Microsoft was working on e-books and tablet PCs a decade ago. So why did it never get around to releasing them? Why, with so many intelligent and talented employees, is it falling behind Apple in innovation? Dick Brass, who was a Microsoft vice president for seven years, explains how Microsoft’s lack of systems that support innovation lead to risk-avoidance and internal struggles that crush great ideas before they ever make it into the marketplace.

Read the article at the New York Times.

An interesting paper published this summer by Vivek Wadhwa et al.: “Anatomy of an Entrepreneur: Family Background and Motivation.”

The paper’s abstract:

“Entrepreneurs are among the most celebrated people in our culture. Celebrity entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, often grace the covers of prominent publications. These company founders and innovators fuel economic growth and give the nation its competitive edge.

“However, very little is known today about the backgrounds, life histories, motivations and beliefs of these entrepreneurs. So myths and stereotypes prevail. The commonly held belief is that entrepreneurs are young, lightly-educated, childless unmarried workaholics. They are perceived to come from rich families and graduate from elite colleges.

“But is this true?

“This research answers some of these questions. This is based on a survey of 549 company founders in 12 high-growth industries.

“It finds that most founders came from middle-class or upper-lower-class backgrounds, are well-educated and married with children. The strongest motivation for starting a company was to ‘build wealth.’ Other popular motivators included capitalizing on a business idea; the appeal of a startup culture; a desire to own a company; and a lack of interest in working for someone else.”

Here’s the link to the paper at the Social Science Research Network.

Creative Capitalism: A Conversation hosts a series of responses by famous individuals, including Warren Buffet, Gary Becker, and Robert Reich, to a speech Bill Gates gave before the World Economic Forum in January 2008 in Davos, Switzerland. In that speech, Gates argued for a “new system [of] creative capitalism – an approach where governments, businesses, and nonprofits work together to stretch the reach of market forces so that more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world’s inequities.”

Professor Stephen Hicks will teach a new course this fall 2008 semester at Rockford College: Entrepreneurship and Ethics. The purpose of this course is to integrate entrepreneurship, business history, and business ethics. It will consist of case studies of major entrepreneurs in modern history, e.g., Commodore Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Samuel Insull, John Johnson, Martha Stewart, Bill Gates, and others. Part of each case study involves learning the entrepreneur’s business practices and how he or she achieved business success. What traits and practices did they have: intelligence, risk-tolerance, leadership, ambition, ruthlessness? And part of each case study will involve learning about the ethical controversies their activities generated: Were they “predatory competitors,” “monopolists,” “robber barons”—or were they extraordinarily productive individuals who benefited both themselves and their customers? Students read and analyze business histories and biographies by both proponents and detractors. See the Entrepreneurship and Ethics course flyer.