Entrepreneurship – Page 65 – artdiamondblog.com

Heart Pioneer Bailey Kept Moving from Hospital to Hospital Due to His Failures

Source of book image:
http://media.npr.org/assets/bakertaylor/covers/e/extreme-medicine/9781594204708_custom-14713d8588e54f066a6abf7b5a13e4c9de832ea1-s6-c30.jpg

(p. C8) In “Extreme Medicine,” physician Kevin Fong reminds us that virtually everything we take for granted in lifesaving medical intervention was once unthinkable. Over the past century, as technology has allowed man to conquer hostile environments and modernize warfare, medical pioneers have been on a parallel journey, confronting what had once been fatal in man’s boldest pursuits and making it survivable.
. . .
As Dr. Fong notes, many of today’s commonplace treatments were once dangerously experimental. One pioneer in the early postwar years, a Philadelphia surgeon named Charles Bailey, killed several patients while trying to repair problems of the mitral valve, which if damaged can cause blood to flow backward into the hear chamber, decreasing flow to the rest of the body. Bailey moved from hospital to hospital to avoid scrutiny of his successive failures.

For the full review, see:
LAURA LANDRO. “BOOKS; They Died So We Might Live; Hypothermia, which killed explorers like Scott, is now induced in heart patients to allow time for surgery.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Feb. 15, 2014): C8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 14, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Extreme Medicine’ by Kevin Fong; Explorers, astronauts and soldiers all pushed the limits of doctors’ abilities to heal and repair.”)

The book under review is:
Swidey, Neil. Trapped under the Sea: One Engineering Marvel, Five Men, and a Disaster Ten Miles into the Darkness. New York: Crown Publishers, 2014.

Managing Engaged Edison Only Half as Much as Inventing

(p. 146) In 1885, three years after the start of service at Pearl Street, a director of the company who chose to remain anonymous complained to the Philadelphia Press that Edison insisted on taking an active part in the management of the company “although he is not a bit of a business man.” He gave an example of Edison’s poor judgment: Edison had proposed installing a new cable in Manhattan that would cost nearly $30,000 a mile, oblivious to the fact that Western Union had one with similar capacity in operation that had only cost $500 a mile. “If he would leave it to practical business men to make money out of it and stick to his inventions,” the director said, “the company would in time become very rich.”
For Edison, “sticking to his inventions” full-time would mean relinquishing control of Edison Electric, which was anathema. Managing his company did not engage him half as much as creating it, but he could not bring himself to let go of the captain’s chair. Edison’s intellectual interests, however, wandered from one minor project to the next. He had always done best when attempting something both entirely new and gargantuan in scale, but in the mid-1880s he could not find a suitable project.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.
(Note: italics in original.)

Edison Was “the World’s Greatest Inventor and World’s Worst Businessman”

(p. 165) BY THE EARLY twentieth century, Edison had earned a reputation as “the world’s greatest inventor and world’s worst businessman.” The phrasing, attributed to Henry Ford, is memorable, even if both characterizations as greatest and worst are too extreme to be accepted literally.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Gilder’s Information Theory of Capitalism Will Boost Morale of Innovative Entrepreneurs

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Individuals like Ford and Jobs are key figures in the economic paradigm that George Gilder lays out in “Knowledge and Power.” He calls for an “information theory of capitalism” in which the economy is driven by a dynamic marketplace, with information widely (and freely) distributed. The most important feature of such an economy, Mr. Gilder writes, is the overthrow of “equilibrium,” and the most important actors are inventors and entrepreneurs whose breakthrough ideas are responsible for “everything useful or interesting” in commercial life.
. . .
Aspiring owners shouldn’t look to “Knowledge and Power” for practical advice on starting a company, but Mr. Gilder’s case for the central role of entrepreneurship might boost their morale. Certainly his argument could not be more timely. Census Bureau data show that startups were responsible for nearly all new job creation from 1996 to 2009. Yet entrepreneurship itself (as measured by new business formation) has been stagnant for about two decades. Thus the important question for America’s future may well be, as Mr. Gilder says, “how we treat our entrepreneurs.” He persuasively shows that creating a more supportive climate for entrepreneurs–by clearing away burdensome regulations and freeing information from its current imprisonment–will result in a more prosperous and vigorous society, creating not only more jobs but more Jobs.

