Rosenberg and Bridzell (1986, p. 150) briefly mention that it took John Harrison four long tries before he got the chronometer right.
This is the case wonderfully documented in:
Sobel, Dava. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. 1st ed. New York: Walker & Company, 1995.
Another example of dogged persistence is Cyrus Field, as described in the A Thread across the Ocean.
Yet another is Marconi, as described in Thunderstruck.
These are good examples of the type of entrepreneur I tentatively call the ‘project entrepreneur’. (As contrasted with entrepreneurs who have other primary motives, like making money, or winning for the sake of winning.)
I’m going to keep looking for the best name for this type of entrepreneur; maybe the ‘idealist entrepreneur’?
Category: Entrepreneurship
Freeing Medical Entrepreneurship Could Speed Cures
Medical entrepreneur Tom Harold. Source of photo: http://www.scyfix.org/management.php
(p. 1D) ScyFix, a Chanhassen, Minn., startup, has developed a device it claims treats diseases such as glaucoma and macular degeneration by shooting electric currents into the eye. The company, which is conducting clinical trials in India and the United States, hopes to sell the first device approved by the Food and Drug Administration designed to restore eyesight.
“To me, this is the pacemaker for the eye,” said Dr. Darrell DeMello, ScyFix president and a former executive at Boston Scientific Corp.
ScyFix hopes to eventually raise $60 million to $70 million to finish its clinical trials.
. . .
(p. 2D) Thomas Harold first came up with the idea for ScyFix in 2002. An Internet entrepreneur and a former executive at General Mills, Harold became interested in studies that showed electricity could restore sight. Drugs, however, could only slow the effects of some diseases.
. . .
Specifically, the studies showed electricity could stimulate the production of neurotrophins, a family of proteins that can instruct optic nerve, retinal neurons and photoreceptor cells not to die. In addition, neuromodulation can also repair cell membranes, allowing cells to absorb nutrients, release wastes, improve blood flow to the eye and rewire faulty nerve connections.
Working with doctors and engineers, Harold, who has no medical background, developed a device that releases low-intensity electric currents into the eyelids through electrodes. A complex mathematical equation programmed into the device controls the amount and frequency of the electricity. Patients can administer the treatment at home twice a day for 20 minutes.
Harold says he is encouraged by the results so far: Since 2002, the device has halted progression of diseases in 95 percent of the 1,000 patients tested in 29 countries, according to ScyFix.
“Everything stopped getting worse,” Harold said. “That was a win in itself.”
In addition, 80 percent of the patients reported vision improvement. There were no side effects, the company said.
For the full story, see:
Lee, Thomas (The Star Tribune). “‘Pacemaker’ for eyes shows initial promise.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, March 9, 2008): 1D & 2D.
(Note: ellipses added.)
Below I have pasted a couple of paragraphs from the ScyFIX web site. Note that Europeans are free to try the therapy, if they so desire. But citizens of the United States are not free to try the therapy, due to the regulations of the Food and Drug Admininstration (FDA) of the U.S. government.
Buy ScyFIX 600 and Accessories on-line!
Welcome to ScyFIX international web shop where you can order products, choose payment method, including a secure on-line credit card payment service (SSL), and check your delivery status on-line. Buying on-line is safe and easy and you will be guided all the way. All prices are in € (Euro). Place your order and your credit card company will convert the amount in € to your own currency. We accept Visa, Master Card, EuroCard and most bank cards connected to VISA or Master Card. Follow the instructions to take you through the pages, and then onto a secure site in which you will input your credit card and shipping details. When bank authorization has been attained, you will get a confirmation on-line, as well as a confirming e-mail. If at any stage you wish to change your order, just click the “Remove”-button.
Please note that ScyFIX can not ship devices to US addresses, until the ongoing FDA trials have resulted in an approval to market the product in the USA. US customers who mistakenly order and pay for a therapy kit over the web, will be contacted and refunded. However, ScyFIX will deduct 100€ (Euros) covering banking fees and handling costs. If you are a US resident and want to know more about our therapy, please send an inquiry by e-mail to our European office support@scyfix.org, or fill in your personal information in our Clinical Trial & Purchase Interest Form by clicking here www.scyfix.org/clinical_trial_form.htm.
The paragraphs were accessed on 3/9/08 from:
http://www.scyfix.org/shop/
Have You Hugged Your Venture Capitalist Today?
“Apple’s chief executive, Steven P. Jobs, left, and the venture capitalist John Doerr at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article cited below.
