App Development Boom’s Depressing Underbelly: What Ever Happened To Big Ideas?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/18/business/as-boom-lures-app-creators-tough-part-is-making-a-living.html?ref=technology&_r=0

This morning’s New York Times published an article on the frothy boom in “app development”  for Apple IOS and Google Android devices.   The four page in-depth analysis of the “app industry,”  paints a very depressing picture.  For all of the hoopla about this area, the statistics suggest that it is little more than a bubble about to burst.  More depressing it adds to the chorus of concern from leading thinkers on entrepreneurship, innovation and technology: ” Where Have All The Big Ideas Gone?”    We have lost our way with innovation and the need to solve big problems.  Angry Birds is not solving any big problem, and leading people like the couple in this article, to chase the ephemeral rainbow.  This morning’s story will likely ignite a vigorous online debate, as it should.

The Washington Post published an article last year with the title, “Moral Decline and the End of Big Ideas.”   http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-innovations/moral-decline-and-the-end-of-big-ideas/2011/09/14/gIQAQntJwK_story.html  The author’s  point is that it is a sense of moral duty to make the world a better place that drives someone to change the World.  Or at least it should be..

Another opinion piece in the New York Times by Neal Gabler, also last year, asks where are the Big Ideas?  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/opinion/sunday/the-elusive-big-idea.html?pagewanted=all   The Atlantic magazine had published a list of the ” 14 biggest ideas of the year,”  the biggest of which, ironically was “The Rise of the Middle Class – Just Not Ours,” describing the rise of broad prosperity in the BRIC nations. The Atlantic list stimulated Gabler to predict a future of Big Data, but not Big Thought.. The implication I hear in Gabler’s editorial is that we are in a post Enlightenment time, a period of anti-intellectualism.  I hope not, but I fear it may be true.

The list of luminaries who bemoan this situation keeps growing. It includes Max Marmer, founder of Startup Genome, whose Harvard Business Review blog post, “Reversing the Decline of Big Ideas,” has probably been reblogged and emailed around the World hundreds of times, and has stimulated millions of comments. http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/reversing_the_decline_in_big_i.html.  No less than Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape and now a venture capitalist himself, Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems, and John Doerr, my former Intel colleague, have also spoken out forcefully on the need for a deep rethink on the state of innovation in America.  They are already on record that they aren’t interested in the next iPhone app.

We need more Big Thought on Big Ideas like the problem of heat dissipation and energy loss, being addressed by startups like Trajectory Design Automation, and water conservation technology, an area where Israel is the world leader.   We need to regain our lead in the World of innovation by refusing to accept mediocrity and greed as the drivers of our economy.

Entrepreneurship Event – UBC Faculty of Management

MARK YOUR CALENDARS AND SHARE IN YOUR CLASSES PLEASE!

Wednesday, November 14

2-3PM

EME 0050 (Lecture Theatre), UBC Okanagan

All students and faculty members are invited to learn more about how University of British Columbia and various partnering agencies, Alacrity Foundation, and Entrepreneurship@UBC are working to provide members of the UBC community (people with great ideas) with resources, advice, mentorship, funding, and even office space.   Learn about the Mock Pitch Competition being planned for our students and hear Peter van der Gracht from Alacrity Foundation explain their program, and the opportunities for new graduates to join an entrepreneurial team.

3D Printing No Longer A Gimmick

More than twenty years ago, when I was with Silicon Graphics, maker of state of the art 3D computer modeling workstations, at that time, I held my first 3D printed object.  It was the Silicon Graphics logo in 3D plastic.   For those who can remember that far back in Silicon Valley, the SGI logo was an image of a 3D tubular cube represented in 2D, which gave it a fascinating “double entendre” optical illusion for those looking carefully at the image.  One day, an early stage startup visited us, to demonstrate their first generation 3D printer, and to explore possibilities for partnership with Silicon Graphics.  The object they produced with laser technology was the SGI logo, about 3″ on a side, in white plastic and set on a mahogany base.

Today, Silicon Graphics is gone.  Their brick buildings on Stierlin Road in Mountain View are now home to  Google’s HQ. Silicon Graphics CEO at that time, Tom Jermolak, failed to see the writing on the wall: their proprietary MIPS RISC chip technology was doomed.  SGI even had a secret program with IBM to build SGI technology onto cards driven by Intel CPU’s.  The Chief Technology Officer of SGI, Forest Baskett, was approached by Intel but in the end, the decision to stick with MIPS, sealed SGI’s fate..  The founder of SGI, Stanford prof Jim Clark, with whom I had worked closely, had by then moved on to Netscape with Marc Andreesen.  Most likely, the early 3D printing company is also history.

 

Canadian Startups Look to Reverse Their “Sellout” Trend

UPDATE: It is worth noting that this 2012 case study on a company in British Columbia, Mobile Data International, and its CEO Barkley Isherwood, attracted the ire of followers of Werner Erhard, prominent San Francisco New Age cult leader, with similarities to L. Ron Hubbard, founder of Scientology.  It is a lens into New Age cults at that time.  In the same way that Scientology reacts to attacks on itself. Erhard’s followers attacked this post in a frenzy of irrational hatred. 

I can only hope that this is a serious effort to reverse this national problem of short-term thinking.

I have seen the problems with Canadian investors first hand, and have the following case study to share here.

