Category: Entrepreneurship

Judgment Overrode Algorithm to Save First Moon Landing

(p. 29) On July 20, 1969, moments after mission control in Houston had given the Apollo 11 lunar module, Eagle, the O.K. to begin its descent to the moon, a yellow warning light flashed on the cockpit instrument panel.
“Program alarm,” the commander, Neil Armstrong, radioed. “It’s a 1202.”
The alarm appeared to indicate a computer systems overload, raising the specter of a breakdown. With only a few minutes left before touchdown on the moon, Steve Bales, the guidance officer in mission control, had to make a decision: Let the module continue to descend, or abort the mission and send the module rocketing back to the command ship, Columbia.
By intercom, Mr. Bales quickly consulted Jack Garman, a 24-year-old engineer who was overseeing the software support group from a back-room console.
Mr. Garman had painstakingly prepared himself for just this contingency — the possibility of a false alarm.
“So I said,” he remembered, “on this backup room voice loop that no one can hear, ‘As long as it doesn’t reoccur, it’s fine.'”
At 4:18 p.m., with only 30 seconds of fuel remaining for the descent, Mr. Armstrong radioed: “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.”
Mr. Garman, whose self-assurance and honed judgment effectively saved mankind’s first lunar landing, died on Tuesday outside Houston.

For the full obituary, see:
SAM ROBERTS. “Jack Garman, Who Saved Moon Landing, Dies at 72.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., SEPT. 25, 2016): 29.
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date SEPT. 24, 2016, and has the title “Jack Garman, Whose Judgment Call Saved Moon Landing, Dies at 72.”)

Musk Unveils Bold Private Enterprise Plan to Colonize Mars

(p. B3) Entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiled his contrarian vision for sending humans to Mars in roughly the next decade, and ultimately setting up colonies there, relying on bold moves by private enterprise, instead of more-gradual steps previously proposed by Washington.
Mr. Musk–who in 14 years transformed his closely held rocket company, Space Exploration Technologies Corp., into a global presence–envisions hosts of giant, reusable rockets standing more than 300 feet tall eventually launching fleets of carbon-fiber spacecraft into orbit.
The boosters would return to Earth, blast off again into the heavens with “tanker” spaceships capable of refueling the initial vehicles, and then send those serviced spacecraft on their way to the Red Planet. The rockets would be twice as powerful as the Saturn 5 boosters that sent U.S. astronauts to the Moon. Each fully developed spacecraft likely would carry between 100 and 200 passengers, Mr. Musk said.

For the full story, see:
ANDY PASZTOR. “Musk Offers Vision of Mars Flights.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Sept. 28, 2016): B3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 27, 2016, and has the title “Elon Musk Outlines Plans for Missions to Mars.”)

“You Never Know for Sure Where Good Ideas Will Come From”

(p. B1) The best-performing U.S. stock over the past 30 years isn’t a household name like Costco Wholesale Corp. or Johnson & Johnson. It’s Balchem, up 107,099% since the end of 1985, according to FactSet Research Systems.
You’d never heard of Balchem? Me either; stocks don’t come much more obscure than this. Based in Wawayanda, N.Y. (population 7,266), about 70 miles northwest of New York City, Balchem makes flavorings, fumigating gases and nutritional additives for animal feed. Its total stock market value is about $1.7 billion.
Since the end of 1985, Balchem has gained an average of 26.2% annually, compared with 10.3% for the S&P 500 and 15.7% for Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc.
. . .
(p. B7) But you can learn from Balchem and its peers for free. Over the past 30 years, 44 U.S. stocks generated cumulative total returns of 10,000% or more, according to FactSet. The 10 behind Balchem are Home Depot Inc., Amgen Inc., Nike Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Danaher Corp., Altair Corp., Kansas City Southern, Jack Henry & Associates Inc., Apple Inc. and Altria Group Inc. All grew by at least twice the rate of the S&P 500. Investment manager William Bernstein of Efficient Frontier Advisors in Eastford, Conn., has christened such companies “superstocks.”
Perhaps the most notable thing they share, says David Salem, chief investment officer at Windhorse Capital Management in Boston, is that “they have all undergone at least one near-death experience.”
. . .
Balchem shows the patience, grit and good luck it takes for a company to turn into a superstock.
The firm began in 1967 as a specialty-chemicals company that made ingredients for hairspray and ink, among other things, says Raymond Reber, who stepped down as chief executive in 1997.
In 1996, Balchem was losing so much on a new technology to coat nutrients that “it was crazy,” says Mr. Reber. “We couldn’t operate that way.” So, he recalls, he told the company’s factory workers, “‘You have to figure out a way to double our production without raising our costs.’ And they did it.”
But the transition was rough. Balchem’s shares dropped 57% in 13 months between late 1997 and the end of 1998.
Dino Rossi, who was Balchem’s chief executive between 1998 and last year, remembers a staff engineer pointing out long ago that its nutritional choline salts might have a nonfood purpose: to help stabilize clay deposits. Years went by before fracking for oil and gas created a bonanza for that use. The end result: tens of millions of dollars in revenue for Balchem.
“You never know for sure where good ideas will come from,” says Mr. Rossi, “and it doesn’t happen overnight.”
It took years for Balchem to perfect microcapsules that could survive the harsh acids of a cow’s first stomach and then release nutrients farther along in the animal’s digestive system. “You have to be constantly working the technology harder,” says Mr. Rossi.

