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Fiona Miller from Hamilton was awarded the 2008 Fulbright-Platinum
Triangle Scholarship in Entrepreneurship to complete a Master of Business
Administration degree at the University of California, Berkeley. Now halfway
through her MBA, Fiona reports on her busy exchange so far.
I had just accepted the offer of a place at Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley when a colleague popped his head through my office door to tell me that protests at the school were making headline news. Some guy had been “squatting” up an old redwood tree on the Cal football stadium grounds for 450 days (and counting) in protest at the tree’s impending demise to make way for a stadium expansion. When I arrived 3 months later, he was still up there! It was a reminder of the colourful history of UC Berkeley, once the hub of student protest movements in the 1960s, and reflects the huge diversity in backgrounds and views that still exists within the university and its surrounding community. This has made my first year as a Fulbright fellow at Haas a rich and fascinating experience. What attracted me to the Haas MBA program was the diversity of the student
population and strengths in entrepreneurship. While some of my classmates
come from the traditional MBA feeder industries of finance and consulting,
the majority of the class is focused on entrepreneurship, non-profit,
clean tech, high tech and healthcare. My diverse classmates include a
former Japanese rocket scientist, a Madagascar-based non-profit manager,
a Thailand-based clean energy investor, and US Marines who served in Iraq.
This variety makes for vigorous class discussions, and many of the best
insights and ideas emerge from the intersection of these differing perspectives.
My first semester was a shock to the system, having been out of the
university system for nearly a decade. Mid-term and final exams rolled
around every four weeks, while we also took on leadership positions in
the student-run clubs, attended star-studded guest lectures, workshops
and networking events, and developed great friendships. I’ve been
amazed at how little sleep I can operate on! What has really struck me is that many of the science and engineering
students see their research projects as potential start-up companies,
rather than simply a means to obtain a qualification. Likewise, academic
faculty who develop new technologies often license these back from the
university and form start-up companies to commercialize them. Many of
my classmates are also establishing start-up companies. If one venture
fails, they take the lessons from that into their next venture. The positive
attitude towards business amongst technical experts and the acceptance
of risk (and ability to bounce back should one venture fail) are features
of the US innovation system that I believe New Zealand should look to
emulate. Lecturers and guest speakers are also a great source of insights and
inspiration. Companies that began as business plans in our Entrepreneurship
class include what is now Google Earth, founded by John Hanke, and My
Points, founded by Steve Markowitz and three other classmates, which raised
more than US$260 million in the dot com boom. My Biotech course lecturers
have included a VP of Marketing at Genetech, while the guest lecturer
for our first Innovation class was Greg Brandeau, CTO for the wildly successful
animation studio Pixar. Being in business school as the financial sector imploded, automobile
industry giants collapsed and the first African-American president came
to office promising “Hope” in areas such as healthcare, has
made the business and political environment here an interesting “live”
case study. The disparity between the “haves” and “have-nots”
is evident everywhere; I pass rows of homeless people burrowed into their
sleeping bags on my morning jog before heading to class to listen to guest
speakers who have built companies with turnovers comparable to New Zealand’s
GDP. For me, this is a stark reminder of the need to pursue both economic
and social goals simultaneously - an area very dear to the hearts of many
of the students and faculty here at Haas. Beyond the classroom, I’ve been enjoying getting to know the real
America. I’ve found the locals to be incredibly friendly and helpful
and they are genuinely interested in New Zealand, even if they’re
not always quite sure where it is. This is probably not helped by the
fact that “Auckland” doesn’t sound too different from Berkeley’s
neighbouring city “Oakland” when uttered in the short, flat
Kiwi accent. That said, Flight of the Conchords has done amazing things
for Kiwi accent recognition and US appreciation for the distinction between
Kiwis and Aussies.
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