(p. C3) CUPERTINO, Calif. — Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, is hoping to expand the iPhone’s appeal by luring software developers to create programs for it.
John Doerr, the venture capitalist, is adding an incentive: his firm is putting up $100 million to invest in the work of those programmers.
At an event Thursday at Apple headquarters, Mr. Jobs announced a low-cost software development kit that outside programmers can use to create programs for the iPhone, much as they now write the vast majority of the programs created for the Macintosh. Until now, iPhones have officially been able to run only the limited assortment of applications that Apple includes. (Some buyers have modified the phones to add unauthorized software.)
“We’re very excited about this,” said Mr. Jobs, who also announced that the company was adding features to make the iPhone more appealing to business users. “We think a lot of people, after understanding where we are going, are going to want to become an iPhone developer.”
Sharing the stage with Mr. Jobs, Mr. Doerr announced that his firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, had established a $100 million venture capital fund for iPhone entrepreneurs. Called the iFund, it is the largest fund the company has created for a specific technology.
“The potential for iPhone is huge,” Mr. Doerr said.
For the full story, see:
LAURIE J. FLYNN. “Apple to Encourage iPhone Programmers.” The New York Times (Fri., March 07, 2008): C3.
Wal-Mart Designs Health Care Around the Needs of Consumers
“Alicia Ledlie, senior director of health business development for Wal-Mart, said walk-in medical clinics would look like the mockup behind her, in a warehouse in Bentonville, Ark.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. C4) Moving to upgrade its walk-in medical clinic business, Wal-Mart is set to announce on Thursday plans for several hundred new clinics at its stores, using a standardized format and jointly branded with hospitals and medical groups.
. . .
Walk-in medical clinics are a growing industry, with numerous competitors that include big-box retailers, drugstores and even grocery chains around the country. Industry executives say 1,500 to 1,800 clinics will be open by the end of the year.
Propelled by the drugstore chains CVS and Walgreens, by far the biggest sponsors of the clinics to date, more than 700 clinics have opened in the last 15 months. But the business model is unproven so far.
Few, if any, clinics are profitable, according to industry analysts, and only a handful have broken even on daily operations. Most have been open a year or less, and executives say it takes up to three years for a clinic to become profitable enough to recover start-up costs.
Medical societies are inclined to be skeptical of the clinics. The American Academy of Pediatrics opposes them, saying they add to fragmentation in the health care system.
Dr. Edward Zissman, a pediatrician in central Florida, said he had qualms about hospitals that hook up with the clinics. “Putting their name on a product that I don’t think has the highest quality,” he said, “is going to cost them dearly with physicians.”
The American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Medical Association have set forth principles for clinics to observe, including sending patients’ medical record to their doctors and finding doctors for patients who do not already have them. Most states require varying degrees of physician supervision of the clinic nurses. Clinic operators say they are complying.
Many patients have said they like the convenience of the walk-in clinics’ weekend and evening hours, the short waiting times to see a nurse practitioner, and the posted price lists for a limited menu of care like tests and prescriptions for sore throats and ear infections and seasonal flu shots.
. . .
“The clinics are the latest big example of how you could think about consumers and what their needs are, rather than a health care system exclusively designed around the needs of providers,” said Margaret Laws, director of an innovations program at the California Health Care Foundation, an independent group that finances health policy research.
For the full story, see:
MILT FREUDENHEIM. “Wal-Mart Will Expand In-Store Medical Clinics.” The New York Times (Thurs., February 7, 2008): C4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
“The design of the Wal-Mart medical clinic is intended to look like a doctor’s office, complete with the usual medical hardware.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.
Gates Should Apply His Entrepreneurial Skills to His Philanthropy
From a cogent letter to the editor by Fred Smith:
(p. A13) The tragedy of Gates-style philanthropy is less that it will do little good but, rather, that he has abandoned the entrepreneurial skills used so creatively in his truly significant wealth-creation work at Microsoft. Had he employed similar skills in dealing with the problems of Africa, he would not — as Mr. Barro notes he is largely doing — simply replicate the tried and failed policies of traditional paternalistic aid. Rather, he would be examining the barriers — political, cultural, tribal — that block entrepreneurial activity throughout Africa and explore ways to remove them. Could we, for instance, out-compete the oligarchs and tyrants by creating prizes that would bypass the bureaucracy and achieve success in health- and wealth-creation, in reducing corruption?
