UCLA Anderson School of Management Blog

Can Uber Create “Order Out of Chaos” When It Comes to Driverless Cars?

By Paul Feinberg

Professor Keith Chen is a behavioral economist whose research blurs the traditional disciplinary boundaries in both subject and methodology, bringing unorthodox tools to bear on problems at the intersection of economics, psychology and biology. He recently returned to UCLA Anderson after a stint as head of economic research at Uber, the near-ubiquitous ride sharing platform.

Chen spoke last month at Anderson’s second annual Big Data Conference. His talk focused on Uber’s current challenge, what the professor called “running a ‘gig’ platform.” Much of Chen’s talk looked at Uber’s experimentation with the disruptive impact of driverless cars. He said that Uber was looking to “create order out of chaos.”

Tech Challenge Team Forecasted the Influence of Virtual Education, Cloud-Processed AR and 5G Wireless

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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 third in a series of guest posts by case competition participants. In November, an Anderson team — one of only eight selected — traveled to the annual Berkeley Haas Tech Challenge, where competitors gain hands-on experience in the technology industry and exclusive access to the protagonist company, which leverages the creativity of top MBAs to solve a real problem facing their business.

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Left to right: Steven Tang, Zachary Fields, Anwesha Deb, Josef Bogosian

By Josef Bogosian (FEMBA ’18)

As high-speed 5G wireless is deployed and fixed broadband internet providers build out their networks, new applications will undoubtedly emerge. In mid-November, a team of UCLA Anderson students traveled to UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business to contribute our vision in response to the question, “How will high-speed internet change American lives in the next decade?”

The annual Berkeley Haas Tech Challenge brings together student teams from across the country to discuss and address the challenges of leading tech firms. This year’s sponsor, Google Fiber, challenged teams to come up with creative forecasts for how high-speed internet and related technology will change the way we live.

The UCLA Anderson team — Anwesha Deb (’18), Zachary Fields (’18), Steven Tang (’18) and I — was one of only eight teams selected from 22 schools that applied to compete this year. The Anderson Tech Business Association (AnderTech) coordinated selection of the team to represent UCLA. Other participants included Chicago Booth, Michigan Ross and Northwestern Kellogg.

UCLA Anderson Teams Meet High Expectations in 2016 ROMBA Case Competition

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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 first in a series of guest posts by case competition participants. In October, two Anderson teams traveled to Dallas for the 2016 Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) Case Competition, which offers MBA and graduate students the opportunity to formulate strategic recommendations to solve a business problem and win up to $5,000 in the process.

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Left to right: Andrew Jancaric, David Poli, Geoff Sokolowski

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By Andrew Jancaric (’18) with contributions from all of the UCLA Anderson ROMBA participants

Going into the Reaching Out MBA Case Competition, we all knew expectations were high. Last year, two teams from UCLA Anderson had earned second and third place among 20 teams representing some of the best business schools in the country. With a dominant position like that, our 2016 teams — the first consisting of Bianca Giusto (’17) and Ali Bhamani (FEMBA ’18) and the second David Poli (’18), Geoff Sokolowski (’18) and me — knew that we had some work to do.

Let’s rewind about three weeks prior, when we all received our case prompt. It was the final week of orientation for the first-year MBAs and the week before classes started for the second-years. Upon reading the prompt, we knew that this was going to be an interesting competition. Our task was to come up with strategic recommendations for long-term financial stability at Fitbit. We would have three weeks to leverage our resources and create a polished recommendation to present to a panel of senior consultants at the ROMBA conference.

Competing at ROMBA is different than many other case competitions because the judges come from a mix of all of the best consulting firms in the nation. There are very few opportunities to be able to perform in front of a representative from each of the major firms in one shot, so we knew that the stakes were high.

Big Data Conference: Value Is Derived When Data Is Turned into Insights, then Translated Into Action

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View Big Data Conference photos on Facebook

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By Cheechee Lin

At UCLA Anderson’s second annual Big Data Conference, attendees gathered to discuss the implications and importance of harnessing the power of this growing, seemingly ubiquitous discipline. As Professor Guillaume Roels, faculty director of the Easton Technology Management Center, put it: “Big data is getting bigger.”

The November 18 conference, held in Korn Convocation Hall before a standing-room-only audience, featured a distinguished lineup of panelists and keynote speakers. In one session, Jason Lee, principal at Bain & Company, led the audience through key insights the company has gleaned from helping clients use data science. As the volume, variety and velocity of data accelerate and the big data infrastructure has expanded, he said, Bain’s clients have had to work hard to stay up to date. The changes have also disrupted the way companies work, reshaping processes, companies and industries along the way.

Lee demonstrated the value of employing big data through the stories of three key clients. In the first, Bain assisted a media distribution company to connect its siloed data sets to provide a single view of the customer across the company, and in turn helped break barriers inside the internal organizational structure. This greatly accelerated the company’s leaders’ ability to think about the future.  

Big Names at Big Data Conference Confront Analytics Challenges, Unlock Opportunities

By Cheechee Lin

The Big Data Conference returns to UCLA Anderson for the second time on Friday, November 18.

Who should attend? This conference is for technologists, managers, directors, executives and entrepreneurs who are either providing technology solutions for their organization or using data analytics to make business decisions across all functional areas. Executives and director-level representatives from IBM, Google, Netflix, Uber, Microsoft and many other companies will participate as panelists or keynote speakers.

With the immense growth of the volumes of data collected, and the decrease in costs of acquiring and storing data, corporations and startups of every scale are equipped with a huge competitive advantage to extract valuable insights when they extract data to answer key business questions.

