Program Benefits
- Learn what it takes to navigate disruption, identify opportunities for innovation, and effectively align business and societal needs in an increasingly technology driven world.
- Discover the opportunities in and impact of AI while developing products and business models that leverage AI/ML for positive impact
- Build your data science vocabulary and skills that will allow you to understand how to manage and analyze big data
- Learn what it takes to innovate, develop and commercialize a successful new product with a team of highly motivated students from all around the globe
- Understand real-world scenarios and strategies of major tech companies, such as Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook, through current case studies
- Immerse yourself in different company cultures during visits to Los Angeles’ hottest companies
- Learn from and network with Silicon Beach tech heavyweights through guest lectures that illuminate their experiences in the tech industry
Course Offerings
All students will enroll in the program's cornerstone course, and choose between two concentration courses. This program carries 8 units of UC credit for a letter grade.
Technology Leadership: The Transformation of Consumers, Businesses and Society
Cornerstone Course
4 UNITS
Discover the impact of tech from the perspectives of consumers, businesses and society. Explore best practices from successful tech companies and learn how to apply this knowledge to launch your career in tech.
Technology has fundamentally changed the lives of consumers, enterprises, economies and societies. For consumers, it has enabled broader and more convenient access to information, commerce, and connectedness. For enterprises, it has lowered costs, facilitated entry to and competition in new markets, deepened customer engagement, blurred traditional product/service lines, and created new challenges and threats of disruption. For enterprises and entrepreneurs alike, technology has created new product/service opportunities, new waves of growth, and new markets.
This course will examine the dynamic nature of technology, the disruption and innovation taken to create new services with competitive advantages. We will explore a variety of industry-changing products and services, including connected devices (Internet of Things), cloud computing, artificial intelligence, over-the-top content and shared economy offerings. This course will also look at the concepts and models which have enabled these new services, threatened existing providers, changed competitive landscapes and blurred lines of service offerings. Such topics will include the role of standards, disruptive innovation, advertising-based business models, multi-sided platforms, cloud-based business models, and effects of competing convergence and unbundling. The class will also significantly focus on the increasing role and power of data as a predictive tool. While this course is focused on technology-based industries, the core learnings in strategy development, disruptive innovation and business models are relevant to numerous other industries.
Data Science and Artificial Intelligence
Concentration Course
4 UNITS
Gain a general understanding of data science and artificial intelligence, their business applications today and in the future, and their ethical and societal impacts. Build practical skills in analyzing and managing data via SQL and Tableau.
In today's business world, data is one of the most vital assets of any organization or business, and knowing how to manage, analyze, and glean insights from data sets is essential to making forward-looking and effective decisions. As a result, databases in which data is quality, protected, yet easily accessible and understandable have become the core of companies' intellectual infrastructures. Similarly, data is essential to the functioning of artificial intelligence and machine learning. This course will provide a practical foundation in data science and artificial intelligence through the lens of industry examples.Students, both technical and non-technical, will gain a better general understanding of the facets of AI, its business applications today and in the future, its ethical and societal impacts, and how both data science and AI can be applied to students' future careers.
Entrepreneurship and New Products
Concentration Course
4 UNITS
Deepen your understanding of innovations regarding the conception, development and management of new products. Learn what it takes to identify, develop and commercialize a new product.
New products are the lifeblood of any corporation and the cornerstone of any economy. Without expanding the product portfolio, any modern corporation can quickly succumb to competition and lose significant market share, or even be totally dis-intermediated. This phenomenon has been intensified with the advancements in digital economy. The innovation process has been significantly altered as a result of the impact of digital economy across all industries and markets. While most companies recognize the need for new products, not all such new products that are introduced to the market are successful. And even a smaller percentage can stand the test of time and reach significant market share or achieve resilient popularity. Innovation is one of the key drivers of making new products. We will examine the process of innovation and new product development and discuss the associated paradigms and success factors (through the case and class discussions).
This course is designed to help students deepen their understanding of new product innovation, development, and management. In the course the student will assume the role of a product developer or a product manager focused on developing a –new- concept into a new product (for a start-up or a mature corporation). This product developer/manager identifies, develops, and commercializes a new product according to the material presented in the class and the reading assignments. The course will seek to develop students’ critical thinking, decision-making skills, and creativity to develop and launch a successful new product (team project).
Past Program Highlights
Students learn to communicate and persuade in the classroom
A student finds one of Google's resources to keep its employees thinking strategically
Students work on big and small data in the classroom
Teams work together to solve assigned problems, rooted in real-world scenarios
Students on a guided company tour in Silicon Beach
Students gain career insight from Microsoft speaker
Students learn about cybersecurity outside of the classroom, at Southern California Edison
Proud graduates of the program
Major Tech Company Access
The Easton Tech Summer Institute will not only prepare you in the classroom, but you'll learn immeasurably through field trips and special speaking engagements, where you'll get a view of what it's like inside some of the most legendary high-tech companies. Last year, these companies either hosted us or spoke on campus for this program:
Housing
Participants are eligible for UCLA on- or off-campus housing through UCLA Housing Services.
Overview of university-owned housing available to students attending Summer Session at UCLA:
Once enrolled, students are eligible to sign up for UCLA Summer Session housing. To apply online, please select the Summer Housing Application link in the Related Information box. The summer online housing application will be available soon.
For 2016 Summer Business Institute, students will have a choice of living on campus in a residence hall or off campus in University Apartments.
Download Walk-Through in PDF UCLA Housing Services