STRIVE APR - JUN 2018 | Page 23

A Culture of Global Possibilities
By Dana Magenau
What other campus can claim to be the birthplace of both
the atomic bomb and the free speech movement? How many
universities have elements tagged with their name? What
other institution offers degrees in financial engineering and
campanology?
I am lucky to work in executive education at the world’s
number one public university: the University of California
Berkeley. Its Haas School of Business is the second oldest in
the United States and consistently ranks in the top 10, a re-
markable feat considering all elite business schools are private
institutions. Haas’ mission? To “develop leaders who redefine
how we do business.”
The Berkeley campus is in the heart of innovation –
the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley. However, I
no longer think of Silicon Valley as an area. It is more of a
culture, and like any culture, it can spread. The culture has
been moving north with firms like AirBnB, Twitter, and Uber
setting up headquarters in downtown San Francisco. Others
like Pandora and Pixar are even closer to Berkeley in neigh-
boring Oakland and Emeryville. As I watch this migration, I
am continually reminded what makes this culture so unique.
Before going any further, let me explain what I do. I
work for Berkeley Executive Education and am the managing
director of Asia Pacific. It is my job to sell executive education
programs from UC Berkeley and the Haas School of Business
to clients in Asia. In that capacity, I get to meet and spend
time with some of the people who are helping reshape the way
the world does business.
Executives coming from China and other parts of Asia
are seeking ways to unlock new ideas, push traditional bound-
aries, and discover unique approaches to their businesses. It
might sound like I am quoting a plaque on a wall, but this is
exactly what UC Berkeley and the Haas School of Business
teach – how to challenge conventional thinking.
In particular, executives from China come to UC Berke-
ley Executive Education to learn how disruption can lead
Berkeley Photos by Jim Block © 2018
Some of Berkeley Haas’ leading minds and top professors like
Maura O’Neil, Toby Stuart, Homa Bahrami and Drew Isaacs teach
innovation and this unique culture to thousands of executives
from nearly every part of the globe.
to new business opportunities. They want to learn how to
shift their organizational culture to be more innovative, and
they want to see and experience the newest ground-breaking
technologies, whether those discoveries are related to their
industries or not.
The appetite of Chinese executives for new knowledge
initially surprised me. I was in China when the 19th National
Congress of the Communist Party met last October. The news
media ran video non-stop for a week of more than 2,000 men
in dark suits rigidly seated in the Great Hall of the People
listening to three-hour long speeches. These images did not
exactly conjure up a spirit of entrepreneurism. However, what
China may lack in individual wardrobe style, they make up
for in their quest for knowledge.
I see this in nearly every program we run. The executives
from China are eager to hear about anything new, including
topics well outside their industries and interests. CEOs and
other top business leaders from China listened intently to
renowned biochemist Jay Keasling talk about biofuels being
made from yeast. They were on the edge of their seats as
famed astrophysicist Alex Filippenko explained the compo-
sition of stars. And they carefully pondered the possibilities
of behavioral economics as the incomparable Shachar Kariv
talked about game theory.
Why does this matter? Well, it is the Chinese executives’
interest in anything new that I believe is most important. In
fact, it is this characteristic alone that surprises and delights
me intellectually. Their proclivity to question the status quo
might seem counterintuitive coming from a collectivist
culture, but the Chinese have a fierce curiosity and quest for
knowledge. It is this pursuit of learning that will ensure this
area (i.e. culture) continues to thrive well into the future.
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