(Cal students working on a startup at the school’s SkyDeck accelerator.)
UC Berkeley’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (CET) recently brought together a bunch of startups, including VIRES, for a pitch contest before a panel of judges comprised of venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, and university faculty. Also in the mix were Chinese teams from the Tsinghua-Berkeley Global Technology Entrepreneurship Program (GTE). Tsinghua alums include a range of top Chinese government officials and industry captains.
Ken Singer, managing director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (CET), offers his perspective: “Unique among university programs, CET is part of the engineering school and not the business school. Business schools tend to be oriented towards the study of ‘making money.’ The discipline of engineering is oriented towards ‘building’ or ‘creating’ something tangible. This informs the way CET educates its students–practical, experiential, applied. The result: a proven pedagogy called ‘The Berkeley Method’ that has attracted students from around the world and has been successfully syndicated to China.”
Ken adds: “Signature elements of the CET program: (1) All instructors are practitioners (not just academics). (2) Classes are open to students of ALL academic backgrounds. CET believes entrepreneurship is a multi-disciplinary sport. (3) We are competition-driven: All advanced courses require students to form teams to compete for highly coveted rewards–trips to Barcelona, office space, investment money.”
