Berkeley, a funny story…
Have you ever been so tired when you were in Lausanne because of the hills? It’s nothing compare to Berkeley… Don’t worry, it was hard but worth it! Berkeley is a huge University and you get easily lost if you are alone. Fortunately, we had the opportunity to be guided by a student from Berkeley. Did you know about the statue of Pappy? Yeah, me neither. He was the football coach of US Berkeley, named the bears. Our excellent guide told us a funny story about him and her. Let me explain to you: when she had her interview for this job, they asked her what was her favorite statue of the campus and she answered “Pappy”, and when they asked her why, she had no idea who was Pappy. Yeah, funny story… There are a lot of rules on Berkeley’s campus. For example, you can’t step on their Berkeley sign that’s on the sidewalk. You have to go around it. But the most surprising thing is that she as a guide couldn’t have accepted tips. Weird, right? Because we all know that’s the U.S policy. Last thing, if you ever complained about the tuition of University in Switzerland, keep in mind that’s 70x less than Berkeley. 😉
Apple’s massive HQ: Apple Park
Summary and cool stories about our time at Apple in Cupertino.
Thinking outside the Box
No foul play on words. That’s exactly what we felt when we visited Box, a cloud content management company based in Redwood City, CA. This company was founded in 2005 by Aaron Levie and Dylan Smith. Levie wasn’t even of legal age at the time. They now have more than 1,800 employees. Thanks to Vincenzo’s contacts, we had the opportunity to spend an hour and a half with Claudio Bartolini, a software architect at Box. He gave us some time to talk about his background, his experience, and the added value that a company like Box brings. We had the chance to know more about the company and how they could deal with a security breach for example. As everyone knows, there is no such thing as zero risks. However, they do everything they can in order to be as secure as possible. In a nutshell, they don’t have big CEO offices, with a top-down hierarchy and fixed schedules. You come to work when you want as long as the job’s done. Coffee and frozen yogurts are free and you can play basketball or PlayStation in the recreation area. The company does everything to make you feel like you’re at home, in order to make you work in an effective way. Thank Claudio, our time at Box was amazing and we really could embody the spirit of Silicon Valley and its new management style.
Swisscom in Palo Alto
“Swisscom in Silicon Valley? Really? Sensational! Our Swiss leader in telecommunication has an office in the world’s capital of innovation.” -Me (5th of february 2018 at 10:02) That day, we were walking down the streets in Palo Alto, waiting for the time to discover the Swisscom office. We were so happy to be at those typical American neighborhoods that we only see in movies or series like Desperate Housewives. After walking past the garage of IBM and having imagined a dozen times Clint Eastwook getting out of a house with a rifle (with a Gran Torino parked next to his house) we suddenly sow a Swiss flag on a small house. No, that did not immediately shock us and yes we had arrived at our destination. When we are talking about “Silicon Valley”, a lot of people are immediately thinking about big and modern offices like Google, Facebook or Apple. They’re half right : Innovation is not always coming from that big and modern environment that everyone has in mind. The proof below! After walking next to the mailbox, walking along a small path with colored bicycles along a wall of the house (there was even a pink one), we saw a “Swisscom” sign on the ground. We then arrived in a nice garden. There were garden tables, garden chairs, cold drinks, beach umbrellas, barbeque, plants and a TV (please find the error). A coke in hand, we met the team who then made a presentation. We learned a lot of elements that were helpful in analyzing our study; New canvas, models and illustrated theories. We then had the opportunity to work in teams to apply those models to our own cases with the help of the team. We were happy with the open-mindedness, the applied theories and advices we received from Swisscom. A surprising but rewarding experience.
