In July 1997, HBS opened a Silicon Valley outpost located at 3000 Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park. The center has two permanent employees, Chris Darwall (MBA ’75) -- the Executive Director -- and Nicole Tempest (MBA ’92) -- the Associate Director in charge of casewriting. The charter of the center is to facilitate faculty research and casewriting in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay area in general, to enrich Harvard's MBA and Executive Education programs, and to further the state of knowledge about issues and industries that are focused here.

The California Research Center is the first of several outposts planned by HBS. Each outpost will be located in an area of the world where there are unusual and significant business issues worthy of research. In addition, the school looks for places where there is a core of alumni that can help the center get established quickly. (The HBS alumni organization in northern California is the largest HBS alumni club in the world.) In September 1998, the school opened a second research center—in Hong Kong -- to help promote research and casewriting in Asia.

The research center's Steering Committee is chaired by Arthur Rock, considered the "father of venture capital." The committee includes HBS alumni, HBS professors, and several representatives from Stanford's Graduate School of Business and School of Engineering.

After being in operation for two years, the center has produced more than 40 cases, more than two-thirds of which have already been taught in the MBA or Executive Education programs. Cases have focused on topics such as the issues faced by very early stage companies, venture capital firms focusing on early stage companies, angel financing, sales force issues in entrepreneurial companies, acquisition- related manufacturing integration processes, the commercialization of technology, and the people-related issues in startups. Several research projects are underway as well; these projects include research into the “strategic intranets” of several Silicon Valley companies; how Silicon Valley firms handle global account management relative to companies in the Eastern U.S. and Europe; and the way in which certain startups build systems which give them the capacity to scale rapidly.

In addition to supporting casewriting and research activities, the center supports student activities in a variety of ways. For example, Susan Breyer (MBA ’92) assists the HBS High Tech and New Media Club, as well as HBS Career Services, in setting up the annual “WesTrek”. Each January, hundreds of students travel to the San Francisco Bay area for a week, visiting over 100 companies; hearing presentations by business executives and thought leaders in Silicon Valley; and interviewing with companies interested in hiring MBAs but unable to travel to Boston to recruit. The center also helps with activities such as student research projects, helping match companies interested in having students do projects with HBS teams interested in doing research in California.

Cases from the California Research Center
 

To order any of these cases, please contact HBS Publishing