Entrepreneurship – Page 68 – artdiamondblog.com

Twitter Founders Were Outsiders and Unafraid of Risk

Source of the book image: http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BN-AF602_bkrvtw_GV_20131031131314.jpg

(p. 20) . . . “Hatching Twitter,” a fast-paced and perceptive new book by Nick Bilton, a columnist and reporter for The New York Times, establishes that uncertainty and dissension about its true purpose has characterized Twitter from its inception.
. . .
The company was financed by Williams, who made a bundle selling Blogger to Google and was intent on proving he wasn’t a one-hit wonder. It rose from the ashes of a failed podcasting enterprise, Odeo, which Williams had bankrolled as a favor to his friend Noah Glass. Bilton sketches the founders’ backgrounds and personalities in quick, skillful strokes that will serve the eventual screenwriter, director and storyboard artist well; these are characters made for the big screen.
None came from money. Ev Williams was a shy Nebraska farm boy whose parents never really understood their socially awkward, computer-obsessed son.
. . .
Having known hardship, none of the four founders were afraid of risk. To join the ill-fated Odeo, Stone walked away from a job at Google, leaving more than $2 million in unvested stock options on the table.
Twitter began with a conversation. Dorsey and Glass sat talking in a car one night in 2006 when Odeo was on the verge of collapse. Dorsey mentioned his “status concept,” which was inspired by AOL’s Instant Messenger “away messages” and LiveJournal status updates that people were using to mention where they were and what they were doing. Glass warmed to the idea, seeing it as a “technology that would erase a feeling that an entire generation felt while staring into their computer screens”: loneliness.

For the full review, see:
MAUD NEWTON. “Four Characters.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., November 3, 2013): 20.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 1, 2013.)

Book under review:
Bilton, Nick. Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal. New York: Portfolio, 2013.

Diane Disney’s Museum Displays Walt Disney’s “Childlike Sense of Play”

“Walt Disney with his daughters Sharon, left, and Diane in 1941.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B16) Diane Disney Miller, Walt Disney’s last surviving child, who . . . co-founded a museum dedicated to the memory of her father as a human being rather than a brand, died on Tuesday [November 19, 2013] in Napa Valley, Calif., where she had a home. She was 79.
. . .
At her death, Mrs. Miller was president of the board of the Walt Disney Family Foundation, whose mission is to ensure that her father, and not just his company, is remembered.
“My kids have literally encountered people who didn’t know that my father was a person,” she told The Times in 2009. “They think he’s just some kind of corporate logo.”
She opened the Walt Disney Family Museum in 2009, financing it through the foundation.
“The Disney Museum is far from being an airbrushed portrait,” Edward Rothstein of The Times wrote in a review of the museum, adding, “The family movies on display show, at the very least, Disney’s childlike sense of play, particularly with his two young daughters.”

For the full obituary, see:
DANIEL E. SLOTNIK. “Diane Disney Miller, 79, Keeper of Walt’s Flame.” The New York Times (Thurs., November 21, 2013): B16.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date November 20, 2013, and has the title “Diane Disney Miller, 79, Keeper of Walt’s Flame, Dies.” The online version substitutes the word “co-founded” for the word “founded” that appeared in the first paragraph of the print version.)

Spencer Justified Carnegie as an Agent of Progress

(p. 229) Whether they read Spencer for themselves, as Carnegie had, or absorbed his teachings secondhand, his evolutionary philosophy provided the Gilded Age multimillionaires with a framework for rationalizing and justifying their outsized material success. In the Spencerian universe, Carnegie and his fellow millionaires were agents of progress who were contributing to the forward march of history into the industrial epoch. Carnegie was not exaggerating when he proclaimed himself a disciple of Spencer and referred to him, in almost idolatrous terms, as his master, his teacher, one of “our greatest benefactors,” and the “great thinker of our age.”

