing rates of obesity in the US are driving much of the increasing healthcare costs – obesity is one of the huge problems facing our generation that will require path-bending leaders to solve.,” says Feth.

Evening & Weekend MBA Startup Makes SXSW Finals

A Berkeley MBA venture aimed at making travel decisions easier and even more appealing has just been named one of eight finalists in the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive tournament Student Startup Madness. Traverie, co-founded by Gaurav Agarwal, MBA 13, has also been selected as one of the top travel innovations of 2012 by PhoCus Wright, a travel market research company, and made strong showings in previous competition.

Described by Agarwal as “an interactive magazine that helps you explore travel through friends,” Traverie emerged from an original field of 64 startup teams competing for a finalist slot at SXSW.

Agarwal and co-founders Jimming Cheng, and Tiffany Yang will make their final pitch in Austin, TX on March 11, presenting before a judging panel of investors and entrepreneurs for top honors and technology tools provided by Google.

“SXSW has become a premier destination for digital media innovation and we thought it would be a great platform to represent Berkeley, compete with other top schools, and create awareness for Traverie,” says Agarwal. “We believe our team and focus on helping consumers discover relevant, trusted content amongst the plethora of data available on Facebook were what made us competitive in this nationwide tournament.”

Agarwal has said that classes such as Problem Finding Problem Solving and New Venture Finance, along with the Startup Board of Mentors Program at the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and the UC Berkeley Startup Competition all greatly contributed to the team’s success. “At Haas I’ve learned how to create a business out of an idea and how to build a strong team, which is the most important asset in a knowledge company.”

Mobile Insights Garner Finalist Honors at Infocom

Evgeniya Kalenykh, MBA 14

The Competition: The 2012 Infocom Future Leadership Awards, held in Calcutta, Dec. 7 as part of the Infocom conference for professionals in information and communications technology.

The Winner: Evgeniya (Eve) Kalenykh, MBA 14, who was one of six finalists.

The Field: More than 1,000 students from 70 b-schools worldwide.

The Challenge: To write a paper on the theme of mobility.

The Winning Approach: In addressing the impact of mobility on organizations and consumers, Kalenykh wrote from her perspective as an MBA candidate who will rejoin the workforce in two years, exploring what the organizations would be like and the skill set that would be required. “For instance, I talked about the importance of seeing and sensing the big picture in the terabytes of data that we are now able to obtain. As a result, ideal employees of mobile era would be visionary and curious rather than skilled.”

A Winner Because: Kalenykh thinks it’s because she identified key trends, such as the ability of companies to offer more with less, (i.e. creating meaningful data instead of simply abundant data,) and the need to be supportive—without being “creepy.” “Suppliers struggle with a desire to offer more, while assuring the user of privacy and anonymity of his information,” she says. “There will be more educated guesses about consumers, more bold campaigns–and more epic failures.”

The H Factor: Kalenykh is pursuing her Berkeley MBA to re-enter the tech industry after four years with the global consumer goods giant Unilever. At Haas she has helped with the school’s annual digital media conference, >play, putting together a mobile application to replace a conference brochure. “This appealed to me from both a sustainability perspective and the ability to get up to speed with latest technology advancements.” She also worked on the annual challenge put on by the Haas Technology Club and will co-chair that event in 2013.

Winning Approaches: 2012 Adobe Digital Analytics Competition

2nd Place in the Adobe Challenge: Dino Boukouris, Tamara Patterson, and Alex Leung

The Competition: 2012 Adobe Digital Analytics Competition, held at Adobe’s new campus in Salt Lake City on Nov. 16.

The Team: Dino Boukouris, Alex Leung, and Tamara Patterson, all MBA 15 in the Evening & Weekend MBA Program.

The Outcome: Second place.

The Field: The team emerged from an original field of 160+ to compete in the finals against NYU, Northwestern, MIT, and UCLA and take the second-place prize of $7,500.

The Challenge: Use the Adobe Site Catalyst and Discover tools to analyze XfinityTV.com site data. “We had to come up with our own understanding of XfinityTV’s business objectives, identify key performance indicators, and make actionable recommendations to improve Xfinity.com,” says Leung.

The Winning Approach: “Our solution focused on collecting relevant visitor data for understanding users better,” says Leung. “Using the themes of engage, attract/grow, and retain, we provided recommendations to improve the XfinityTV.com experience for the most valuable customer segments.”

Won Because: “None of our team members have previous experience in marketing or digital analytics,” says Leung. “We are all scientists/engineers so we stuck with the numbers and made observations in the data as we saw it. We think our fresh perspective helped us lay out a clear path to our recommendations, which the judges complimented.”

The H Factor: “The timing was great because we are all currently studying Marketing, and we had just completed the Leadership Communication course,” Leung says. “We knew to use a vertical takeoff, minimize text on the slides, and use stories as much as possible.”

Try it because: “It was great experience to directly apply our learning from class lectures and even win a big check!” says Leung. “We got to learn new tools, pick up new skills (marketing/digital analytics), define a problem from a new perspective, and collaborate with those we haven’t worked with before. We had so much support from our EWMBA classmates and are really proud we could represent Haas in the finals.”

