Programs for Executives
Undergraduate Courses
New Course – UGBA 199:
Prototyping Scalable Smart Villages in Scalable Economies
Summer 2016, Berkeley Haas
Professor: Solomon Darwin
Corporate Advisors: IBM, Tyco, Cisco, Wipro, HCL, GE, SAP, Intel, Solar City, Google & Nestle
Class Hours: Independent Group Project, 12 hours/week x 5 weeks of research, 60 hours total.
The urban population in India is 67% rural vs. 33% urban while GDP Generation is just the reverse: 70% Urban and 30% rural. Empowering villages brings about a transformative change through technology will boost village economic GDP contribution by on-boarding village industry to global trade distribution networks, through internet of things (IOT), Communication and Cognitive Intelligence and Analytics Technologies. Secondly, this course will result in giving ideas back to the companies UC Berkeley is collaborating with as well as provide foundation for future students that will work on similar projects.
IEOR 185:
Building Smart Cities Leveraging Open Innovation
Professor: Solomon Darwin
Corporate Advisors: Tyco, Cisco, IBM, Siemens, Wipro, HCL, GE, Intel, EMC, VMWare & Applied Materials
Fall 2015, Berkeley Haas/ Berkeley Engineering
Tue 4:00pm -5:00pm & Thursdays 4pm – 7pm. Class Rooms: Haas C335
View Travel Study Project Course Flyer here
Learn “The Smart City Architecture in the Making”. Study and evaluate the concepts and ideas behind the design, layout and technology employed in a smart city. We will study the city of Vizag that was sponsored by President Obama and approved by USTDA for US investment in India and serve as a Model for 100 Smart Cities Plan in India.
In September 2015, Diane Farrell, Acting-President of USIBC, led representatives from 25 major U.S. companies, including IBM, Microsoft Cisco, Dow, GE, 3M, AECOM, Applied Materials, CH2MHill, Hospira and United Technologies Corporation, in detailed discussions with State government officials to create a roadmap and advance the goal of developing Visakhapatnam into a smart city as articulated in the joint statement between President Obama and Prime Minister Modi
The students are expected to come up with an independent smart city proposal for Vizag by studying smart city model that are under construction or those that already claim to be a smart city.
UGBA 193i – 2015
Building Smart Cities Leveraging Open Innovation- Travel Study Program
Travel Study program offers Haas majors an opportunity to combine academic curriculum with an international engagement through travel with a faculty instructor. The program would be comprised of an academic course at Haas with an international experience leveraging the Haas Alumni Network. Travel will consist of two weeks during winter break (Dec 28, 2014 – Jan 14, 2015) before spring instruction begins.
Students will study and evaluate the Open Innovation process “The Smart City in the Making” and will capture the lessons currently being learned in India by the architects, engineers, business partners, investors, city managers, supply chains, and the federal government. Students will evaluate Cost-Benefits of the investment – at a very high level. Students will recommend a framework for India’s urban planning, and for better processes for soliciting external innovations to secure cost effective, designs, technologies, infrastructure and talent to benefit the building of future smart cities that are in the planning stages. Develop at least one use case (i.e. Safety, Traffic, Energy Management etc.) for an Indian city.
UGBA 198
Open Innovation Leveraging IBM Watson
The UGBA 198 course offers technical and business students access to the Watson Developer Cloud to learn about the technical aspects of cognitive computing, including ingesting, building and training a corpus, and then in the second half of the semester, using that information to build a cognitive app and developing a business model as a precursor to taking their ideas to market. The course is intended to help educate and empower the next generation of innovators with an opportunity to ‘change the world’ with their access to Watson. The students taking this course will be among the first to have hands-on access to the cutting-edge Watson technology, enabling them to develop innovative ideas to solve the most pressing problems of industry and society. And from a skills perspective this course will further enhance the students’ marketability. Gartner Inc., a research firm predicts that 4.4 million IT jobs will be created to support Big Data by 2015.
UGBA 190T
Open Business Models & Open Innovation
UGBA 190T has been a very popular course over past three years. Our students’ innovative solutions were proudly featured in the media and were applauded by the participating executives. The students learn the process of Open Innovation Management. The main objective of the course is to solve a real company’s problem or challenge. Students work in groups of five with Senior Corporate Executives who present their business challenges. The groups tap into both internal and external ideas, generated on ideation platforms, to explore and create innovative business models to deliver products and services. Sourcing of external ideas from a larger and diverse population is preferred to build good business models.
UGBA 193i – 2014
Open Innovation & Business Models in India – Travel Study Program
In the UGBA 193i students research and study “Open Innovation Business Models” that focus on Frugal Innovations (Jugaad Innovations). These are products and services that are offered at low cost /high quality creating “Value for Many” vs. “Value for Money”, models that are more relevant to majority of the world’s consumers of today and tomorrow. The Jugaad models being innovated in India have the potential to disrupt the high margin models in the developed world. In addition, they promote greener and more sustainable approaches to preserve our planet.
Many innovations in health care, telemedicine, medical equipment, refrigeration, cookery and prosthetics etc. fall into this category. Students will be exposed to models that ordinate in the 3rd world but have a global appeal and impact in the developed world.