For the full commentary, see:
JASON ZWEIG. “No. 1 Over 30 Years? You Will Never Guess.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Jan 30, 2016): B1 & B7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Jan 29, 2016, and has the title The Best Stock Over the Last 30 Years? You’ve Never Heard of It.”)

“A Corporate Jargon of Uplift That Turns Sensitive Souls Suicidal”

(p. C1) Though Dante cataloged many forms of diabolical torture in his “Inferno,” a guided tour of hell, he somehow missed out on what could well be the most excruciating eternal punishment of all. I mean (ominous organ chords, please) the staff meeting that never, ever ends.
You’ve surely been a part of such sessions. They’re those gatherings in which people waste time by talking about how to be more productive, with algebraic visual aids and a corporate jargon of uplift that turns sensitive souls suicidal.

For the full review, see:
BEN BRANTLEY. “A Circle of Hell: The Staff Meeting.” The New York Times (Mon., OCT. 10, 2016): C1 & C4.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date OCT. 9, 2016, and has the title “Review: ‘Miles for Mary,’ a Sendup of the Interminable Meeting From Hell.”)

Blockchain Is a Process Innovation That Will Make Financial Records More Reliable and Easier to Access

(p. A13) Until the mid-1990s, the internet was little more than an arcane set of technical standards used by academics. Few predicted the profound effect it would have on society. Today, blockchain–the technology behind the digital currency bitcoin–might seem like a trinket for computer geeks. But once widely adopted, it will transform the world.
Blockchain offers a way to track items or transactions using a shared digital “ledger.” Blocks of new transactions are added at the end of the chain, and encryption ensures that it remains unbroken–tamper-proof and error-free. This is significantly more efficient than the current methods for logging and sharing such information.
Consider the process of buying a house, a complex transaction involving banks, attorneys, title companies, insurers, regulators, tax agencies and inspectors. They all maintain separate records, and it’s costly to verify and record each step. That’s why the average closing takes roughly 50 days. Blockchain offers a solution: a trusted, immutable digital ledger, visible to all participants, that shows every element of the transaction.

For the full commentary, see:
GINNI ROMETTY. “How Blockchain Will Change Your Life.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Nov. 8, 2016): A13.
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Nov. 7, 2016, and has the title “KEYWORDS; Is Engine of Innovation in Danger of Stalling?”)

Spreadsheets and Committees Are Enemies of Innovation

(p. B4) “As we became more sophisticated in quantifying things we became less and less willing to take risks,” says Horace Dediu, a technology analyst and fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a think tank. “The spreadsheet is the weapon of mass destruction against creative power.”
The same could be said of university research, says Dr. Prabhakar. Research priorities are often decided by peer review, that is, a committee.
“It drives research to more incrementalism,” she says. “Committees are a great way to reduce risk, but not to take risk.”

For the full commentary, see:
CHRISTOPHER MIMS. “KEYWORDS; Engine of Innovation Loses Some Spark.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Nov. 21, 2016): B1 & B4.
(Note: the online version of the article has the date Nov. 20, 2016, and has the title “KEYWORDS; Is Engine of Innovation in Danger of Stalling?”)