Swissnex: a part of Switzerland in the Silicon Valley
If you are walking along the piers in San Francisco, as a swiss citizen, you will probably see a familiar clock, like the ones in railway station in Switzerland, at the beginning of the pier number seventeen. A small part of Switzerland is standing here, between the City and the ocean. Next to the Consulate General of Switzerland, in the same building, you can find Swissnex. If you have never heard about this swiss organization before, it is probably because you cannot find any Swissnex office in Switzerland! (In fact, this is not true: As a governmental organization, Swissnex San Francisco is on the swiss territory as well as embassies are). So, what is Swissnex? What do they do? And is it relevant to be so far away from Switzerland? The mission of the organization is: “[…] to connect Switzerland and San Francisco in education, research, innovation and the arts.” (https://www.swissnexsanfrancisco.org/). Swissnex can be defined as a network that has for goal to create a connection between Switzerland and the Silicon Valley. This is why the office is here, in San Francisco. But the organization is active all around the world. The first Swissnex office opened in Boston in 2000. The objective was to be closer to innovations in Harvard university and MIT. Nowadays, you can also find Swissnex offices in India, in Brazil and in China. To sum up, Swissnex is a network that helps startups, artists and companies to connect with local people. The organization provides events, such as: workshops, conferences and exhibitions. Companies can also rent a space to work with all the necessary tools. At this point, the exact mission of Swissnex does not seems to be really clear but, at the same time, it is pretty easy to understand the importance of having this kind of connection all around the world. The main difficulty is to calculate the real benefits created by the network. How can we measure the efficiency of the organization? By counting the numbers of companies helped? Or the number of startups and artists that have succeed? But what is the part of Swissnex in the success? How can we financially measure a network and say if it is relevant or not to have it? No indicator can precisely calculate this efficiency. However, as we discover it with our International Innovation Management class, in term of networking, it still seems important to have a local contact. Cultures are so different from a country to another and even more from a continent to another. Swissnex provides a connection that even internet will never be able to replace.
Visit from Craig Newmark
InthisTuesday 17th of February we had the luck to receive Craig Newmark in the Swissnex. He is the founder of Craiglist, the main local classified website in the USA. The website is one of the most seen in the world. It receives more than 50 billion views per month. That’s represent more than 60 million of users and 80 million of classifieds adds each month in the USA and even more around the world. He came to tell us the story of Craigslist and to talk about his current engagement. Craig described himself as a nerd. He worked at IBM for 17 years as a web developer and move to Silicon Valley in 1993. story of Craigslist began in 1995. As a hobby he decided to launch a newsletter to inform people about the different event in the bay area. To collect enough e-mail addresses, he collected the visit card of the everybody he met. At the beginning, Craig was alone to share events, but quickly a lot of people began to use the platform. And the user started to call the newsletter “The Craig’s list”. Craig was surprised to see that the purpose of the list has involve. Companies use it to look for new employees, especially developers. Craig decided to add a rubric for Jobs research. By the time others rubrics has been added. In 1997, Craig realized that the newsletter was not adapted any more. He created the website Craigslist.com. In the beginning of 1998 thelist was still a non-profit hobby for Craig. He hired two people to help him to develop the website. In 1999 the Craigslist become a for-profit company. In 2000 the company had 9 employees working in Craig’s flat in San Francisco. During the same year Craig realize that he was not a good CEO to run a business, so he hired Jim Buckmaster as CEO (still current CEO). Later, Craigslist started to ask money two kind of ads. 25$ to post a jobs, 10$ for apartments. These prices are much lower than in any other way to advertise a job or an apartment. The business model surprised a lot of observatory, especially some Wall Street analysts like UBS. Maximizing the profit is not at all the goal the company. They are just using their revenues to cover the operating costs. They focus almost exclusively on maintaining and improving the website and on helping people to find their car, a flat or even a job. Craigslist is the perfect example of his founder philosophy. Using technology for the public good. Today Craig is no-more involved in Craigslist.com. In 2011 he founded Craigconnects, his personal Web-based initiative to stand up for organizations “getting stuff done” in areas Craig is passionate about. These include veterans and military families, open government, public diplomacy, back-to-basics journalism and fact-checking, consumer protection, and technology for the public good. During this visit of Craig, we met a really interesting person. An innovator in the non-profit sector. He reminds us that making profit should not be the only goal of a company and that having a real impact on people life is as important as making profit. ¨ Bryan Pilet Student in management and business administration HEIG-VD
Two weeks in two minutes
You might be interested into the adventures we had in San Francisco. Well, there is so much to read on this blog, this might be too much for you. So if you only have two minutes available – have a look at our video «Two weeks in two minutes». This will give you the idea, what really was going on over there… It is a condensation of about 60 gb photo and video data, showing all the main points of our trip! Have fun, and before pressing the play button: get ready!