 

Winning Approaches: National Association of Asian MBAs Global Case Competition

The winning Haas team: Riddhiman Ghosh, Neelam Saboo, Edwin Mach, and Adrian Kok

The Competition: National Association of Asian MBAs (NAAMBA) Global Case Competition, Sept. 13-15, sponsored by Facebook and Electronic Arts

The Team: Neelam Saboo, MBA 13, and Edwin Mach, Adrian Kok, and Riddhiman Ghosh, all MBA 14. The team advanced from a July opening round through summer quarter- and semi-finals to the finals, held alongside the NAAMBA Leadership Conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

The Outcome: First place, as deemed by a judging panel that included the Commissioner of President Obama’s White House Advisory Commission on Asian Americans.

The Field: Berkeley-Haas squared off against USC’s Marshall School and Brandeis University’s International School of Business in the finals.

The Challenge: “How can Social Media be used to empower marginalized communities?”

The Winning Approach: The team’s Project Telos uses technology to remove barriers to access to social media for refugees and immigrants through affordable recycled mobile phones, commodity text messaging plans, and the use of community facilitators. “Telos helps immigrants find their place in American society by facilitating the creation of personal and professional networks and integration with the labor market,” says Ghosh.

Won Because:  “We had extensive conversations with Bay Area organizations that serve the immigrant and refugee populations and leveraged from their domain expertise in the design of our solution,” says Ghosh. “We were also able to demonstrate viability by signing up early partners who were willing to pilot Telos with their constituencies in the Bay Area.” Says Mach, “Our winning case emphasized that not all business plans need to be for-profit, but a sustainable nonprofit that provides a feasible solution for the target community ultimately came out on top.” Ghosh also notes that all of the team members have a personal connection to the immigrant experience — directly or through immediate family.

The H Factor: “Throughout the initial brainstorming and conception of Telos we relied heavily on the diverging and converging skills learned in the BILD Problem Finding Problem Solving classroom,” notes Ghosh. He also credits the rigorous case analyses in Competitive Strategy with helping the team critically analyze the ecosystem in which Telos would play, and then choose the activities and partnerships with the maximum impact.

Why it Matters: “Every year millions come to the U.S. to pursue dreams for better lives or to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster. They make the journey at great personal cost and they face many hurdles trying to integrate into American society, with very little social support in the U.S.” says Ghosh. Adds Saboo, “Haas principles emphasize thinking beyond ourselves and this competition gave us a chance to do something innovative for the marginalized communities.”

A Weekend in the Life of a Part-time MBA Student: From Health Hackathon to Tough Mudder

…Sunday

This past Saturday and Sunday were a productive 48 hours for Erik Krogh-Jespersen, a student in the Evening & Weekend MBA Program. On Saturday, he was part of the team that won the UC Berkeley Digital Health Hackathon, with a way to track child immunizations in rural India. On Sunday, he was one of eight evening and weekend MBA students completing the Tough Mudder. Get the dirt on Tough Mudder in this Haas Achieves post and read on to learn about the winning Health Hackathon team.

Krogh-Jespersen teamed with Sanat Kamal Bahl and Anandamoy Sen, both MBA 14, and with software programmers Shinto Manuel and Jeremy Rahe, Public Health Adjunct Professor Julia Walsh, and mechanical engineering student Srihari Yamanoor to win the 24-hour competition, which challenged students to “build apps that change lives.” The event, held at Skydeck, is co-hosted by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship, the Haas Entrepreneurs Association, and UC Berkeley’s CITRIS.

…preceded by Saturday strategizing at the Hackathon–Krogh Jespersen with Julia Walsh

It began with a 60-second elevator pitch on Friday evening to attract teammates. In this case, Bahl, Krogh-Jespersen, and Sen made the pitch and Manuel, Rahe, Walsh, and Yamanoor signed on. The team then worked through most of Friday night and most of Saturday, coding, designing and building—to make a 6:00 p.m. Saturday pitch to judges.

Team Immutrac proposed a way to track child immunizations in rural India using only a feature phone (aka a “dumb” phone) on the side of the rural villagers and a smart phone on the side of the Healthcare providers.  A readable/writable device would allow a villager to keep electronic medical records for her child on her phone, to receive text message reminders about the upcoming need for a shot, and to have the record updated with each visit.

Anandamoy Sen makes the pitch

“We were targeting the over 160,000 child deaths that occur from vaccine preventable diseases in India with an extremely cheap solution that could function without power cords or internet connections,” says Krogh-Jespersen. He credits the diversity of the team for making the event “so amazing.” A chemistry team leader with Nanosyn, Krogh-Jespersen says, “You can imagine that  as an organic chemist, I have no clue what technology solutions are possible, but both Haas and this event bring these people together–and big things happen.”

The winning Haas Hackathon team, top row, l. to r.: Erik Krogh-Jespersen, MBA 14, Shinto Manuel, Julia Walsh, Jeremy Rahe; bottom row, l. to r.: Sanat Kamal Bahl, MBA 14, Srihari Yamanoor, Anandamoy Sen, MBA 14