Studying Cancer in Dogs Can Help Humans and Dogs

(p. D4) Dogs are a better natural model for some human diseases than mice or even primates because they live with people, Dr. Karlsson says. “Compared to lab mice, with dogs they’re getting diseases within their natural life span, they’re exposed to the same pollutants in the environment” as humans, she says.
Previous canine studies conducted by other scientists have shed light on human diseases like osteosarcoma, a type of bone cancer, as well as the sleep disorder narcolepsy and a neurological condition, epilepsy.
With osteosarcoma, the most common type of bone cancer in children and one that frequently strikes certain dog breeds, researchers have discovered that tumors in dogs and children are virtually indistinguishable. The tumors share similarities in their location, development of chemotherapy-resistant growths and altered functioning of certain proteins, making dogs a good animal model of the disease. Collecting more specimens from dogs could lead to progress in identifying tumor targets and new cancer drugs in dogs as well as in children, some scientists say.

For the full story, see:
SHIRLEY S. WANG. “IN THE LAB; How Dogs’ Genes Can Help Humans.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Dec. 3, 2015): D4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 2, 2015, and has the title “IN THE LAB; Why Dogs Are Some Scientists’ New Best Friends.”)

A paper showing how cancer research on dogs can help humans, is:
Fenger, Joelle M., Cheryl A. London, and William C. Kisseberth. “Canine Osteosarcoma: A Naturally Occurring Disease to Inform Pediatric Oncology.” ILAR Journal 55, no. 1 (2014): 69-85.

“We Shall Increasingly Have the Power to Make Life Good”

(p. B13) Derek Parfit, a British philosopher whose writing on personal identity, the nature of reasons and the objectivity of morality re-established ethics as a central concern for contemporary thinkers and set the terms for philosophic inquiry, died on Monday at his home in London.
. . .
The two volumes of “On What Matters,” published in 2011, dealt with the theory of reasons and morality, arguing for the existence of objective truth in ethics.
. . .
“With no other philosopher have I had such a clear sense of someone who had already thought of every objection I could make, of the best replies to them, of further objections that I might then make, and of replies to them too,” the philosopher Peter Singer wrote recently on the philosophy website Daily Nous.
. . .
In February [2017], Oxford University Press plans to publish a third volume of “On What Matters.” It consists in part of responses to criticism of his work by leading philosophers, which will appear in a companion volume, edited by Mr. Singer, titled “Does Anything Really Matter?”
. . .
On Daily Nous, Mr. Singer offered a snippet from Mr. Parfit’s new work:
“Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine.
“In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea.”

For the full obituary, see:
WILLIAM GRIMES. “Derek Parfit, 74, Philosopher Who Explored Identity.” The New York Times (Thurs., JAN. 5, 2017): B13.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date JAN. 4, 2017, and has the title “Derek Parfit, Philosopher Who Explored Identity and Moral Choice, Dies at 74.”)

The book by Parfit quoted above, is:
Parfit, Derek. On What Matters: Volume Three. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2017.

Internet Innovations Only Arose After Entrepreneurs Created PCs

(p. B15) Leo L. Beranek, an engineer whose company designed the acoustics for the United Nations and concert halls at Lincoln Center and Tanglewood, then built the direct precursor to the internet under contract to the Defense Department, died on Oct. 10 [2016] at his home in Westwood, Mass.
. . .
After the war, Dr. Beranek was recruited to teach at M.I.T., where he was named technical director of the engineering department’s acoustics laboratory. The administrative director of that lab was Richard Bolt, who later founded Bolt, Beranek & Newman with Dr. Beranek and Robert Newman, a former student of Dr. Bolt’s.
The company was conceived as a center for leading-edge acoustic research. But Dr. Beranek changed its direction in the 1950s to include a focus on the nascent computer age.
“As president, I decided to take B.B.N. into the field of man-machine systems because I felt acoustics was a limited field and no one seemed to be offering consulting services in that area,” Dr. Beranek said in a 2012 interview for this obituary.
He hired J.C.R. Licklider, a pioneering computer scientist from M.I.T., to lead the effort, and it was Dr. Licklider who persuaded him that the company needed to get involved in computers.
Under Dr. Licklider, the company developed one of the best software research groups in the country and won many critical projects with the Department of Defense, NASA, the National Institutes of Health and other government agencies. Though Dr. Licklider left in 1962, the company became a favored destination for a new generation of software developers and was often referred to as the third university in Cambridge.
“We bought our first digital computer from Digital Equipment Corporation, and with it we were able to attract some of the best minds from M.I.T. and Harvard, and this led to the ARPA contract to build the Arpanet,” Dr. Beranek said.
“I never dreamed the internet would come into such widespread use, because the first users of the Arpanet were large mainframe computer owners,” he said. “This all changed when the personal computer became available. With the PC, I could see that computers were fun, and that is the real reason why all innovations come into widespread use.”

