Short-term business course held with the UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business

The Sophia Future Design Platform Office at Sophia University (hereinafter called Sophia) held a four-day “Innovation Boot Camp,” a short-term business course, with UC Berkeley Executive Education (hereinafter called Berkeley Exec Ed) and UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business (hereinafter called Berkeley Haas) from December 9 to 12, 2024.

UC Berkeley is the top public university in the United States, leading the world in a wide range of fields including business, science, and technology. Berkeley Haas, founded in 1898 as the first public business school in America, is known for world-class faculty with extensive Silicon Valley experience and their cutting-edge innovation and business research.

In response to the high demand for programs on creating innovation in established global firms, as expressed in the feedback from member companies of the Sophia University Professional Studies (hereinafter called PS), a program designed for joint study in collaboration between industry and academia, Sophia organized this course with Berkeley Exec Ed and Berkeley Haas, a world leading institution in innovation and entrepreneurship education, to deliver a new type of executive education.

From Berkeley Haas, Dr. Homa Bahrami, specializing in organizational flexibility and dynamic global leadership, and Professor Saikat Chaudhuri, specializing in corporate growth and innovation, and strategic deployment of technological disruption (such as AI), delivered the hands-on lectures. From Sophia, Mr. Naohiro Nishiguchi, the Special Appointment Professor, who is a serial entrepreneur and has held executive and leadership positions in several organizations, including the World Bank Group, supported the participants in implementing what they learned in the Berkeley Haas sessions in their own organizations.

The participants were primarily executives, general managers, and emerging leaders from PS member companies and Sophia’s partner companies. The 32 participants were a diverse group of business leaders from 17 companies representing a wide range of industries, including finance, manufacturing, transportation, and construction.

During the first three days, Berkeley Haas’s Dr. Bahrami and Professor Chaudhuri led lectures based on real-world case studies and workshops. The lectures featured interactive dialogues with the participants, with the participants first sharing with the entire group the current issues and concerns within their own companies. The professors translated the individual cases into universal themes and provided their feedback in the form of solutions and suggestions.

Professor. Chaudhuri’s first session focused on the mindset and conditions of successful startup founders by watching the video of a founder, followed by case studies on the challenges of managing innovation in established global companies and how to address innovation from both inside and outside the company. He passionately called upon the participants to realize the strengths that Japan already has in terms of regulations and culture for innovation.

He also outlined the challenges and seven pitfalls that companies face in the strategic deployment of AI, provided clear metrics for measuring readiness, and led a group discussion on where the company is now and what actions should be taken next. In this session, he explained that when considering the adoption of a new technology, it is not just the technology itself that is the challenge but also the organization and strategy that matter, and that successful leaders are skilled at building organizations and thinking strategically to achieve their goals.

In Dr. Bahrami’s session, based on the challenges of innovation in the VUCA era, she introduced five Adaptive DNA, key characteristics of successful innovators, which she identified based on her field survey of approximately 12,000 innovation leaders. The results of the assessment test taken by the participants were distributed to each individual, shared with the group, and compared with the results of successful innovators of the past to determine what adaptive DNA could be used and practiced in order to improve their teams’ innovation.

She also provided practical steps and checklists, as well as case studies on driving innovation and influencing stakeholders and supervisors. The participants reflected on their best and worst experiences in driving innovation and shared practical lessons learned with the entire group. In this session, she explained that the three “U’s” of innovation are Urgent Need, Unique Product / Service and Unified Team. She emphasized that the most important one is the third one, Team Power, and she hoped that the participants would take what they learned from the course back to their teams and apply it to their own work.

On the last day of the session, led by Mr. Nishiguchi, each company was divided into groups to discuss and analyze the insights from the Berkeley Haas sessions in order to implement them in their own companies, and the international standard for innovation management systems (ISO 56001) was introduced as a guide for the future. To wrap up the course, each company gave a presentation on the topic of their own outstanding press release in the year 2035.

At the end of the program, a graduation ceremony was held and the participants who completed the course received a certificate of completion jointly signed by Sophia and Berkeley Exec Ed.

In this course, group members were rotated from session to session throughout the program, creating an environment in which discussions could be held with different members each time. This was in line with Dr. Bahrami’s repeated message in her lectures: “To innovate, don’t stay in the familiar environment, the so-called comfort zone. This is also consistent with the concept of cross-pollination in Silicon Valley, where participants are encouraged to learn from people in different industries with different values than their own.

After each day’s program, networking opportunities were arranged to give participants the chance to interact with people from a variety of industries and professions and almost all participants attended. It was very impressive that the participants were highly engaged, both during the session and during the networking events.

The participant experience, based on faculty and staff observation, and based on the participant satisfaction evaluations, was incredible, including the learning and tools, overall participant experience and networking opportunity.

Both Sophia and Berkeley are proud of the Innovation Boot Camp and the impact it delivered to the participants, their companies and the innovation ecosystem in Japan.

Results of the Participant Satisfaction Questionnaire (Response rate 100%):

The results from the participant satisfaction survey were extraordinarily positive, with the Innovation Boot Camp qualifying for “Club 6” status, a designation reserved for Berkeley programs that score 6 or greater in all categories. 

Evaluation Item Score %
1. Average Confidence in application of material score 6.00 / 7 86%
2. ROI score 6.40 / 7 91%
3. Average Faculty teaching effectiveness score 6.55 / 7 94%
4. Average Program experience score 6.50 / 7 93%
5. Average Customer service satisfaction score 6.63 / 7 95%

Comments from participants (excerpts):

“The combination of the theme of innovation in large companies, the content of the lectures, and the communication with people from other industries was very good.”

“I was able to learn to think in terms of my company’s position by considering the strategies of established companies as well as the position of successful Silicon Valley companies. Recognizing the strengths of my company gave me confidence.”

“The new perspective was to approach stakeholders using the perspective of Adaptive-DNA. I feel that I received many practical suggestions, such as communicating in a timely manner with a sense of involvement, giving options based on facts, and having one-on-one conversations with resistors.”

“The interactive lectures were dynamic. The flow of lectures, discussions, presentations, and debates was helpful in deepening our examination as the participants were aware of the issues involved. The contents were very rich and fit well.”

“The session we got together with our colleagues was very helpful for putting the knowledge we had gained in the first three days into practice in our own company. The international standard for innovation management systems (ISO 56001) was also helpful, as it systematized what is necessary to drive innovation.”

Innovation Boot Camp 2025:

Innovation Boot Camp 2025 is scheduled to be held from Monday, November 17th to Thursday, November 20th in collaboration with UC Berkeley Exec Ed and Berkeley Haas. Specific details will be announced on the Sophia Future Design Platform Office official website.

<Contact>

Office of Sophia Future Design Platform (Office of Professional Studies), Bureau of Academic Affairs
Email: prostudies-co@sophia.ac.jp

Sophia University

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