New Program Aims to Bridge Business, Tech Skills

This fall, UC Berkeley's College of Engineering is starting the Technology and Leadership Studies program, designed to give students going into the business world a better grasp of running a business while using technical skills.

The multidisciplinary program, which is open to all UC Berkeley students, combines classes and services in business and engineering through the pre-existing Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology, the Haas School of Business' Management of Technology Program and other smaller programs.

"We're trying to increase the level (and) type of education so that engineering scientists and people across the rest of campus, including business students, can be leaders in the global economy as opposed to just workers," said Ikhlaq Sidhu, associate dean of Technology and Leadership Studies.

In one class that the program is hosting, called "Engineering Entrepreneurship," students build a prototype of a product and, given a budget, have to pitch and sell their product.

"It's to figure out how to create a business which will require $500,000 investments, but by the end of three years have a revenue of $20 million," Sidhu said. "It goes towards educating people in a global economy."

As part of the A. Richard Newton Global Technology Leaders lecture series, entrepreneurs speak about starting a successful business. The majority of students taking the seminar are undergraduates from the engineering department and business school, Sidhu said.

A large portion of the Technology and Leadership Studies program is funded by private donors and external sources like the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Sidhu said.

One such donor is Shomit Ghose, who graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in computer science in the 1970s and is now a current partner of ONSET Ventures, which funds start-up companies. Since a program like Technology and Leadership Studies did not exist when he was in college, Ghose said he thinks this type of learning environment gives students a rare taste of the business world.

"That kind of eye-opening experience never existed when I was an undergrad," Ghose said. "Getting experience to the business world required me ... getting out and doing it. The students will actually have the beginnings of that knowledge and I think that's the important thing."