Is Microsoft doomed to fail? Does the LinkedInIPO signal a new bubble? Is Google the model of success? Silicon Valley entrepreneur, writer, and professor, Steve Blanks, makes a number of bold assertions about the state of tech-based businesses in this Business Insider article.
For more information about Steve Blanks, visit his website.
Watch Dr. Stephen Hicks, CEE’s Executive Director, interview Spring 2011 guest speaker Dr. Al Gini on critical tasks for leadership:
Norm Augustine believes that America is falling behind other countries like China and India in technological innovation. This is because our culture portrays engineers and scientists as nerds rather than venerating them, because our educational system deemphasizes science and math, and because we don’t invest enough in long-term basic research. “Despite what many Americans believe,” he writes, “our nation does not possess an innate knack for greatness. Greatness must be worked for and won by each new generation.”
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Read our Kaizen interview with Judy Estrin, in which she covers similar themes.
Last week, Big Think started a ten day series on the future of capitalism. Through articles and videos, the series examines the impact on capitalism of technologies such as 3D printing, virtual products and currencies, data analysis, and the relationship between governments and markets. Also featured is an interview with John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods and co-founder of Conscious Capitalism with recent CEE guest speaker Michael Strong.
Stata Ventures, Kaizen interviewee Ray Stata’s venture capital vehicle, recently provided funding to technology startup Lyric Semiconductor. Lyric is developing probability chip technology. Traditional chips use binary “yes/no” switches, but probability chips “can accept inputs and calculate outputs that are between 0 and 1, directly representing probabilities, or levels of certainty.” Some of the commercial applications of this technology include: better error correction and faster operation for portable flash drives; better prediction of consumer behavior for websites like Amazon (and better product recommendations for customers); and faster, cheaper large scale data processing.
Read more about Lyric at the New York Times and VentureBeat.
Read our interview with Ray Stata.
Watch a video interview with co-founder and CEO of Lyric, Ben Vigoda, who explains probability chips:
Anil Singh-Molares is CEO of EchoMundi, an international consulting, research and product development company based in Bellevue, Washington. Prior to founding EchoMundi, he worked for twelve years at the Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, where he was Senior Director of Vendor Relations and a recipient of the Microsoft Achievement Award. He is also currently a member of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation. We met with Mr. Singh-Molares in Bellevue.
Kaizen: You are a successful businessman—yet as an undergraduate you majored in Philosophy and English Literature. That might seem a surprising background. Has your undergraduate education been relevant to your success in business?
Singh-Molares: Yes, absolutely. Philosophy in particular. English certainly gave me the ability to express myself succinctly and technically. But philosophy taught me how to think and taught me to appreciate that there are many sides to an argument, but that you have to make some judgment about what you think is the correct judgment. It has to be well-supported, it has to be well researched, well thought-out, but it should be grounded in common sense. And that’s why I, like you, am a big fan of the Greeks, Plato in particular, and Aristotle as well. So, it’s been very helpful.
The Wall Street Journal reports on the growing trend of hiring highly-skilled stay-at-home mothers for short-term projects. It is a win-win situation: “Employers get lots of voltage, cheap, while the women get a skills update and a taste of the professional challenges they miss.”
