Entrepreneurship – Page 147 – artdiamondblog.com

It’s Hard to Be Consistent

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

(p. A13) Both Adam Smith and Horatio Alger would find something to like in the rise of T. Boone Pickens. “Boy geologist” Boone quit a promising job at Phillips Petroleum in the mid-1950s and built, over the following decades, Mesa Petroleum, a top North American independent oil and gas producer. Mesa found lots of oil and gas, provided jobs for hundreds of workers, and earned wealth for thousands of investors. During the same years, Mr. Pickens’s attempts to take over Cities Service, Gulf Oil, Phillips and Unocal made the whole oil industry shape up: His bids required the managers of each company to look hard at its practices and improve its shareholder returns.

Such accomplishments are the core of Mr. Pickens’s 1987 autobiography, “Boone,” which was updated 13 years later and retitled “The Luckiest Guy in the World.” In those books, Mr. Pickens’s political philosophy rang loud and clear. “I believe,” he stated, “the greatest opportunity lies in a free marketplace.” He warned: “There are powerful forces afoot trying to restrict that freedom in the interests of the vested and already wealthy. I am talking about a relatively small collection of corporate executives who would use the engine of American commerce for their own narrow ends.”
. . .
Now Mr. Pickens has new dreams — and he is lobbying Washington to make them come alive.
In particular, Mr. Pickens wants the federal government — through a mix of tax incentives, mandates and subsidies — to override the market and redirect the uses of natural gas.
. . .
“The First Billion” argues for this plan, along with recounting Mr. Pickens’s business ups and downs. The book is often entertaining, featuring the usual “Boone-isms”: e.g., “Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser.” But readers unfamiliar with Mr. Pickens’s earlier memoirs may not realize that the new one represents a kind of bait-and-switch. Mr. Pickens’s standing to pronounce on energy matters was earned as a free-market producer. He is now using that standing to defy the market itself.

For the full review, see:
ROBERT BRADLEY JR. “BUSINESS BOOKSHELF; When Effort Is Energetic.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., September 10, 2008): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)

The book under review is:
Pickens, T. Boone. The First Billion Is the Hardest: Reflections on a Life of Comebacks and America’s Energy Future. New York: Crown Business, 2008.

“No Innovation Happens with 10 People in a Room”

“Paul English, the co-founder of Kayak, said the company valued testing new ideas, not talking about them.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B2) Q. You were a co-founder of Kayak nine years ago. What’s unusual about the culture?

A. We’re a little bit reckless in our decision-making — not with the business, but the point is that we try things. We give even junior people scary amounts of power to come up with ideas and implement them. We had an intern last summer who, on his very first day at Kayak, came up with an idea, wrote the code and released it. It may or may not have been successful, but it almost doesn’t matter, because it showed that we value speed, and we value testing ideas, not talking about them.
. . .
Q. What else?
A. We’re known for having very small meetings, usually three people. There’s a little clicker for counting people that hangs on the main conference room door. The reason it’s there is to send a message to people that I care about this issue. If there’s a bunch of people in the room, I’ll stick my head in and say, “It takes 10 of you to decide this? There aren’t three of you smart enough to do this?”
I just hate design by consensus. No innovation happens with 10 people in a room. It’s very easy to be a critic and say why something won’t work. I don’t want that because new ideas are like these little precious things that can die very easily. Two or three people will nurture it, and make it stronger, give it a chance to see life.

For the full interview, see:
ADAM BRYANT, interviewer. “CORNER OFFICE; Paul English; Ten People in a Meeting Is About Seven Too Many.” The New York Times (Fri., July 26, 2013): B2.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold and italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date July 25, 2013, and has the title “CORNER OFFICE; Paul English of Kayak, on Nurturing New Ideas.”)

“A Jigger of Asperger’s in the Mix”

(p. 11) Page was not a social animal– people who talked to him often wondered if there were a jigger of Asperger’s in the mix– and could unnerve people by simply not talking. But when he did speak, more often than not (p. 12) he would come out with ideas that bordered on the fantastic.

Source:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

In the Plex Helps Us Understand Entrepreneurs Page and Brin

Source of book image: http://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/intheplex.jpg

In the Plex goes from detail to detail of the values, actions and quirks of a large cast of characters who have been involved in the Google story. I did not find the book as consistently gripping as Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography.
But some of the details help suggest new hypotheses, or test old ones, on important issues of entrepreneurship and technological progress. Some parts are revealing of the goals and methods of Page and Brin.
During the next weeks I will quote some of the more interesting passages.

