The Blum Center for Developing Economies, housed at the Institute, was initiated in April 2006 through a $15 million gift from Haas alumnus Richard C. Blum that includes a $5 million challenge grant.  Serving as the nexus on the Berkeley campus for cultivating targeted new education programs and convening resources to combat global poverty, the Blum Center focuses on implementing solutions extrapolated from cutting-edge research while engaging students in transformative service programs. With a focus on developing innovative projects in specific countries, Berkeley students will explore the tremendous potential and challenges created by international aid.  George Scharffenberger is the center’s executive director
.
The Blum Center has selected its first project initiatives — the East Africa Healthcare Initiative and the Initiative on Safe Water and Sanitation. The former will be initially focus on Uganda; the latter project includes support for a portfolio of activities in six countries: India, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico. Both projects address poor health status, which is both a leading cause and a debilitating impact of global poverty.   Consistent with the Blum Center's objectives, each project employs UC Berkeley-developed technologies and expertise, and both provide hands-on service-learning opportunities for students. The projects also leverage existing partnerships in host countries to increase the likelihood of success, broaden impact and promote sustainability.

The Center for Research on Chinese and American Strategic Cooperation (CRC) is an active new center in the Institute.  The CRC fosters economic and political collaboration between China and the US, and helps improve bilateral decision-making through innovation, research, and educational programs.

Some recent CRC Highlights:
· University of California-Berkeley officials and a Chinese delegation announced an agreement in April 2005 to start a five-year Intellectual Property Rights program managed by the CRC.  In 2006, over 20 Chinese judges and government officials attended specially designed classes at Berkeley on American intellectual property concepts and laws and observe practices at Bay Area law firms and Silicon Valley corporations.
· CRC co-sponsored the 2006 China Venture Capital Forum in Shenzen, China, an annual gathering of global private equity and venture capital investors with an interest in China,
· Institute Fellowship funds were awarded to six students demonstrating strong backgrounds in Management of Technology in China, Innovation, and IPR research. The program includes a one-week field trip to China and development of case studies for the China IPR training program.
· Institute Director David Teece and Executive Director Jihong Sanderson, played central roles in China's 2007 national IPR week, April 20 to April 26, 2007 (see article below).
· CRC generated $183,475 in gifts and grants to support its operations in the first year. 

Director of the Institute Dr. David Teece of the Haas School of Business, accompanied by Jihong Sanderson, Executive Director of the Institute’s China Research Center, recently played central roles in China's 2007 national IPR week, April 20 to April 26, 2007. They were key participants in the three major events that made up the 2007 nation-wide promotion of IPR, including a high level forum for China's political and economic leaders, a nationwide TV special, and an academic symposium. The IPR week is intended to educate the Chinese public and leaders on the importance and accomplishments of IPR protection in China.

The highlight of the IPR week was the “National High Level Forum” on IPR protection and Chinese firms’ competitiveness on April 24, attended by 800 of China's top political and business leaders. At the Forum, Teece presented on “New Milestones for Global Competitiveness”. He pointed out that knowledge, competence, and related intangibles have emerged as the key drivers of competitive advantage in both developed and developing nations, and control of physical capital is fading in its significance compared to ownership and control of intangibles, in terms of its importance to both the profitability of firms and the prosperity of nations. 

On April 21, Teece and Sanderson's discussion of the importance of innovation and intellectual property protection was shown on China Central Television (CCTV), the official state television network with1.3 billion Chinese viewers, on the popular “Dialogue Program”. There, Teece was invited to provide suggestions for Chinese firms on using innovation as a key to success, while Sanderson argued that a “free lunch” (copying or imitating other people’s innovations) has very high opportunity cost for the future development of China.

In 2005-2006, the Institute sponsored nine Visiting Scholars from Italy, Austria, Japan, Brazil, Korea, and the US.    The Institute also distributed $355,000 in direct student aid, including 112 paid research fellowships supporting many campus departments including the Haas School of Business, School of Information, EECS, PEIS, BioEngineering, Public Health, Public Policy, Energy and Resources, City and Regional Planning, Economics, Agricultural and Resource Economics, Jurisprudence and Social Policy, and Mechanical Engineering.

In October 2006, the academic journal Research Policy published a special issue, Volume 35, Issue 8, commemorating the 20th Anniversary of David Teece's article, Profiting From Technology Innovation, (Research Policy, Volume 15, Issue 6, December 1986).  This is the single most cited paper ever published by Research Policy, with 740 cites as of May 2007.
From the special issue Introduction: “the importance of the paper extends beyond technology and innovation management to broader topics of business strategy, science and technology policy, and the theory of the firm…Teece left forever the relatively narrow confines of economic analyses of innovation, and forged a much broader, multidisciplinary approach to the study of innovation…he combines economics with organizations, technologies, intellectual property, and markets (or the lack thereof) for complementary assets.”

A conference was held at the Haas School of Business on September 21, 2006, in which the special issue papers were presented, as well as special guest lectures by Dean Tom Campbell on “Innovation and the Law:  The contributions of David Teece” and by David Teece on “Reflections on Profiting from Innovation.”   Papers and panel topics included Economics and Innovation, Innovation and IP Protection, and extensions to Profiting from Innovation.

From the special issue Introduction: “the importance of the paper extends beyond technology and innovation management to broader topics of business strategy, science and technology policy, and the theory of the firm…Teece left forever the relatively narrow confines of economic analyses of innovation, and forged a much broader, multidisciplinary approach to the study of innovation…he combines economics with organizations, technologies, intellectual property, and markets (or the lack thereof) for complementary assets.”

A conference was held at the Haas School of Business on September 21, 2006, in which the special issue papers were presented, as well as special guest lectures by Dean Tom Campbell on “Innovation and the Law:  The contributions of David Teece” and by David Teece on “Reflections on Profiting from Innovation.”   Papers and panel topics included Economics and Innovation, Innovation and IP Protection, and extensions to Profiting from Innovation.

Director of the Institute and Haas School Professor David Teece was recognized as the tenth most cited scholar worldwide in economics, business, and finance in a survey of highly cited research that was published in the November/December 2005 issue of Science Watch, a publication that tracks trends in basic research.
Using figures from Essential Science Indicators, Thomson Scientific's database of nearly 200 Thomson Scientific-indexed journals of business and economics, Science Watch built a list of the most cited institutions, authors, and journals from 1995 to 2005. Teece, the Mitsubishi Bank Professor of International Business and Finance, and director of the Institute of Management, Innovation, and Organization, was tenth on the list of most-cited authors with 897 citations in the ten-year period of the study. UC Berkeley ranked #7 in total citations.

The most cited paper in the study was coauthored by Teece with then-Haas doctoral students Gary Pisano and Amy Shuen. The paper, "Dynamic Capabilities and Strategic Management" (Strategic Management Journal, 18 [7] 1997), which has been cited over 600 times, explored a new framework for analyzing the sources and methods of wealth creation and capture by firms, which they called the "dynamic capabilities framework." Using this framework they concluded that strategizing against competitors is less effective than identifying and taking advantage of new opportunities.
Online access to the current issue of Science Watch is available only to subscribers at http://www.sciencewatch.com/.

[back to top]