Sara Beckman

Sara Beckman is an award-winning Haas faculty member who creates and delivers courses on design, innovation and product management. She has published case studies on design for sustainability, design road mapping, and leveraging design approaches in sales processes. In over thirty years at the Haas School she initiated new courses on design, entrepreneurship in biotechnology, new product development, and problem framing/solving, won four awards from MBA students for excellence in teaching, and received the Berkeley campus Distinguished Teaching Award.

Professor Beckman’s current research focuses on the pedagogy of teaching design and on the role of diversity on design and innovation teams for which she developed a Teaming with Diversity curriculum (teamingxdesign.com) that is being used in classes in engineering, biological sciences, humanities and business at UC Berkeley and elsewhere.

Professor Beckman directs Product Management Programs for the UC Berkeley Center for Executive Education, serving over 300 product managers from around the world each year. She has trained over 5,000 Product Management executives through this program and through a custom Product Management program she designed and leads at Google. She also serves as Faculty Director for the Leading Innovative Change executive program and a new offering on Customer Obsessed Design.

Professor Beckman has always served as a boundary spanner between the business and engineering schools. She developed, institutionalized and directed the school’s Management of Technology Program and served as the Chief Learning Officer of the Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation within Berkeley's College of Engineering. In this role, she facilitated the creation of a multi-disciplinary Certificate in Design Innovation for business and engineering students. She now serves on the Jacobs Institute of Design Innovation's Faculty Council and co-teaches a class on Collaborative Innovation with colleagues from the Theater/Dance Performance Studies and Art Practice departments.

Before joining Berkeley-Haas, Professor Beckman worked in the Operations Management Services group at Booz, Allen & Hamilton and ran the Change Management Team at Hewlett-Packard. Dr. Beckman received her BS, MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management.

Sara also co-creates impactful custom programs for our corporate, government, and university partners.

Education

• PhD, Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Stanford University
  
• MS, Statistics, Stanford University
  
• MS, Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, Stanford University
  
• BS with Distinction, Industrial Engineering, Stanford University
  

Positions Held

• At Haas since 1988
  
• 2009 – present, Faculty Director, Management of Technology Program
  
• 1997 – present, Senior Lecturer with Security of Employment, Haas School of Business
  
• 1999, Visiting Lecturer, Leaders for Manufacturing Program, MIT
  
• 1991 – 1997, Director and Lecturer, Management of Technology Program
  
• 1994, Visiting Assistant Professor, Operations Management, MIT
  
• 1991 – 1993, Organizational Learning Champion, HPLabs, Hewlett Packard
  
• 1989 – 1991, Director, Product Generation Change Management Team, Hewlett Packard
  
• 1989, Manager, Surface Mount Technology Program, Hewlett Packard
  
• 1988 – 1991, Assistant Professor, Haas School of Business
  
• 1986 – 1989, Program Manager, Corporate Manufacturing, Hewlett Packard
  
• 1985 – 1986, Strategic Planner, Data Systems Division, Hewlett Packard
  
• 1980 – 1983, Consultant, Operations Management Consulting Practice, Booz, Allen and Hamilton
  

External Service and Assignments

• Board participation: Building Materials Holding Corporation, Corporate Design Foundation,
• Former memberships and board participation: Manufacturing Studies Board, National Research Council, Columbia University, Operations Management Advisory Board, Leaders for Manufacturing, MIT, Operating Committee Member

Current Research and Interests

• Innovation and design management
• New product development
• Operations strategy
• Environmental supply chain management

Selected Papers and Publications

• “Accenture Award Winning “Innovation as a Learning Process: Embedding Design Thinking,” with Michael Barry. California Management Review 50, no. 1 (Fall 2007).
• “Designing Sustainable Solutions: Frameworks and Tools for Considering Sustainability Issues in New Product Development,” with Nathan Shedroff. The Handbook of Technology Management, 3 Volume Set, Hossein Bidgoli, Editor-in-Chief. John Wiley & Sons, Inc: Hoboken, N.J, 2009 (forthcoming).
• “Infrastructure Meets Business: Building New Bridges, Mending Old Ones,” with Nuno Gil. California Management Review 51, No. 2 (Winter 2009).
• “Framing innovation: negotiating shared frames during early design phases,” with Jonothan Hey and Caneel Joyce. Journal of Design Research, Undersciences 6 nos. 1-2 (2007): 79-99. Special Issue on Fostering Creativity and Innovation during Early Informal Design Phases: Sociotechnical and psychology studies.
• “Self-Reflection: Lessons Learned in a New Product Development Class,” with Jonothan Hey, Alan Van Pelt and Alice Agogino.Journal of Mechanical Design 129, no. 7 (July 2007): 668-676.
• “Workplace Design: A New Managerial Imperative,” with Jeffrey Chan and Peter Lawrence. California Management Review 49, no. 2 (Winter 2007).

Teaching

• Introduction to Operations Management, BA 204
• Managing the New Product Development Process: Design Theory and Methods, MBA 290N and ME290P
• Design and Systems Thinking for MBAs, MBA 290T

Honors and Awards

• Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Full-Time MBA Program, 2003, 1992, 1990
• Phi Beta Kappa, 1977
• Tau Beta Pi, 1977
• Berkeley Campus Distinguished Teaching Award, 2001
• Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Evening & Weekend MBA Program, 1990