Book discussed:
Levy, Steven. In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011.

Wittgenstein Heirs Lost Family Wealth and “Found Little Happiness”

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

(p. W10) As he lay dying during Christmas 1912 — from a gruesome throat cancer — the Viennese industrialist Karl Wittgenstein no doubt took some comfort in the fact that he was leaving to his heirs one of the largest fortunes in Europe. He had acquired his wealth in just 30 years, the period during which Wittgenstein, an engineer, transformed a small steel mill into Europe’s largest steel cartel through a combination of hard work, luck and ruthlessness. As der österreichische Eisenkönig (the “Austrian iron king”), he was the chief executive, principal shareholder or director of dozens of industrial companies and banks that provided the ore, manufacturing and financing for most of the steel products of the Habsburg Empire.

In his spare time, Wittgenstein acquired a spectacular house in Vienna, grandly styled as the family’s Palais Wittgenstein.
. . .
Today, though, the Wittgenstein millions are gone and the Palais replaced by a hideous concrete apartment block. “Riches,” Adam Smith wrote, “. . . very seldom remain long in the same family.” Alexander Waugh’s grimly amusing “The House of Wittgenstein” shows how the family fortune was lost and how the family members themselves, despite instances of prodigious talent and accomplishment, found little happiness in their own lives or pleasure in their sibling relations.

For the full review, see:
JAMES F. PENROSE. “BOOKS; A Viennese Blend: Riches and Rancor; Blessed by Musical and Intellectual Gifts, and Lots of Money, a Family Still Struggled to Find Harmony.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., March 1, 2009): W10.
(Note: ellipsis added; italics in original.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date February 28, 2009.)

The book under review is:
Waugh, Alexander. The House of Wittgenstein: A Family at War. New York: Doubleday, 2009.

Children of Chinese Entrepreneurs Want to Work for Government

“Engineering student Xie Chaobo has yet to land a job.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) BEIJING–Xie Chaobo figures he has the credentials to land a job at one of China’s big state-owned firms. He is a graduate student at Tsinghua University, one of China’s best. His field of study is environmental engineering, one of China’s priorities. And he is experimenting with new techniques for identifying water pollutants, which should make him a valuable catch.
But he has applied to 30 companies so far and scored just four interviews, none of which has led to a job.
Although Mr. Xie’s parents are entrepreneurs who have built companies that make glasses, shoes and now water pumps, he has no interest in working at a private startup. Chinese students “have been told since we were children to focus on stability instead of risk,” the 24-year-old engineering student says.
Over the past decade, the number of new graduates from Chinese universities has increased sixfold to more than six million a year, creating an epic glut that is depressing wages, (p. A10) leaving many recent college graduates without jobs and making students fearful about their future. Two-thirds of Chinese graduates say they want to work either in the government or big state-owned firms, which are seen as recession-proof, rather than at the private companies that have powered China’s remarkable economic climb, surveys indicate. Few college students today, according to the surveys, are ready to leave the safe shores of government work and “jump into the sea,” as the Chinese expression goes, to join startups or go into business for themselves, although many of their parents did just that in the 1990s.

For the full story, see:
MIKE RAMSEY and VALERIE BAUERLEIN. “Tesla Clashes With Car Dealers; Electric-Vehicle Maker Wants to Sell Directly to Consumers; Critics Say Plan Violates Franchise Laws.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., June 18, 2013): B1-B2.

Source of table: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited above.

Slow Patent System Makes U.S. Look Like Third World Country

(p. 118) The absurd length of time and the outrageous cost of obtaining a patent is a national disgrace. If we heard it took two to five years to obtain title to real property somewhere, we would assume it was a corrupt third world country. And yet that is how long it takes to receive a patent now, depending on the area of technology.

Source:
Halling, Dale B. The Decline and Fall of the American Entrepreneur: How Little Known Laws and Regulations Are Killing Innovation. Charleston, S.C.: BookSurge Publishing, 2009.

Laws to Protect Car Dealers, Keep Car Prices High

“Tesla ‘galleries’ such as this one in McLean, Va., can show but not sell cars.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) RALEIGH, N.C.–Elon Musk made a fortune disrupting the status quo in online shopping and renewable energy. Now he’s up against his toughest challenge yet: local car dealers.

