teaching change
CONTESTANTS CREATE GREEN COMPANIES
Proposed ventures named EasyDiabetes, RippleEffects and Xtracycle would use the Internet to connect patients with physicians, develop interactive multimedia games to help troubled youth, and build sports utility bikes to carry cargo, respectively.

LAST MONTH, three business plans were named winners in a nationwide competition for social and environmental ventures organized by the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. EasyDiabetes took the first prize of $10,000 for its Internet-based diabetes management system; RippleEffects — interactive media games and simulations to help young people troubled with behavior problems — and Xtracycle with a sport-utility bike with tremendous cargo capacity were runners-up, each receiving $2,000.

The plans impressed the panel of 19 judges, leaders in socially responsible organizations such as: Dan Geiger of OpNet, Shelly Herman of Shorebank Advisory Services, Trinita Logue of Illinois Facilities Fund, Stephen Moody of Private Equity Portfolio Calvert Group, and William Rosenzweig of Hambrecht Vineyards and Wineries. “The impressive quality and number of business plans submitted for the competition reflect the increasing commitment of business people pursuing a double bottom line of financial and social objectives,” said competition judge Jed Emerson, who is the president of Roberts Enterprise Development Fund and a Bloomberg Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Business School. John May, the managing partner of New Vantage Partners of Vienna, Virginia noted, “The winners met or exceeded the quality of professional plans I see at regional venture fairs and at past Investors Circle conferences.”

TOP BUSINESS SCHOOLS COMPETE

The Haas Social Venture Business Plan Competition invited teams from the country’s top business schools to submit business plans that would yield a positive financial performance as well as a positive social and/or environmental outcome. Some 66 teams from schools including UC Berkeley, Stanford University, Harvard, the Wharton School, the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and the Andersen School at UCLA participated.

As one of the nation’s most entrepreneurial business schools, Haas also has a long-standing tradition of promoting social responsibility among its students and community. To qualify, plans had to be mission-driven, self-sustaining and profitable, while showing quantifiable social or environmental return on investment. Almost half of the plans entered involved the Internet. As competition winners, EasyDiabetes, RippleEffects and Xtracycle will have their plans circulated among 150 “angel” investors from the Investor’s Circle, a group of individuals who make private equity investments based on social dividends and economic returns.

Haas MBA organizers secured more than $55,000 in cash and in-kind support for this competition. Contributors included the David & Lucile Packard Foundation, Greenmountain.com, Peninsula Community Founds, Irwin Home Equity, The Men’s Warehouse, Calvert Social Investment Fund, and South Shore Bank. Also supporting the competition were Investors’ Circle, Stonyfield Farm, Honest Tea, Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Hambrecht Vineyards and Wineries, IDG Books, Prophet Brand Strategy, and Net Impact.

VENTURES AND PLANS

The people behind EasyDiabetes — Jenna Beart and Michael Douek, both MD/MBA candidates at UCLA’s Anderson School — built an Internet-assisted support system that will, among other tasks, allow patients to hook up their blood sugar monitor to the computer and have results sent to a physician in easily readable form. “We wanted to express our excitement for having the opportunity to participate in such an important event,” said Douek. The RippleEffects team is from the University of Washington, while Xtracycle’s goal of more bikes and fewer cars comes from students at UC Davis.

Other finalists in the competition included the following:

Boost Technology, which produces devices allowing people with severe disabilities to interface with computers; Cafe Dalat, a gourmet coffee bean enterprise aimed at improving the livelihoods of subsistence farmers in Vietnam’s central highlands; Enviro-Search.org, offering a comprehensive website with information about, and solutions for, the environmental community; Mind, Body & Soul, with plans to develop a nationally branded relaxation service; and Virginia Winegrowers Association, with a program that enables tobacco farmers to switch their crops to grapes.

GREEN MBA PROGRAMS AT UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA BUSINESS SCHOOLS

In fall, 1999, a new emphasis in Corporate Environmental Management will be available to MBA students at the Haas School and four other business schools within the University of California system. The new emphasis is named the Bren Corporate Environmental Management Certificate Program in honor of Donald Bren, chairman of the Irvine Company, who donated $15 million to the University of California to stimulate the integration of environmental science and engineering, law, and business across the university’s nine campuses.

The five business schools within the UC System, at Berkeley (Haas), UCLA (Anderson), Irvine, Davis, and Riverside (Anderson), will select a total of 25 students to participate in the new Corporate Environmental Management Program. Six new courses will be available within the emphasis, five of which will be taken by all students admitted to the program.

While the Corporate Environmental Management emphasis is targeted at full-time MBA students, executives and fully-employed evening MBAs are also eligible to participate if their schedules allow. The Haas School already offers a variety of MBA courses that incorporate environmental and social issues. The school requires all MBA students to take two courses that cover social responsibility issues — one on corporate ethics and one on business and public policy — and offers electives on a variety of specialized issues, including environmental management and corporate social responsibility.