Many light years ago, I worked for a pioneering wireless data company, Mobile Data International, in Richmond, BC.   I thought this company was so promising, I came from the UK to join it.  Regrettably, the Board of Directors and the Canadian investors were more interested in making a quick profit than in building the company to potentially be the company that established itself as a global leader in wireless data.  The CEO of MDI, Barclay Isherwood, was an avid follower of California new-age guru, Werner Erhard  aka Jack Rosenberg, of erhard seminars training, better known as “est”.  Erhard’s career has been marked by allegations, controversy, and legal disputes.  Leading academics have raised serious questions about Erhard’s qualifications, his businesses, and the highly authoritarian style of his organizations.

Finding that MDI was influenced by Erhard was a supreme irony. Years before, while in university in the San Francisco Bay Area, my housemate also became infatuated with Erhard.  My housemate eventually quit university and joined “est” as one of Erhard’s trusted senior lieutenants. I got to see “est” up close and very personally. I was browbeaten by my friend, who tried to convince me how important it was to take “the training” as they called it, at a price I could not afford. I was disturbed enough by what I saw from outside the cult, that nothing altered my view that est was extremely dangerous. Since that time, Erhard has run from his critics, and reincarnated himself and “est” into a new group called “The Forum.”

Isherwood was spending company money to have Erhard’s people “hang out”  at MDI, and he kept his girlfriend, Evi Truu on the payroll, supposedly reporting to me, but via “pillow talk” apparently also reporting to Isherwood himself. The Board took no action, employees were asking questions among themselves, and morale was suffering.  I invited Intel’s legendary Marketing VP, Bill Davidow to MDI for a speaking engagement.  I was flabbergasted to be told that no one liked Davidow, as he was too “arrogant.”  Ironically, their description of Davidow was exactly backward.  The company was floated on the Toronto exchange much too early, and as a consequence, MDI was eventually sold for a relative pittance to Motorola Canada in a hostile takeover. Isherwood has tried to take credit for selling out to Motorola as if it were a victory for him, but the truth is that he snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

The investors made a modest return, but Canadian investors don’t seem to think like Silicon Valley.  In a strikingly similar startup situation in Silicon Valley, the CEO, actually an Intel sales organization alumni, had become infatuated with the alleged “supernatural powers of crystals” and his belief system became part of the company culture. The investors quickly became deeply concerned about their investment and their fiduciary duty. The question was, “How could this have happened?” and “We need to move to fix this immediately or face consequences.” My former Intel boss, Barry Cox, was brought in by the Board of Directors to fire the CEO, take drastic action and turn the company around. Obviously, nothing like this happened with MDI.

In the years since I have also seen offers in California in the hundreds of millions turned down flat, and million dollar cheques were thrown back across the table.   The MDI employees were mostly laid off and MDI’s doors were eventually shuttered.  The MDI building, an excessively elegant structure that would have raised eyebrows in California, sat idle in Richmond for 20 years, until it was finally leased again as the security headquarters, ringed in barbed wire, for the 2010 Olympics.

Let’s hope that this new realization of the need to build innovation in Canada strikes a chord and that Canada doesn’t repeat the mistakes that occurred at Mobile Data International.

http://www.techvibes.com/global/category/start-up

Strategy As Simple Rules

From the Harvard Business Review, October 2012 issue..

 

http://hbr.org/2001/01/strategy-as-simple-rules/ar/1?conversationId=3309386

Communication Skills Are Everything: John Doerr

Kim Smith at Stanford‘s eCorner, says that my former Intel colleague and KPCB venture partner, John Doerr, believes that he would be nowhere without his communication skills.

A major lesson for all UBC Faculty of Management students.

Leadership, Communication and Facilitation http://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=615

Characteristics of Entrepreneurs – Stanford eCorner

William Sahlman of Harvard Business School, speaking at the Stanford University eCorner about the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs.  Not enough is said about this topic.

Characteristics of Entrepreneurshttp://ecorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1806

Make Meaning in Your Company: Guy Kawasaki

Very valuable words from Guy Kawasaki. Tom Byers of KPCB commented on this video, that he has consistently used it for the last 5 years in his entrepreneurship classes at Stanford.

Guy Kawasaki

Silicon Valley Isn’t The End All And Be All…Or Is It?

This debate about Silicon Valley goes on ad nauseum, and in this Venture Beat post.

 

My answer to this guy is “it depends,”  big time.  It depends on a lot of factors, including the entrepreneur him or herself, access to money, brains, a “cluster” as this guy found in Austin Texas, well-known for not only IT management, as he points out. The University of Texas at Austin is key, and other companies there include IBM, AMD and Intel.  Boulder, Colorado, northern Virginia, NYC, Boston, a bit in greater L.A./Orange County, and definitely San Diego are all happening, but in different segments, and in different ways.. Even very small communities like Walla Walla Washington have found ways to have an innovative economy…But there is still nothing quite like the breadth and scope of Silicon Valley, and it is unlikely to change anytime soon.

I just had a long talk Friday evening with a good friend, a consultant, as she was driving home in heavy SV commute traffic, who has worked in the Valley for her entire career.  It still is a magnet and she has more clients than she can handle, but the company profiles are changing. Hollywood has moved north and not just Pixar stuff. Digital sound editing for some reason is in Daly City and South San Francisco. I remember one Canadian entrepreneur telling me how he felt the vibe in northern California. and it was a huge factor for him.  Kelowna was dead, dead, dead. Vancouver was bit better, but SV was best for the buzz of ideas.

http://venturebeat.com/2012/10/20/dont-believe-the-hype-silicon-valley-is-not-the-be-all-end-all-for-tech-companies/#ofAQAlcrlRkhzsxQ.02