For the full letter, see:
Fred L. Smith Jr. “Do Something for Other People by Getting Very, Very Rich.” Wall Street Journal (Fri., Jun 29, 2007): A13.
Entrepreneur Calls 2008 “The Year of the Spaceship”
Burt Rutan’s current design for WhiteKnightTwo, carrying the smaller SpaceShipTwo spaceship. Source of image: http://www.techno-science.net/?onglet=news&news=4993
(p. A18) Virgin Galactic, the company that hopes to fly well-heeled tourists to the edge of space by the end of 2009, provided a peek Wednesday at the craft that will take them there.
During a news conference at the American Museum of Natural History in Manhattan, Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur whose Virgin Airways is the parent company of the project, said 2008 would be “the year of the spaceship.”
Mr. Branson showed models of two vehicles, both created by the airplane designer Burt Rutan. WhiteKnightTwo, a two-fuselage, four-engine plane, is designed to ferry a smaller spacecraft, SpaceShipTwo, high into the sky and release it. The pilot of SpaceShipTwo will then fire the craft’s rocket engine, which burns a combination of nitrous oxide and a rubber-based solid fuel, shooting the vehicle to an altitude of more than 62 miles into the realm of black sky.
For the full story, see:
JOHN SCHWARTZ. “Built to Fly Into Space With the Greatest of Ease (They Hope).” The New York Times (Thurs., January 24, 2008): A18.
Artist’s rendering of SpaceShipTwo spaceship. Source of image: http://www.techno-science.net/?onglet=news&news=4993
Media Futures Market Achieves “Astonishing Accuracy”
The passage below is quoted from a WSJ summary of an article that appeared in the July 9-16, 2007 issue of The New Yorker:
(p. B8) The most successful media prediction market is the Hollywood Stock Exchange. According to a study by Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse, the markets’ forecasts of box-office performance are off by 16% on average. That’s astonishing accuracy for an industry which, despite all kinds of attempts to predict what will work, assumes that the vast majority of its product will fail at the box office.
For the full summary, see:
“The Informed Reader; Marketing; What’s the Next Big Thing? Prediction Markets Answer.” Wall Street Journal (Mon., July 2, 2007): B8.
Entrepreneurial Medicine Hunter Seeks Cures in Ethnobotany
Source of photo: screen capture from slide show on online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. C1) Part David Attenborough, part Indiana Jones, Mr. Kilham, an ethnobotanist from Massachusetts who calls himself the Medicine Hunter, has scoured remote jungles and highlands for three decades for plants, oils and extracts that can heal. He has eaten bees and scorpions in China, fired blow guns with Amazonian natives, and learned traditional war dances from Pacific Islanders.
But behind the colorful tales lies the prospect of money, lots of money — for Western pharmaceutical companies, impoverished indigenous tribes and Mr. Kilham.
. . .
(p. C5) In Peru, Mr. Kilham is betting on maca, a small root vegetable that grows here in the central highlands — “a turnip that packs a punch,” he says, adding “it imparts energy, sex drive and stamina like nothing else.”
That view is supported by studies carried out at the International Potato Center, a Lima-based research center that is internationally financed and staffed. Studies there show maca improves stamina, reduces the risk of prostate cancer and increases the motility, volume and quality of sperm.
Some peer reviewed studies published in the journal Reproductive Biology and Endocrinology backed up those findings.
. . .
One product, Maca Stimulant, is sold in Wal-Mart under Mr. Kilham’s Medicine Hunter brand. Mr. Kilham earns a retainer from both Naturex and Enzymatic Therapy, in addition to royalties from another Medicine Hunter-branded product at Wal-Mart.
Mr. Kilham says he earns around $200,000 each year in retainers, and sales are so buoyant he expects to make “in the mid-six figures” in royalties next year.
Mr. Kilham insists he is not in the business simply for financial gain. His motivation comes from promoting herbal medicines and helping traditional communities, he said.
“I have financial security and don’t need to make money from this,” he said. “I believe trade is the best way to get good medicines to the public, to help the environment and to help indigenous people.”
He and Mr. Cam pay growers here in Ninacaca a premium of 6 soles (about $2) for a kilo of maca, almost twice the going rate of 3 to 3.40 soles a kilo. They have set up a computer room at the Chakarunas warehouse and a free dental clinic, the town’s first.
Mr. Kilham is clearly adored by the locals in these desolate, wind-swept villages. On a recent visit here, shamans, maca growers and their families flocked to him. Since only maca and potatoes grow at this altitude, they are thankful Mr. Kilham is helping them sell their produce.
