Initiatives
Training the Trainers: Entrepreneurship in a Box
We will hold special training sessions at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley for leading business and management professors from the developing world as well as skilled pedagogues from other disciplines, who would be capable of teaching “Entrepreneurship in a Box: The Berkeley Method of Management, Marketing, and Entrepreneurship” in their respective countries. Upon completing our training program, instructors will be certified to teach the Berkeley method, under the supervision of Haas instructors, who will provide part of the instruction through distant learning, to students from varying disciplines and majors enrolled in tertiary education in public and private colleges and universities.
Bringing Innovation to Market
This initiative is based on the notion that graduate degree holders with innovative ideas can substantially boost their capacity for transformative impact, commercializing ideas, founding and growing startup companies, creating jobs, and serving as mentors and inspirational role models if they are exposed to the concept and practice of entrepreneurship in world class universities, established companies, startups, and accelerators and incubators in Silicon Valley
Training the Trainers: Design Thinking
This initiative is designed to help remedy one of the most glaring defects of educational systems in developing countries—namely their tendency to undermine critical and original thinking and suppress students’ creative potential. From grade school up, the curriculum taught in schools throughout developing countries tends to be didactic and hierarchical, emphasizing singular, frequently pontificated, answers to given problems and issues.
Policy Oriented Research
Post-doctoral fellowships and visiting scholar appointments for the duration of one academic year will be provided to creative established or junior researchers who will work with subject matter experts at UC Berkeley. The task of the visiting scholars and post-doctoral fellows will be to produce policy relevant white papers providing rigorous analyses of the underlying causes and offering effective/innovative (where possible based upon market oriented or public/private) approaches for resolving the most pressing socio-economic and environmental problems facing each country.