Mr. Musk, the billionaire behind PayPal and now Tesla Motors Inc., wants to sell his $70,000 Tesla electric luxury vehicles directly to consumers, bypassing franchised automobile dealers. Dealers are flexing their considerable muscle in states including Texas and Virginia to stop him.
The latest battleground is North Carolina, where the Republican-controlled state Senate last month unanimously approved a measure that would block Tesla from selling online, its only sales outlet here. Tesla has staged whiz-bang test drives for legislators in front of the State House and hired one of the state’s most influential lobbyists to stave off a similar vote in the House before the legislative session ends in early July.
The focus of the power struggle between Mr. Musk and auto dealers is a thicket of state franchise laws, many of which go back to the auto industry’s earliest days when industry pioneer Henry Ford began turning to eager entrepreneurs to help sell his Model T.
Dealers say laws passed over the decades to prevent car makers from selling directly to consumers are justified because without them auto makers could use their economic clout to sell vehicles for less than their independent franchisees.

“The Million-Dollar Question” for “Our Long Economic Slump”: Why “the Severe Downturn in Jobs”?

(p. 5) [There are] . . . two underappreciated aspects of our long economic slump. First, it has exacted the harshest toll on the young — even harsher than on people in their 50s and 60s, who have also suffered. And while the American economy has come back more robustly than some of its global rivals in terms of overall production, the recovery has been strangely light on new jobs, even after Friday’s better-than-expected unemployment report. American companies are doing more with less.
“This still is a very big puzzle,” said Lawrence F. Katz, a Harvard professor who was chief economist at the Labor Department during the Clinton administration. He called the severe downturn in jobs “the million-dollar question” for the economy.

For the full commentary, see:
DAVID LEONHARDT. “CAPITAL IDEAS; The Idled Young Americans.” The New York Times, SundayReview Section (Sun., May 5, 2013): 5.
(Note: ellipsis, and words in brackets, added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 3, 2013.)

Will Apple Innovate Without Jobs?

“Steve Jobs, introducing the iPhone 4 in January [2011].” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B4) “The good news for Apple is that the product road map in this industry is pretty much in place two and three years out,” said David B. Yoffie, a professor at the Harvard Business School. “So 80 percent to 90 percent of what would happen in that time would be the same, even without Steve.”

“The real challenge for Apple,” Mr. Yoffie continued, “will be what happens beyond that road map. Apple is going to need a new leader with a new way of recreating and managing the business in the future.”
. . .
His design decisions, Mr. Jobs explained, were shaped by his understanding of both technology and popular culture. His own study and intuition, not focus groups, were his guide. When a reporter asked what market research went into the iPad, Mr. Jobs replied: “None. It’s not the consumers’ job to know what they want.”
. . .
Great products, Mr. Jobs once explained, were a triumph of taste, of “trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done and then trying to bring those things into what you are doing.”
Mr. Yoffie said Mr. Jobs “had a unique combination of visionary creativity and decisiveness,” adding: “No one will replace him.”

For the full story, see:
STEVE LOHR. “Without Its Master of Design, Apple Will Face Challenges.” The New York Times (Thurs., August 25, 2011): B1 & B4.
(Note: ellipses in text, and bracketed year in caption, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date August 24, 2011, and the slightly longer title “Without Its Master of Design, Apple Will Face Many Challenges.”)

Chinese Peasants Applied Precautionary Principle to Scythe Technology

(p. 249) In a letter Orville Wright wrote to his inventor friend Henry Ford, Wright recounts a story he heard from a missionary stationed in China. Wright told Ford the story for the same reason I tell it here: as a cautionary tale about speculative risks. The missionary wanted to improve the laborious way the Chinese peasants in his province harvested grain. The local farmers clipped the stalks with some kind of small hand shear. So the missionary had a scythe shipped in from America and demonstrated its superior productivity to an enthralled crowd. “The next morning, however, a delegation came to see the missionary. The scythe must be destroyed at once. What, they said, if it should fall into the hands of thieves; a whole field could be cut and carried away in a single night.” And so the scythe was banished, progress stopped, because nonusers could imagine a possible–but wholly improbable–way it could significantly harm their society.

Source:
Kelly, Kevin. What Technology Wants. New York: Viking Adult, 2010.