The “Swiss Idea” challenge
As the concluding post of this blog (at least for this academic year), I would like to tell the story about how my students have dealt with the challenge I gave them. The IIM San Francisco study trip was not only an opportunity to visit companies and universities in the Bay Area, but also an opportunity to do “something different” in a very different place. I asked my students to form 3 groups of 4 people and figure out what could be a market need in San Francisco (and more generally in the Bay Area/California/United States) which could be fulfilled with a “Swiss-*” product. The “*” could have been anything related to Swissness, such as technology, branding, know-how, tradition, etc. I gave them full freedom, except the fact that they need to “get out of the building” and talk to people in order to understand the real needs. They could choose the sector before hand, but they had to clean their mind from assumptions and be open to listen to what people needed. I also explained them that “need” means not only problems (pains), but also desires and aspirations (gains). They need to understand how people deal with those needs today and see if there is an opportunity to provide them additional value in exchange of a price for which a profit could be generated. Very simple, but at the same time, very challenging. All that started on Monday 16th (the President’s Day) in the premises of WeWork Golden Gate co-working space in Taylor Street. After a briefing where I explained the terms of the challenge and formed the groups, the teams entered into some brainstorming sessions, before going outside and interviewing people. I told them to try being very open-minded and never jump to the solutions. First, they need to understand the needs and assess both the level of urgency of that need and how many people had that feeling. I also explained that for disruptive innovation, the market size can be small at the beginning, but with a high probability to grow exponentially in the future. As explained by Peter Thiel, founder and CEO of PayPal (and with Swiss origins) in his book Zero to One, being able of “monopolizing” a small but exponentially growing market is key to big success, as it happened for PayPal or for YouTube. The three groups selected each 1-3 sectors to investigate and after 1 hour they were ready to start their first interviews. After few hours they came back to WeWork and debriefed the interviews. I noticed that they started with some assumptions and the interview showed that some of them were wrong, while they also discovered other opportunities that they had not considered before. Back and forth from the street to the meeting room, a the end of the day, for almost all of them it was pretty clear on what to focus and put their creative effort to come up with a “Swiss” solution to a US need. The brainstorming and interviews continued throughout the whole week and the group took the opportunity to discuss about their ideas with the people they met during the visits we organized, such as Y-Combinator, Singularity University CA Technologies, etc. On Tuesday 19th, the 3 teams spent a whole day at Swissnex San Francisco premises, finalizing their market research for the presentations they had to present the morning after in front of a panel of experts of innovation and entrepreneurship. During this day, they also had the chance to talk of Francesco Simoneschi, an Italian entrepreneur and now managing partner at VC fund Mission & Market in San Francisco. Francesco talked about his history as an entrepreneur from Europe to Silicon Valley and how he turned into an investor. He also explained what investors expects from startup founders and how different are the European and US investors landscapes. On Friday 20th, my students were ready to pitch! The panel of expert was made of 3 interns from Swissnex San Francisco, Peter Matthews head of research at CA Technologies and Greg Jorgensen a former VP of marketing at Verisign and now brand management consulting in Silicon Valley. I explained to the panel that there would not be any winning team. They were supposed to provide feedback on the idea and and the way they have performed their market research and collected primary and secondary data. The first team, IdeaSpace, composed of Alizée, Nelsia, Auriana and Mathias O. focused on a problem of startups, namely that of showcasing their products in order to get feedback from potential customers. I think that a good short description of their ideas could be a sort of “Physical KickStarter”, that is physical place, a showroom, where startups can demonstrate their latest products, get feedback and even sell the products to early adopters. I haven’t seen anything like this. The “Swissness” of the idea comes from the Swiss excellence in hospitality and specifically in the organization of great events such as the Geneva Motor Show, World Economic Forum in Davos, or the Montreux Jazz Festival. I was also impressed to see how well the value proposition was illustrated through the use of the Lean Startup validated learning loop. The team learned a fundamental aspect of product development: it is very rare that the first attempt in designing a product will be the right one. Perfection is obtained through iteration over a loop that includes customers in the first place. Only customers can tell when a product is good enough for their needs. And they usually tell you by buying your product! The second team, S-paint, composed of Camille, Veronica, Yohan and Florian, were more focused on technology. They chose a very interesting and somehow serious problem: drought in California. They figured out that absence of rain does not mean that there is no humidity. Humidity can be transformed into water by means of nano-technologies developed in Swiss research institution such as EPFL and ETHZ. These institutions are working on special painting material that can condensate vaporized water when spread over
Making a video for StudyBox
After having spent a full day in a coworking space called “we work”, Sabine and Camille had a wonderful idea. What about making a short video to present StudyBox which is a startup created by two HEIG-VD student and which allows students to share their lectures notes. As I am being part of the study trip and one of the cofounder, I loved the idea, so we went for it! Christian who is a very good photographer and an incredible movie maker, accepted to make the girls’ idea possible. Chris is the man behind the camera. The other students agreed as well to be part of the movie and the result is awesome 😉 Have a look at the movie and discover how amazing things can be made within an interdisciplinary team: When business students meets engineer… Enjoy it!