For the full review, see:
MATTHEW REES. “BOOKSHELF; The Real Market-Maters; Economists as far back as Adam Smith have undervalued entrepreneurs–the restless, inventive, job-creating engines of the economy.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 18, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 17, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Knowledge and Power’ by George Gilder
Economists as far back as Adam Smith have undervalued entrepreneurs–the restless, inventive, job-creating engines of the economy.”)

The book under review is:
Gilder, George. Knowledge and Power: The Information Theory of Capitalism and How It Is Revolutionizing Our World. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 2013.

Edison’s Goal Was Not Philanthropy, But to Make Useful Inventions that Sold

(p. 163) . . . , Edison had declared publicly that his inventions should be judged only on the basis of commercial success. This had come about when a reporter for the New York World had asked him a battery of questions that threw him off balance: “What is your object in life? What are you living for? (p. 164) What do you want?” Edison reacted as if he’d been punched in the stomach, or so the writer described the effect with exaggerated drama. First, Edison scanned the ceiling of the room for answers, then looked out the window through the rain. Finally, he said he had never thought of these questions “just that way.” He paused again, then said he could not give an exact answer other than this: “I guess all I want now is to have a big laboratory” for making useful inventions. “There isn’t a bit of philanthropy in it,” he explained. “Anything that won’t sell I don’t want to invent, because anything that won’t sell hasn’t reached the acme of success. Its sale is proof of its utility, and utility is success.”
He had been put on the spot by the reporter, and had reflexively given the marketplace the power to define the meaning of his own life.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.
(Note: ellipsis added; italics in original.)

Research on Dogs that Benefits Both Humans and Dogs

“Erica Moore examined Akyra, a shih tzu, in August before the dog was enrolled in Penn Vet’s canine mammary tumor program. She had surgery there.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. D6) Akyra’s mammary glands were riddled with tumors, including one the size of a golf ball. She would be hard to place in a home, and the medical care she needed would be expensive. The tumors could be cancerous.

“When my husband called and said they were going to leave one of the dogs behind because she had mammary tumors, I said, ‘No, you’re not!’ ” said Bekye Eckert, 49, a dog lover who lives outside Baltimore and has cared for several animals with mammary cancer.
Ms. Eckert arranged for Akyra to be enrolled in an innovative program at the University of Pennsylvania, where veterinary oncologists are learning about the progression of human breast cancer by treating mammary tumors in shelter dogs.
. . .
Generally, two sets of tumor samples are taken from each dog, one for the pathology lab and one for Dr. Troyanskaya to use for molecular analysis. Astrid, for example, had tumors in seven mammary glands that were mostly benign. The largest proved to be malignant.
Such a large set of samples is a gold mine for Dr. Troyanskaya, who is looking for changes in the expression of a specific gene or group of genes, or pathways linking groups of genes as the tumor becomes malignant.
. . .
In the meantime, stray dogs are getting free cancer treatment that makes it easier to find them permanent homes, and they are promised care for any recurrence. More than 100 dogs have been through the program; several have been adopted by women who also survived breast cancer.
For Akyra, there was good news. She had surgery in August, and veterinarians removed the large tumor and three smaller lesions. The pathology report gave her a clean bill of health: None were cancerous. She was adopted by Beth Gardner, a relocation consultant in Devon, Pa.

For the full story, see:
RONI CARYN RABIN. “By Treating Dogs, Answers About Breast Cancer.” The New York Times (Tues., April 1, 2014): D6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date MARCH 31, 2014, and has the title “From Dogs, Answers About Breast Cancer.”)