For the full obituary, see:

GLENN RIFKIN. “Leo Beranek, 102, Who Pivoted From Acoustics to Computers, Dies.” The New York Times (Tues, OCT. 18, 2016): B15.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date OCT. 17, 2016, and has the title “Leo Beranek, Acoustics Designer and Internet Pioneer, Dies at 102.” )

Flaws in Early Tech, Solved by Later and Better Tech

(p. A2) Mr. Mokyr says innovators gravitate to society’s greatest needs. In previous eras, it was cheap and rapid transport, reliable energy, and basic health care. Today, seven of the top 10 problems he says are most in need of innovative solutions are instances of bite-back. They include global warming, antibiotic resistance, obesity and information overload. Fixing these problems may weigh heavily on growth. Yet Mr. Mokyr argues past productivity was overstated because it didn’t include those costs.
Nonetheless, he’s an optimist. For every unintended consequence one innovation brings, another innovation will find the answer. Fluoridation cured tooth decay, and automotive engineers found alternatives to leaded gasoline. And distracted driving? Driverless cars may take care of that plague before long.

For the full commentary, see:
GREG IP. “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; When Tech Bites Back: The Cost of Innovation.” The New York Times (Thurs., Oct. 20, 2016): A2.
(Note: the online version of the commentaty has the date Oct. 19, 2016, and has the title “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; When Tech Bites Back: Innovation’s Dark Side.”)

Venture Capitalists Expect Future Successful Entrepreneurs to Look Like Recent Successful Entrepreneurs

(p. 4) In recent months, the fund-raising atmosphere has cooled as venture capitalists react to the poor stock market performance of some public tech companies and question whether the recent fast pace of investment is sustainable. Venture capitalists are making fewer investments at lower valuations.
“There is this delusion that it’s easy to raise money in Silicon Valley,” said Sam Altman, president of Y Combinator, a mentorship and investment program for start-ups. “Raising money is incredibly hard.”
. . .
Venture capitalists, who hold the keys to success in Silicon Valley by providing start-up money, are even more likely to be white and male than tech company employees are. Theirs is an insular business. Most investors accept pitches only from entrepreneurs who come through an introduction, and they tend to finance people who have succeeded before, or who remind them of those who did.
According to a 2014 study published by the National Academy of Sciences, investors prefer pitches by men, particularly attractive men, to those by women, even when the content of the pitch is the same. In addition to studying the results of three entrepreneurial pitch competitions, the researchers conducted two experiments in which a representative sample of working adults heard identical pitches in male and female voices. Sixty-eight percent of people preferred to finance the company when it was pitched by a male voice, while 32 percent chose the female.
. . .
At the gender discrimination trial last year against Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, which the venture capital firm won, female employees said they were excluded from a ski trip, denied credit for deals they brought to the firm, and told they both didn’t speak up enough and talked too much.
“I feel like it’s a lot more nuanced and sometimes it’s subconscious,” said Julia Hu, the founder and chief executive of Lark, which makes a health and weight-loss app. “V.C.s are pattern matchers, and they’re just used to seeing men like themselves.”
Many women convey confidence and leadership in a different way than men do, she said. As an Asian woman, she said, she was raised to be humble and quiet and felt uncomfortable promoting her skills. “To try to be who I thought they wanted me to be, which was another Mark Zuckerberg, was actually very difficult for me without feeling inauthentic.”

For the full story, see:
Miller, Claire Cain. “The Venture Capital Ceiling.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., FEB. 28, 2016): 1 & 4-5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date FEB. 27, 2016, and has the title “What It’s Really Like to Risk It All in Silicon Valley.”)

The National Academy of Sciences study mentioned above, is:
Wood Brooks, Alison, Laura Huang, Sarah Wood Kearney, and Fiona E. Murray. “Investors Prefer Entrepreneurial Ventures Pitched by Attractive Men.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111, no. 12 (March 25, 2014): 4427-31.