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\u201cThis course aligned not just with my past interests, but my future interests in a way that I haven\u2019t seen with any other course do yet.\u201d \u2013 Ryan Delaney, EWMBA 28<\/p>\n\u201cThis course aligned not just with my past interests, but my future interests in a way that I haven\u2019t seen with any other course do yet.\u201d \u2013 Ryan Delaney, EWMBA 28<\/p>\n
Before he arrived at UC Berkeley Haas<\/a>, Ryan Delaney<\/a>, EWMBA 28, spent a decade building a startup clean fuel manufacturing facility in Haiti, navigating a deepening political crisis. Before that, he worked in mineral exploration in the Atacama Desert<\/a> on South America\u2019s Pacific coast\u2014the world\u2019s driest place. So when he spotted a new MBA course named Frontier Ventures: Space, Air, Marine, and Arctic, there was no question whether he\u2019d sign up.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea of working at the frontier isn\u2019t novel to me; It\u2019s my comfort zone,\u201d said Delaney, co-founder and former COO of Carbon Roots International. \u201cThis course aligned not just with my past interests, but my future interests in a way that I haven\u2019t seen with any other course yet.\u201d<\/p>\n For Delaney and 24 fellow UC Berkeley Haas Evening & Weekend MBA<\/a> students, the five-day elective class this month was an exploration of both the new and the unknown. Combining team project work, site visits, and lectures and discussions, the class brought in top leaders including a former NASA CTO, C-level airline execs, veteran venture investors, government ministers, and experts in geography and global resilience.\u00a0<\/p>\n The timing could hardly be better. Students wrapped the course just as SpaceX made history<\/a> with the largest IPO ever, an event that further shifts how investors, entrepreneurs, and business schools think about the commercial space economy: no longer a moonshot, but a market.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re helping students understand the complexity of environments that are driven by very tough physics and very tough geopolitics,\u201d said Olaf Groth<\/a> of the Haas Professional Faculty in the Business & Public Policy Group, who teaches the class with Professor Adair Morse<\/a>. \u201cWe\u2019re asking, \u2018What\u2019s going to happen with mining in space or in the Arctic? As the Arctic ice melts much more speedily than we thought we\u2019ve sadly reached a tipping point. Now we have to make sense of this.\u201d<\/p>\n Exploring extreme environments<\/p>\n The class emerged as a collaboration between Groth and Morse, who share a goal to explore extreme environments and the vast opportunities these emerging areas will yield.\u00a0<\/p>\n The students explored how new economies and industries will be built through a combination of AI, hardware tech, entrepreneurship, consulting, and government. (The space economy alone is expected to grow to $1.8 trillion by 2035, up from $630 billion in 2023, according to the World Economic Forum and McKinsey & Company.)<\/p>\n Morse, The William A. and Betty H. Hasler Chair in New Enterprise Development, lends deep experience in analyzing and financing complex ventures that involve public and private funding sources, while Groth, founder and CEO of Cambrian Futures and Labs<\/a>, is a renowned futurist who studies global AI innovation, strategy and geopolitics.<\/p>\n On day one of the class, Groth dove into discussions about bottlenecks that slow down infrastructure opportunities in air, space, sea, and Arctic domains. Then he asked students to evaluate opportunities using an \u201cEliminate, Consider, Observe\u201d framework\u2014before introducing a management tool he co-designed called the FLP-IT foresight methodology<\/a> to project how these areas will evolve. Students then had to go deep on an opportunity and frame a solution.\u00a0<\/p>\n Much of the innovation required to do business in these remote emerging spaces require physical AI<\/a>\u2014systems that interact directly with the physical world through sensors that send instructions to actuators, robotic limbs, or navigation controls. Physical AI requires substantial capital, Morse said.<\/p>\n To strengthen the students\u2019 early-stage finance knowledge, Morse walked students through a crash course in how to to think like a VC: weighing an opportunity, describing its limitations, and finding the right kind of capital to invest.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Then students heard directly from industry experts including Raj Pai<\/a>, MBA 98, a venture capital investor and former CTO of NASA Mission Support, and David Blakely<\/a>, BS 82, (electrical engineering) MS 83 (mechanical engineering), a partner at NewLine Ventures, during a panel on air and space investing. They were joined on a panel by Frederick Reid<\/a>, former global head of transportation for Airbnb and founding CEO of Virgin America, now a senior fellow at the Institute for Business Innovation<\/a> at Haas. <\/p>\n For Jen Cole<\/a>, EWMBA 27, a marine biologist and COO of Good Machines, a climate-focused venture capital studio, the challenge and expense of working in frontier environments hit close to home.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cole, who grew up on Guam, said she worries that the island will be under water within 30 years. After traveling to Greenland several years ago to study the sea level rise in the city of Ilulissat<\/a>, she realized how capital intensive it is to reach remote areas and build the infrastructure required to gather data. \u201cThrough the Frontier Ventures class we\u2019re looking at the types of data we need to capture in the Arctic and in these other ecosystems and how we can use that data to build a better world,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Visiting a living lab<\/p>\n To bring classrrom ideas to life, students left Haas for the day, heading to the nearby Richmond Field Station<\/a>, UC Berkeley\u2019s 175 acre campus that\u2019s used as a living lab for applied research. Students checked out a test track for autonomous vehicles, the station\u2019s drone testing park, and the V2X Lab, used for evaluating connectivity between autonomous vehicles and smart infrastructure and between vehicles and the grid.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nita Chandrasekhar<\/a>, EWMBA 27,\u00a0 said the visit was a highlight of the week, providing insights into real world tech, and how innovators overcome the barriers of science to launch a business.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a brand new experience for me,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is a playground, where you can test drones, test robotics and test LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging used in robot technology).\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, Groth and Morse held a session on preparing for so-called wildcards like climate disaster, AI disruption, geopolitical conflict, and cyber incidents. Guest speaker Jason Stack<\/a>, who is launching a maritime startup, highlighted the need for baby steps before introducing any new military technology.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the first things we do are simulations,\u201d said Stack, who is former director of the Naval Office\u2019s AI Task Force. \u201cIn the military, we go to stateside labs and work with the women and men who just rotated back to the states from a deployment. They challenge us and challenge the technology and we go through many iterations before going to a theater overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n Sharing final pitches<\/p>\n To wrap up the week, the students headed to UC Berkeley\u2019s Bakar Labs<\/a>, where teams shared their final startup concept pitches, explaining the challenge, why current solutions fail, and how their proposed venture creates value. All pitches required a venture capital and exit strategy.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"students](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Olaf-and-Adair-Students-10-scaled.jpg\")
The five-day Frontier Ventures class was an exploration of both the new and the unknown. Photo: Zena Barakat<\/p>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/alof-and-adair-scaled.jpg\")
Groth and Morse teaching students about wildcard simulations to prepare for climate disaster, AI disruption, geopolitical conflict, and cyber incidents. Photo: Zena Barakat<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20260605_130457-scaled.jpg\")
The first Frontier Ventures course was offered to evening & weekend students in June. The course will be offered to full-time MBA students next year. Photo: Zena Barakat<\/p>\n![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/20260603_132138.jpg\")
The students explored the Richmond Field Station with Justin Wiley, the field station\u2019s corporate partnerships strategist, and Tarek Zohdi, UC Berkeley Engineering\u2019s vice dean for research and director of RFS. <\/p>\n![\"Students](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/bakar.jpeg\")
Students presented their final startup concept pitches during a visit to UC Berkeley Bakar Labs.<\/p>\n