Edison Was Too Frugal to Buy a Yacht

(p. 148) Edison spent the weeks preceding his first Chautauqua visit at the Gillilands’ to get comfortable with the new version of himself that he was trying on: a gregarious bon vivant, uninterested in work, filling summer days with frivolous entertainments such as boat rides, card games, and a variation of Truth or Dare for middle-aged participants. He seriously considered buying a yacht, before he came to the realization that his self-transformation was still incomplete–he recognized that he still lacked the ability to disregard the frightful expense.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Where Ideas Go to Launch Versus Where Ideas Go to Die

(p. 1) PALO ALTO, Calif. — THE most striking thing about visiting Silicon Valley these days is how many creative ideas you can hear in just 48 hours.
. . .
Curt Carlson, the chief executive of SRI International, which invented Siri for your iPhone, recalls how one leading innovator (p. 11) just told him that something would never happen and “then I pick up the paper and it just did.”
What they all have in common is they wake up every day and ask: “What are the biggest trends in the world, and how do I best invent/reinvent my business to thrive from them?” They’re fixated on creating abundance, not redividing scarcity, and they respect no limits on imagination. No idea here is “off the table.”
. . .
What a contrast. Silicon Valley: where ideas come to launch. Washington, D.C., where ideas go to die. Silicon Valley: where there are no limits on your imagination and failure in the service of experimentation is a virtue. Washington: where the “imagination” to try something new is now a treatable mental illness covered by Obamacare and failure in the service of experimentation is a crime. Silicon Valley: smart as we can be. Washington: dumb as we wanna be.

For the full commentary, see:
Thomas L. Friedman. “Start-Up America: Our Best Hope.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., FEB. 16, 2014): 1 & 11.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date FEB. 15, 2014.)

Gas Company Literally Tried to Short-Circuit Edison’s Lights

(p. 104) The willingness of Edison to turn his laboratory into a public theater had succeeded, only too well. When he appeared, a shout, “There is Edison!” rang out, causing a surge of bodies in his direction. One report claimed that the crowds “more than once threatened to break down the timbers of the building,” a statement that may not have been hyperbole; the lab assistants were convinced that collapse was possible and hurried outside, bolstering the floor supports below with telegraph poles and lumber. Where the realm of science ended and that of entertainment began could no longer be distinguished, judging by the printed condemnation of the behavior of a minority of the visitors who “cared nothing for science, who regarded the laboratory as they would a circus.”
In the laboratory itself, the lights were arranged on a table to resemble a miniature layout of Menlo Park, and Edison had assigned assistants on all four sides to look out for sabotage. Their vigilance was needed that day, as one man was caught applying a jumper wire that ran under his clothes and down both sleeves, deliberately short-circuiting four of the lights. He turned out to be an electrician employed by the Baltimore Gas Company and was marched out, with language ringing in his ears “that made the recording angels jump for their typewriters,” Edison later recalled.

Source:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

In the Gilded Age Moguls Cleaned Up Their Own Mess and the Economy Was Not Hurt

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Takeover wars seem to have lost their sizzle. What happened to the battles of corporate goliaths? Where have they gone, those swaggering deal makers? “Harriman vs. Hill” is a corporate dust-up that takes us back to the beginning of the 20th century, when tycoons who traveled by private rail merrily raided each other’s empires while the world around them cringed.
. . .
Mr. Haeg conveys a vivid picture of the Gilded Age in splendor and in turmoil. Champagne still flowed in Peacock Alley in the Waldorf-Astoria, but fistfights erupted on the floor of the exchange, and a young trader named Bernard Baruch skirted disaster with the help of an inside tip, then perfectly legal. There were scant rules governing stock trading, the author reminds us–no taxes, either. “If you won in the market, you kept it all.”
In that era, moguls were left to clean up their own mess. . . .
. . .
Though hardly a cheerleader, Mr. Haeg is admiring of his cast, nostalgic for the laissez-faire world they inhabited. Observing that the economy wasn’t upset by the stock market’s mayhem, he concludes that, “in a perverse way, the market had worked.”

For the full review, see:
ROGER LOWENSTEIN. “BOOKSHELF; When Titans Tie the Knot; Businessmen of a century ago didn’t place ‘competition’ on a revered pedestal. Merger and monopoly were considered preferable.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Feb. 14, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 13, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘Harriman vs. Hill,’ by Larry Haeg; Businessmen of a century ago didn’t place ‘competition’ on a revered pedestal. Merger and monopoly were considered preferable.”)

The book under review is:
Haeg, Larry. Harriman Vs. Hill: Wall Street’s Great Railroad War. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.