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Solitude May Allow “Making Novel Connections Between Far-Flung Ideas”

Source of book image: http://ffbsccn.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/focus.jpg

(p. 16) What appears to be most at risk is our ability to experience open awareness. Always a rare and elusive form of thinking, it seems to be getting rarer and more elusive. Our modern search-engine culture celebrates information gathering and problem solving — ways of thinking associated with orienting and selective focus — but has little patience for the mind’s reveries. Letting one’s thoughts wander seems frivolous, a waste of practical brainpower. Worse, our infatuation with social media is making it harder to hear the mind’s whispers. Solitude has fallen out of fashion. Even when we’re by ourselves, we’re rarely alone with our thoughts.

In the end, we may come to see the flights and fancies of open awareness as not only dispensable but pathological. Goleman points out that the brain systems associated with creative mind-wandering tend to be “unusually active” in people with attention-deficit disorder. When they appear to be “zoning out,” they may actually be making novel connections between far-flung ideas.

For the full review, see:
NICHOLAS CARR. “Attention Must Be Paid.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., November 3, 2013): 16.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date November 1, 2013.)

Book under review:
Goleman, Daniel. Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013.

Walt Disney’s “Job” Was to “Restore Order to the Chaos of Life”

“Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks in “Saving Mr. Banks,” directed by John Lee Hancock.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

I’m a fan of Disney the entrepreneur and I think that Hanks does a good job of showing that side of Disney. It’s a movie made by the Disney company, but has a darker, more adult-themed, side than most “Disney” movies. It’s not on my all-time-top-10-list. But we enjoyed it, overall. (Paul Giamatti is wonderful.)

(p. C8) “Saving Mr. Banks,” released by Disney, is a movie about the making of a Disney movie (“Mary Poppins”), in which Walt Disney himself (played by Tom Hanks) is a major character. It includes a visit to Disneyland and, if you look closely, a teaser for its companion theme park in Florida (as yet unbuilt, when the story takes place). A large Mickey Mouse plush toy appears from time to time to provide an extra touch of humor and warmth. But it would be unfair to dismiss this picture, directed by John Lee Hancock from a script by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, as an exercise in corporate self-promotion. It’s more of a mission statement.
. . .
. . . Walt is less a mogul than a kind and reliable daddy. He dotes on his intellectual properties (the mouse, the park, the picture) as if they were his children. He wants to adapt Mrs. Travers’s novel to keep a promise to his daughters.
. . .
. . . Walt, in a late, decisive conversation, explains that their job as storytellers is to “restore order” to the chaos of life and infuse bleak realities with bright, happy colors.

For the full review, see:
A. O. SCOTT. “An Unbeliever in Disney World.” The New York Times (Fri., December 13, 2013): C8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date December 12, 2013.)

William Abbott Thought Tom Carnegie Was a “Better Business Man” than Andrew

The relationship between Andrew and Tom Carnegie sketched in the passage below seems, in some ways, similar to the relationship between Walt and Roy Disney.

(p. 138) William Abbott, who knew both Carnegies from their early days at the Pittsburgh iron mills, thought Andrew a genius, but regarded Tom as the “better business man.” Tom, Abbott told Burton Hendrick, “was solid, shrewd, farseeing, absolutely honest and dependable.” The two brothers had very different notions about business. Andrew was the ambitious one, (p. 139) filled with new ideas; Tom “was content with a good, prosperous, safe business and cared nothing for expansion. He disapproved of Andrew’s skyrocketing tendencies, regarded him as a plunger and a dangerous leader. Tom wanted earnings in the shape of dividends, whereas Andrew insisted on using them for expansion.” There were other differences as well. While Andrew sought out publicity, Tom ran away from it. He was silent, retiring, “not a mixer in society, was tongue-tied at dinner parties and social gatherings.”

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

AquaBounty Has Waited More than 17 Years for FDA Approval

“The Enviropig Scientists at the University of Guelph, in Canada, developed these pigs to produce more environmentally friendly waste than conventional pigs. But the pigs were killed because the scientists could not get approval to sell them as food.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 4) If patience is a virtue, then AquaBounty, a Massachusetts biotech company, might be the most virtuous entity on the planet.