This one-day interactive conference, organized by the Easton Technology Management Center and the Center for MEMES at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, aims to explore big data challenges and opportunities by bringing together a cross section of industry experts and academic thought leaders who are shaping and defining the conversation around the business aspects of big data.

“Big data has been, and continues to be, an important area for UCLA Anderson,” says Dr. Vandana Mangal, Easton’s executive director. “Big data and analytics have been taught in our classes at Anderson since as early as 2012.”

Easton Panel Optimistic about the Future of Educational Technology

Left to right: Kirk Werner, Kenny Berlin, Debra Quazzo, Michael King, Dean Judy Olian

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By Carolyn Gray Anderson

“Educational technology” often makes headlines when K-12 schools fail to implement computer learning in the classroom or when distance learning programs don’t deliver what they promise. That said, advances in technology have created a more global economy that needs a globally minded workforce. Lifelong learning is, increasingly, the key to adapting to career demands well after classroom instruction has ended for many professionals and it’s here that such technology is essential.

Impact@Anderson and the Easton Technology Management Center recently invited leaders in EdTech to discuss their efforts to bring the global education landscape into the 21st century. Dean Judy Olian moderated the panel, which included Michael King (’96), VP and general manager of global education industry at IBM; Deborah Quazzo, founder and partner of GSV Advisors and GSV Acceleration; Kirk Werner, director of content production and instructional design at LinkedIn and Lynda.com; and Kenny Berlin (’11), CEO and co-founder of the 12Twenty career services software platform.

Panel members were unanimous in their optimism about the future of technological innovations in learning, including in public schools. IBM’s King and GSV’s Quazzo named districts in the U.S. that are making strides — D.C., Atlanta, New Orleans. And Werner and Berlin cited the unprecedented access to information as the key to more effective teaching and learning. Werner, a veteran of popular online tutorial platform Lynda.com — which was acquired last year for $1.5 billion by LinkedIn, which was in its turn acquired by Microsoft for just over $26 billion — said this accelerated spread of information vastly expands the traditional classroom and the potential for both study and instruction.

TechDay in Los Angeles Attracts UCLA Anderson Startups

By Carolyn Gray Anderson

TechDay comes to Los Angeles on Thursday, September 22, and UCLA Anderson alumni in the startup community are gearing up. The one-day technology exhibitor and demonstration event hosts more than 50,000 people from six continents at events in major cities like New York and London.

Max Lynn (’13) manages business development and finance for AtomTickets, the app that simplifies locating movies you want to see, purchasing tickets and concessions, and coordinating with friends — skipping the line in the process. AtomTickets will be at TechDay at a booth in the entertainment and music section.

Lynn’s title is Road Warrior and, by contrast, his favorite movie is Up in the Air. He and the AtomTickets team said their top tip for UCLA Anderson students interested in launching a startup is “Make sure your idea solves a problem.”

We asked them to describe the tech startup environment at the intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley in 140 characters or fewer: “We are surrounded by smart, driven companies looking to change the game for the better — which is great company to keep.”

Visit AtomTickets at TechDay Los Angeles and follow them on social media @atomtickets

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UCLA Anderson #TuesdayTakeover: Day in the Life of a Summer Intern

Every Tuesday through September, the UCLA Anderson MBA admissions team is spotlighting a different MBA student to take over @uclamba on Instagram for a whole day to give us a peek at their summer internships. You’ll hear from students working in a variety of industries and functions, from marketing at Mattel to consulting at Bain & Co. to product strategy at Google!

Today’s Instagram #TuesdayTakeover features MBA student Suzie Lee (’17), who is interning with The Honest Company. Follow Suzie for a day in the life in sales operations at the beautiful Playa Vista offices of this mission-driven health, wellness and lifestyle enterprise.

Our first student takeover was Katie Caswell (’17), who took us behind the scenes at Adobe’s world headquarters in Silicon Valley, where she’s interning in product marketing.

Check UCLA Anderson’s MBA Insider’s Blog regularly for updates!

#UCLAAnderson #TuesdayTakeover #DayInTheLife #AnderIntern #AnderAlum #WhyAnderson #UCLAMBA

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Google’s Nan Boden to Address Executive MBA Class of 2016

UCLA Anderson is pleased to announce that Dr. Nan Boden (EMBA ’11) will deliver the 2016 commencement address to our graduating Executive MBAs on July 30, 2016.

The head of global alliances for enterprise at Google, Boden has spent her career working at the strategic intersection of technology and business. “I would never have ended up in my position — and I mean never — if I hadn’t taken the road through Anderson’s EMBA program,” she said of her MBA experience. “Doing so made all the difference in the trajectory of my career.”

Boden leads the organization responsible for partnering with companies that build their businesses on Google’s cloud, apps, maps and education products. She joined Google via acquisition in 2013 in the division that designs, develops and deploys Google’s data centers, where she handled various strategy matters as well as mergers and acquisitions.

9 Tips for Aspiring MBA Entrepreneurs

By Jeff Chang (FEMBA ’12)

1. When you find the right opportunity or the right founding team, be ready to jump.

2. Try to avoid building a founding team larger than three unless you’ve known everyone on the team for a decade or more. Starting with five founders is really pushing it.

3. More often than not, you’ll be making at least a few small pivots, and there are times you’ll need to rethink your entire startup. Never get stuck on your original idea, market, customer, revenue model or technology. Move things around and experiment endlessly. Through it all, just focus on product-market fit and sustainable growth.

4. Get to break-even and profitability. Even if you’re growing at 2x/week, proving that your product-market fit is good enough to generate revenue is rarely a bad thing. As many startup founders have noted, fundraising is easiest when you don’t need the money.