UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

CES at Anderson, Where Technology Shakes Hands with Science

Enjoy the complete album of photos from CES at Anderson

UCLA Anderson’s annual CES^® event, held in partnership with the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)^TM following the world-renowned CES conference in Las Vegas, attracted audiences among the wider community of UCLA students, faculty and staff, as well as industry professionals and business leaders.

The CES at Anderson differentiator is the university context, where rigorous scientific research meets entrepreneurship across disciplines. Professor Mayank Mehta, who teaches in UCLA’s departments of physics and astronomy and neurobiology, and Dr. Ramin Ramezani, assistant adjunct professor of computer science, both lent expertise to panels that explored machine learning, artificial intelligence and virtual reality. Several Anderson alumni chimed in with insights from their positions at companies that include Epson, Sengled and Deepgram. Dyan Decker (’02), PwC’s U.S. forensic technology leader, sat down with Easton Technology Management Center faculty director John Blevins for a conversation about CES in Las Vegas, where the emphasis was on rapidly developing smart home technology and the race to refine virtual assistants.

South Africa Global Immersion Makes Social Entrepreneurship Standard Curriculum

In South Africa, UCLA Anderson students toured the entrepreneurial development Philippi Village, where repurposed shipping containers provide space for shopkeepers’ stores, from hair salons to appliance sales. Back row, left to right: Lisa Tang (FEMBA ’18), Mark Reidy (FEMBA ’17), Milan Karunarante (FEMBA ’18), Bradley McGough (FEMBA ’18), Justin Vu (FEMBA ’18), Alex Lieu (FEMBA ’17), a local entrepreneur, Adrian Colesberry (EMBA ’17), Frank Mikel (EMBA ’17), Mike Levine (EMBA ’17). Front row, left to right: Graham Pulliam (FEMBA ’17), Jonathan Chow (FEMBA ’17), Rachel Luskin (FEMBA ’18), Nikki Strenk (FEMBA ’18), Stephanie Celotto (FEMBA ’18), Tae Macias (EMBA ’18).

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

In September 2016, 40 UCLA Anderson students traveled to South Africa for a global immersion course titled Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Led by UCLA Anderson lecturer Gayle Northrop (’96), president of Northrop Nonprofit Consulting, the course focused on how “pro-social” businesses succeed in an age of waning corporate philanthropy. Northrop, who also serves as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business and co-founded Cape Town’s Spark Health, says students may gravitate to immersion courses because of the international destinations, but her hope is that global examples of social and corporate responsibility will infuse b-school curriculum generally.

UCLA Anderson’s global immersion courses originated in 2008 within the Fully Employed MBA program. Since then, they have expanded to include students in the full-time, executive and UCLA-NUS Global Executive MBA programs. In 2014, the global immersion courses transitioned to the Center for Global Management to enhance the portfolio of global offerings to students across all MBA programs.

“This experience opened my eyes to the amazing work being done by social impact organizations around the world and inspired me to get involved in the field,” said Milan Karunaratne (FEMBA ’18), who joined the South Africa immersion. “I would never have had such an authentic and enriched experience if I had visited South Africa as a tourist.”

Remembering MLK’s 1965 “Segregation Must Die” Speech at UCLA

Listen to the moving address Martin Luther King Jr. made to UCLA students on April 27, 1965. His refrain throughout the 50-minute speech was, “We’ve come a long, long way … but we have a long, long way to go.”

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Made available online in 2015 by UCLA’s Department of Communication Studies

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Joss Whedon to UCLA Anderson Students: “Make Your Choice, and Give Yourself to that Choice”

By Paul Feinberg

“Save the Day … didn’t,” said writer/director/producer/auteur Joss Whedon, referencing the digital production company he founded in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election. The goal of his super PAC Save the Day was to get out the vote, specifically in support of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, though the candidate herself was never specifically mentioned in any of the short films produced by the organization.

But while the text of Save the Day didn’t go as planned, the subtext contained several important lessons: that the act of voting is a powerful one and that getting involved in the causes one believes in is a brave and necessary act in a democracy. Whedon recently emphasized these points in an appearance at UCLA Anderson at the invitation of the Entertainment Management Association.

Whedon was a working writer in Hollywood when he created his first television show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became a cultural phenomenon, featuring Sarah Michelle Gellar as Buffy: high school student by day, killer of vampires and other denizens of the evil realms by night. Buffy begat its spin-off Angel and Whedon and his company Mutant Enemy Productions became power brokers in the entertainment industry. His body of work includes creating, writing and directing television shows, comic books and feature films. If you’re one of the millions of people who enjoyed the two Marvel films featuring the super hero team the Avengers, you’ve enjoyed Whedon’s work.

Up Close and Personal with Cutting-Edge Technology Innovations at the 3rd Annual CES @ UCLA Anderson

On Thursday, January 12, UCLA Anderson’s Easton Technology Management Center, in association with student-run Anderson Tech Business Association, is hosting its third annual CES^® conference. The free event occurs in partnership with and follows the wildly popular annual CES^® conference held in Las Vegas by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)^TM, which showcases the latest innovations in consumer electronics. The CES^® event at UCLA Anderson will highlight some of the newest emerging technologies through featured speakers and panel discussions from various industries.

“This third edition of the CES at Anderson will feature the latest innovations in terms of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and virtual reality,” says Guillaume Roels, UCLA Anderson associate professor of decisions, operations and technology management and faculty director of the Easton Technology Management Center. “Technology innovations, such as self-driving cars and computers detecting credit fraud or making health care recommendations, which seemed so far-fetched a few years ago, have now become reality. We are very excited to bring together a distinguished set of speakers and panelists to discuss their business implications.”

UCLA Anderson Team Bound for Deloitte National Case Competition Finals

Left to right: Melissa Tran, Sophia Moreno, Ella Foux, Bradley McGough

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UCLA Anderson MBA students compete in case competitions locally, nationally and internationally, often bringing home first prize and always returning with valuable experience facing real-world business challenges in a competitive environment. Today, the UCLA Anderson blog presents the fourth in a series of guest posts by case competition participants. This is the prevailing Anderson team’s story of getting to the final phase of the Deloitte National Case Competition in Texas, January 5–8.

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By Bradley McGough (FEMBA ’18)

We received the case prompt for the Deloitte National Case Competition at 7:00 p.m. on a Thursday night. This marked the start of a UCLA Anderson-only competition that would get our team — Melissa Tran (FEMBA ’18), Sophia Moreno (FEMBA ’18), Ella Foux (FEMBA ’18) and I — to the Deloitte NCC finals.

The challenge Deloitte posed to us was how to leverage technology to address business challenges faced by a major sports network. We had just over 24 hours to dig into the data and put together a presentation on our proposed solution.

Our plan was for each of us to read through the case on Thursday evening and come up with a few ideas that we’d explore further in the morning, following a decent night’s rest, ensuring that our time together as a group would be spent as efficiently as possible. Although well-equipped rooms in Rosenfeld Library were at our disposal, we made the decision to meet at Ella’s house instead, so as to eliminate any distraction from the other 23 formidable Anderson teams.

The deadline to submit our polished proposal and deck was 11:00 p.m. the next night.