In 1993, the company approached the Food and Drug Administration about selling a genetically modified salmon that grew faster than normal fish. In 1995, AquaBounty formally applied for approval. Last month, more than 17 years later, the public comment period, one of the last steps in the approval process, was finally supposed to conclude. But the F.D.A. has extended the deadline — members of the public now have until late April to submit their thoughts on the AquAdvantage salmon. It’s just one more delay in a process that’s dragged on far too long.
The AquAdvantage fish is an Atlantic salmon that carries two foreign bits of DNA: a growth hormone gene from the Chinook salmon that is under the control of a genetic “switch” from the ocean pout, an eel-like fish that lives in the chilly deep. Normally, Atlantic salmon produce growth hormone only in the warm summer months, but these genetic adjustments let the fish churn it out year round. As a result, the AquAdvantage salmon typically reach their adult size in a year and a half, rather than three years.
. . .
We should all be rooting for the agency to do the right thing and approve the AquAdvantage salmon. It’s a healthy and relatively cheap food source that, as global demand for fish increases, can take some pressure off our wild fish stocks. But most important, a rejection will have a chilling effect on biotechnological innovation in this country.
. . .
Then there’s the Enviropig, a swine that has been genetically modified to excrete less phosphorus. Phosphorus in animal waste is a major cause of water pollution, and as the world’s appetite for meat increases, it’s becoming a more urgent problem. The first Enviropig, created by scientists at the University of Guelph, in Canada, was born in 1999, and researchers applied to both the F.D.A. and Health Canada for permission to sell the pigs as food.
But last spring, while the applications were still pending, the scientists lost their funding from Ontario Pork, an association of Canadian hog farmers, and couldn’t find another industry partner. (It’s hard to blame investors for their reluctance, given the public sentiment in Canada and the United States, as well as the uncertain regulatory landscape.) The pigs were euthanized in May.
The F.D.A. must make sure that other promising genetically modified animals don’t come to the same end. Of course every application needs to be painstakingly evaluated, and not every modified animal should be approved. But in cases like AquaBounty’s, where all the available evidence indicates that the animals are safe, we shouldn’t let political calculations or unfounded fears keep these products off the market. If we do that, we’ll be closing the door on innovations that could help us face the public health and environmental threats of the future, saving countless animals — and perhaps ourselves.

For the full commentary, see:
EMILY ANTHES. “Don’t Be Afraid of Genetic Modification.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., March 10, 2013): 4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date March 9, 2013.)

Emily Anths, who is quoted above, has written a related book:
Anthes, Emily. Frankenstein’s Cat: Cuddling up to Biotech’s Brave New Beasts. New York: Scientific American / Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013.

Carnegie Failed Twice Before Bessemer Success

(p. 101) [Carnegie] . . . organized his own company to secure the rights to the Dodd process for strengthening iron rails by coating them with steel facings. Thomson agreed to appropriate $20,000 of Pennsylvania Railroad funds to test the new technology.
On March 12, 1867, Thomson wrote to tell Carnegie that his Dodd-processed rails had failed their first test: “treatment under the hammer…. You may as well abandon the Patent–It will not do if this Rail is a sample.” Three days later, Thomson wrote Carnegie again, this time marking his letter with a handwritten “Private” in the top left-hand corner and “a word to the wise” penned in just below. Carnegie had apparently asked Thomson for more time–and/or money–to continue his experiments. Thomson replied that the experiments his engineers had made had so “impaired my confidence in this process that I don’t feel at liberty to increase our order for these Rails.”
Instead of giving up, Carnegie pushed forward, hawking his new steel-faced iron rails to other railroad presidents, attempting to get a new contract with Thomson, and reorganizing the Freedom Iron Company in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, in which he was a major investor, into Freedom Iron and Steel. In the spring of 1867, he succeeded, despite Thomson’s misgivings, in getting the approval to manufacture and deliver a second 500-ton batch of steel-faced rails. The new rails fared as poorly as the old ones. There would be no further contracts forthcoming from the Pennsylvania Railroad or any other railroad.
Carnegie tried to bluff his way through. When his contacts in England recommended that he purchase the American rights to a better process for facing iron rails with steel, this one invented by a Mr. Webb, Carnegie retooled his mill for the new process. He was fooled a second time. Not only was the Webb process as impractical as the Dodd, but there was, as there (p. 102) had been with the Dodd process, confusion as to who held the American patent rights. Within a year, the company Carnegie had organized to produce the new steel-faced rails was out of business.
. . .
These early failures did not deter him from investing in other start-up companies and technologies, but he would in future be a bit more careful before committing his capital. In March 1869, Tom Scott solicited his advice about investing in the rights to a new “Chrome Steel process.” Carnegie replied that his “advice (which don’t cost anything if of no value) would be to have nothing to do with this or any other great change in the manufacture of steel or iron…. I know at least six inventors who have the secret all are so anxiously awaiting…. That there is to be a great change in the manufacture of iron and steel some of these years is probable, but exactly what form it is to take no one knows. I would advise you to steer clear of the whole thing. One will win, but many lose and you and I not being practical men would very likely be among the more numerous class. At least we would wager at very long odds. There are many enterprises where we can go in even.”

