COURSE NUMBER: MBA295E.1

COURSE TITLE: Case Studies in Entrepreneurship: Current Topics in Entrepreneurial Management

CREDIT UNITS: 2 units

INSTRUCTORS: Drew Isaacs and Whitney Hischier

EMAIL ADDRESSES:  isaacs@haas.berkeley.edu; anoop@vmware.com

MEETING DAY/TIME: Tuesdays, 4:00 – 6:00PM

PREREQUISITES: A summer internship in an entrepreneurial organization; or, with permission of the instructors, a strong interest in entrepreneurial management

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

Want to REALLY understand what you learned from your summer internship? Want to multiply what you learned by learning from the experience of others?  The Case Studies course takes your summer experience from the workplace to the classroom. 

You get to dive into the management issues you and your classmates experienced and explore the hyper-competitive world of building companies in the Silicon Valley model.  You will learn from the senior management of companies who are invited to class to discuss cases written by the students.

This course brings into the classroom student experiences with entrepreneurship and management of new ventures drawn from summer internships.  This provides a rich learning environment with current topics in entrepreneurial markets and with clinical aspects of managing companies in those markets. 

The materials for the course are derived from the internship experiences of the Mayfield Fellows and other students who have had internships during the summer or have had significant entrepreneurial management experience.  The course allows you to step back from the furry and frenzy of the entrepreneurial environment and understand what you and your fellow students really learned.

By the end of the semester, each student will better understand what it takes to navigate the managerial challenges of an entrepreneurial enterprise.  

REQUIRED READING: Some texts and cases

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES:

Whitney Hischier is the Assistant Dean for the Center for Executive Education at Haas which offers open enrollment programs for individuals and customized programs for companies. Her role includes business development, co-developing programs with clients, as well as coaching clients on maximizing the impact of their learning and development programs. She has grown the center 8x in revenues during her tenure. Additionally, she serves as a coach for the MBA International Business Development program. Prior to Haas, Whitney was a consultant for Deloitte, San Francisco, KPMG London and ABN Amro bank in Amsterdam. Whitney started her career at Shetland Toys, a 5 person start-up located in a backyard pool house in Woodside- the company was later sold to Learning Curve Toys.

She holds a BA from Stanford and an MBA from Haas.

Andrew M. Isaacs is Adjunct Professor at UC Berkeley and Executive Director of UC Berkeley’s Management of Technology Program, the joint graduate program of Berkeley's Haas School of Business, College of Engineering and School of Information Management and Systems.

Management of Technology is a graduate and executive level program offering 50 courses in management and high technology plus a wide range of programs that integrate high tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere with UC Berkeley. Since joining MOT in 1999, the program has grown to be the largest interdisciplinary program on the Berkeley campus, with approximately 1,400 graduate student enrollments in the program annually. Berkeley's Management of Technology Program is one of the largest programs of its type in the world.

Isaacs also directs the joint UC Berkeley UNIDO program on Technology in the Developing World, begun in 2003, including the annual Bridging the Divide Conference held each April on the Berkeley campus. UNIDO, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, has established a close working relationship with UC Berkeley's MOT Program.

Isaacs' graduate courses at Berkeley include:

-Introduction to Management of Technology

-Marketing for High Tech Entrepreneurs

-Opportunity Recognition: Technology and Entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley

-Technology in the Developing World

-The Business of Nanotechnology

He is also a frequent visiting lecturer at universities, corporations and government agencies in the US, Japan, China and Korea.

Isaacs' experience includes a successful and on-going consulting career as well as executive and technology leadership:

- President, California Technology International, Inc., a consulting firm he founded in 1990, ranked among the Top 10 fastest growing companies in Silicon Valley in 1994 and 1995. CTI's operations in Silicon Valley and Asia specialize in strategy and marketing for US, Japanese, Chinese and Korean technology companies.

- Corporate officer and marketing executive at public and private high tech companies in Silicon Valley, 1983 1990.

- Senior Scientist, NASA Johnson Space Center, Houston, TX, 1981 - 1983 As part of the Management of Technology Program, Isaacs directs several graduate fellowship programs, including the IBM Venture Fellows Program, the Hitachi Fellows Program, the Mayfield Fellows Program, the MOT China Fellows Program, the Sandia Fellows Program and the Berkeley MOT-UNIDO Fellows Program.

His current areas of interest include international marketing, technology company strategy, technology start-ups, technology in the developing world, and US-Asia business strategies.

Isaacs serves on the advisory board for the University of Michigan as well as numerous corporate technical advisory boards. He is also a government advisor on Nanotechnology policy and IBM Faculty Award Recipient for 2005. He holds BS and MS degrees from the University of Michigan.