Solyndra Teaching Case (Download Here)

University of California at Berkeley affiliates Ikhlaq Sidhu, Paul Nerger & Shomit Ghose have released a teaching case based on the topic of Solyndra, which filed for bankruptcy fall 2011 after receiving $1B in professional investment and another $500M in politicized government loan guarantees.

Though Solyndra has become a politically charged discussion, the case of Solyndra is important and interesting for the Innovation Economy because it uniquely captures the confluence of technology, business models, policy, and a changing landscape in global competition, and thus is of value to students of business and technology in the classroom, executives in the board room, and policy makers in the halls of government.

Quantitative Technology Methods

Over the next few years, newly-established quantitative technology-based businesses will reinvent and expand the services sector while refining existing (and enabling new) business models. In addition to the overview of quantitative technology methods, this brief describes three sample methods that were investigated at UC Berkeley in collaboration with McKinsey & Company: recommendation engines, automated service Web site improvement, sentiment analysis and opinion mining.

Intellectual Property Strategies for New Berkeley Ventures: A Framework

Report Summary
Full Report
Slide Presentation

This report identifies how successful Berkeley technology entrepreneurs have approached IP decisions and strategies. Intended primarily as a resource for graduate students and faculty within UC Berkeley, entrepreneurs in the Silicon Valley and throughout the world may also find the report's universal themes helpful in building startups.

Technology, Entreprenuership and Education: A Report from the Global Venture Lab Inaugural Summit (full report)

The study encompasses the insights of approximately 20 technology entrepreneurship educators expressed during the inaugural symposium of the Global Venture Lab, held during Global Entrepreneurship Week, November 2010. The roundtable included leading technology educators from   Stanford University, the University of Michigan; University of Texas, Austin; King Saud University; India Institute of Technology (IIT), Kharagpur; Tsinghua University; Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) ;and the University of Cambridge among others.

This reports offers insight on how ecosystem influences educational strategies; how university systems designed to promote innovation, can often stifle it; and why entrepreneurship education is no longer about how many new ventures a university spins out. 

The Electric Vehicle Battery Landscape: Opportunities and Challenges

At the 2009 California Institute of Technology commencement, Nobel Prize winner and current U.S. Secretary of Energy, Stephen Chu, told the graduating class they must prepare for "the inevitable transition to electricity as the energy for our personal transportation."

The battery represents arguably the most important and most technically challenging component of the electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem. Within the battery market are intriguing issues such as battery type and chemical compilation; performance and efficiency; cost; market demand and environmental concerns. This brief provides an overview of the current state of battery technology and the EV battery industry, focusing on lithium-ion (Li-ion) technologies.

Read other CET Technical Briefs on this subject...

The Technical and Business Challenges of Building an Electric Vehicle Sport Utility Vehicle

Strategies for Electric Vehicle Deployment in
the San Francisco Bay Area

Optimal Charging of Electric Vehicles

Impact of Widespread Electric Vehicle Adoption on
the Electrical Utility Business

Electric Vehicles in the United States: A New Model with Forecasts to 2030

Electrical Vehicle Charging Infrastructure Rollout Strategy

Electric Power Supply and Distribution for Electric Vehicle Operations

Economic Impact of Electric Vehicle Adoption in the United States