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: bracketed name, ellipsis near start, and ellipsis between paragraphs added; ellipsis internal to other paragraphs, in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Malcolm Gladwell, on Harvard, Rings True to Debbie Sterling

Debbie Sterling, GoldieBlox entrepreneur. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 2) Debbie Sterling is the founder and chief executive of GoldieBlox, a toy company dedicated to encouraging girls’ interest in engineering and construction.

READING I just started “David and Goliath,” by Malcolm Gladwell. He has some really interesting statistics about how at the top-tier universities like Stanford and Harvard, freshmen who go into engineering often fall out versus if those same students had gone to a second-tier school, they would have been in the top of their class and therefore would have stayed in. It really spoke to me because I was definitely one of those engineering students at Stanford who constantly felt like I was surrounded by geniuses. I was intimidated, but I stayed because I am just so stubborn.

For the full interview, see:
KATE MURPHY, interviewer. “DOWNLOAD; Debbie Sterling.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., December 22, 2013): 2.
(Note: bold in original, indicating that what follows are the words of Debbie Sterling.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date December 21, 2013.)

Book that “spoke to” Sterling:
Gladwell, Malcolm. David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

The Law-Breaking Entrepreneur as “Savior”

(p. A11) This is a simple lesson in free-market economics, provided courtesy of the harsh winter weather of recent days in the eastern half of the U.S. Coincidentally, the annual meetings of the American Economic Association were scheduled to take place in Philadelphia, from Jan. 3-6. My friend and colleague, Haizheng Li, flew in to Philadelphia late in the evening of Thursday, Jan. 2, landing around 10:45. As he later told me, by then it was snowing heavily. Because of backed-up air traffic, the pilot was not able to park at their arrival gate for 40 minutes. After de-planing, Haizheng waited for another 40 minutes to retrieve his luggage.
. . .
Haizheng and a number of other passengers were facing the grim prospect of an uncomfortable night at the airport. The food vendors were all closed. Haizheng was tired and hungry–and he was scheduled to make a presentation at 8 the next morning.
Unexpectedly, out of the night came a savior. A man walked through baggage claim asking whether any of the recently arrived passengers needed transportation to one of the downtown hotels. Haizheng didn’t ask what the ride might cost, he just said yes. As it turned out, the man took six stranded passengers, plus luggage, to their hotels for $25 each.
No doubt in doing so he broke at least one, probably several, laws regarding passenger transport that are designed to prop up the local taxi cartel. Yet this man’s action dramatically improved the lives of six individuals, each of whom undoubtedly would have been willing to pay much more than $25 to get from the airport to their respective hotels. Haizheng told me he would have paid a lot more.

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID N. LABAND. “An Economics Lesson at the Baggage Carousel; Government-regulated taxis weren’t around in a snowstorm. Then came a man with a car and price.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., Jan. 10, 2014): A11.
(Note: ellipsis added; italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Jan. 9, 2014.)