COURSE NUMBER: MBA 217.2

 

COURSE TITLE: Cleantech to Market

 

UNITS OF CREDIT: 3 units

 

INSTRUCTORS: Beverly Alexander and Brian Steel

 

E-MAIL ADDRESSES: beverly_alexander@haas.berkeley.edu; bsteel@haas.berkeley.edu

 

COURSE WEB PAGES: http://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/c2m/course.html; http://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/c2m/course_details.html

 

MEETING DAYS & TIME: Tuesday and Thursday 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

 

PREREQUISITE(S): No firm prerequisites; however, Energy and Environmental Markets is helpful.

 

CLASS FORMAT: Lectures, guest speakers, in-class teamwork; in-class mentoring.

 

REQUIRED READINGS: Given the dynamic nature of cleantech markets, C2M develops a custom reading list every year tailored to the specific project in the course. Because most cleantech information is out of date by the time it is published in a book, many of our readings are available off the Internet.

 

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE: 70% team performance: 45% market report (50+ pages) and 25% presentations (30-min. presentation to a symposium of 100+ energy professionals and a one-hour debriefing with your scientist). 30% individual performance: teamwork and class participation, including attendance and peer feedback surveys.

 

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

Cleantech to Market is a cross-disciplinary, capstone project course in which graduate students apply their core courses as well as business, engineering, scientific, and legal knowledge to help define and improve pathways to market for cleantech research. Students are drawn from Haas, Berkeley Law, the College of Engineering, the Energy and Resources Group, and various science programs.

 

Over 15-weeks, students produce in-depth market assessments of inventions from nationally acclaimed labs such as the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Joint BioEnergy Institute, and the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society. Students work in four to six-person teams and collaborate as a class to support each other’s work. In addition, each team interviews at least 50 subject matter experts from across the energy industry. The course culminates in teams presenting their findings (1) at an all-day, public seminar for 100-200 energy industry professionals and (2) privately to their scientist partners.

 

For further details, see C2M’s 2012 Syllabus at http://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/c2m/C2M_2012_Syllabus.pdf. Please note this is only a sample as we update the syllabus every year to support the new round of projects.

 

 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES:

Brian Steel is Co-Director of the Cleantech to Market program to which he brings 30 years of business innovation and leadership experience. He is also a governing partner of Clean Energy Advantage Partners and a Senior Advisor to Renewable Energy Trust. Brian serves on the advisory board of the Berkeley Startup Cluster and is a mentor to Greenstart companies. In addition, he has served as an advisor to the Department of Energy, working on both renewable energy financing and solar initiatives. Prior to joining the UC Berkeley faculty, Brian was Vice President of Corporate Strategy & Development for PG&E Corporation, where he led the energy industry’s first tax-equity solar project financing by an investor-owned utility, investing $400 million in nearly $1 billion of photovoltaic assets from 2010-2011. Prior roles include Chairman, International, Pandora Media – the world’s leading Internet radio company; President, International, Overture Services – building a billion-dollar division of Yahoo! with operations in 20 countries; President and CEO, Idealab Silicon Valley and Managing Director of Idealab; and President and COO, On Command. Previously, Brian was Senior Vice President and co-head of the Real Estate Merchant Banking Group at Shearson Lehman Brothers. He has served on the boards of more than 20 early-stage technology companies, several of which went public, and many of which had successful acquisition exits. His separate angel investments include LiveOps and Powerset (sold to Microsoft). Brian holds a B.A. magna cum laude in Economics from Duke University, where he was an Angier B. Duke Scholar.

 

Beverly Alexander is Co-Director of the Cleantech to Market program, and has been involved in energy and environmental innovation for almost 30 years. As a Vice-President at Pacific Gas & Electric Company, she was in charge of the largest energy efficiency, solar, and demand response programs in the United States. Those programs moved $1.2 billion into the California economy and won over 75 awards, including the United States Department of Energy's Energy Star Sustained Excellence award. Bev also held Director, Chief Counsel, and Vice President positions in generation, transmission, distribution and customer services, with a focus on leadership development and strategic planning. Before PG&E, Bev specialized in emerging environmental law and policy. The National Law Journal recognized her as one of the top 40 attorneys under the age of 40 in the United States for her pioneering work. After PG&E, Bev consulted on clean energy solutions, including sustainable communities. She received her B.A. in Environmental Studies from UC Santa Cruz and her J.D. from UC Berkeley, where she was Editor-in-Chief of Ecology Law Quarterly, and clerked on the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.