For the full story, see:
ANDREW DOWNIE. “On a Remote Path to Cures.” The New York Times (Tues., January 1, 2008): C1 & C5.
(Note: ellipses added.)
Source of photo: screen capture from slide show on online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.
Creative Sparks Arise from Opportunistic Innovation
Source of book image:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51vovIVI5sL.jpg
(p. D16) One of the insights of “Strategic Intuition” is that business makes progress by following the opportunistic innovation model, while governments and international-aid agencies aim repetitively at rigid social goals. Such rigidity happens partly for a reason that Mr. Duggan is too polite to mention — bureaucrats, by nature, rarely give off a creative spark. Mr. Duggan prefers to emphasize a structural cause: The public demands solutions to problems of great social importance; thus bureaucrats get stuck with fixed objectives. Yet Mr. Duggan also shows that social progress often happens by emulating the opportunism of business. Among the most powerful of his examples is Muhammad Yunus’s invention of microcredit.
. . .
If there are still businessmen who feel compelled to follow a fixed-goal plan — missing out on the profits of opportunistic flexibility — then at least there is the free market to punish them. Market feedback is surely one big reason that we have so many innovative entrepreneurs. Where the old approach does most of the damage is in social policy, where the feedback is either fuzzy (as in domestic policy) or absent (foreign aid). Social policy could use a lot fewer commencement speakers and a lot more creative sparkers.
For the full review, see:
WILLIAM EASTERLY. “BOOKSHELF; Surprised by Opportunity.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., November 14, 2007): D16.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
The reference to the Stratetic Intuition book is:
Duggan, William. Strategic Intuition: The Creative Spark in Human Achievement. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007.
Lower Taxes Encourage Entrepreneurship in Ireland
“Feargal Mooney, left, is chief operating officer for Web Reservations International. Ray Nolan is the founder and chief executive officer. Web Reservations provides booking and management for hostels that cater to economy travelers.” Source of the caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.
(p. C8) DUBLIN — Ireland is now alive with enthusiasm for entrepreneurs, who seemingly rank just below rock stars in popularity.
. . .
The relatively new emphasis on entrepreneurs in Ireland is the culmination of nearly four decades of government policies that have lifted the economy from centuries of poverty to modern prosperity.
The change began when Ireland entered the European Union in 1973. In subsequent years, the government rewrote its tax policies to attract foreign investment by American corporations, made all education free through the university level and changed tax rates and used direct equity investment to encourage Irish people to set up their own businesses.
“The change came in the 1990s,” said James Murphy, founder and managing director of Lifes2Good, a marketer of drugstore products for muscle aches, hair loss and other maladies. “Taxes and interest rates came down, and all of a sudden we believed in ourselves.”
The new environment also encouraged Ray Nolan, who founded Raven Computing in 1989 to provide software for lawyers to keep track of billable hours. He sold that company and founded another that created software for companies to manage billing and receipts. And in 1999, he founded Web Reservations International to provide booking and property management for hostels that cater to backpackers and economy travelers.
“Hostel owners needed to keep track of people sharing rooms, and bookings for Americans coming to Dublin for three nights,” said Feargal Mooney, chief operating officer of Web Reservations. “Hostel accommodations go for 10 to 20 euro a night,” he said, or $15 to $30 at today’s exchange rates, “so booking reservations in them wasn’t profitable for the big travel companies.”
For the full story, see:
JAMES FLANIGAN. “ENTREPRENEURIAL EDGE; Ireland Uses Incentives To Help Start-Ups Flourish.” The New York Times (Thurs., January 17, 2008): C8.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
Mooning the Future
Source of book image:
http://a1055.g.akamai.net/f/1055/1401/5h/images.barnesandnoble.com/images/24530000/24539427.jpg
In an ideal world, a famous railroad mogul like Cornelius Vanderbilt, would be a consistent defender of technological progress. But moguls can differ in their motives and are not always consistent. Consider the following from a new biography of Vanderbilt:
(p. D9) The arrival a few years earlier of the first steamships, clanking loudly and belching flames and smoke, provoked scorn from sailors, who waved their hats in condescension and “sometimes also turned their backs, bent down, and revealed their bare ends to the dignified ladies and gentleman who had paid lofty prices to flirt with the future. Cornelius sometimes made such a salute.”
For the full review, see:
JULIA FLYNN SILER. “The Tides of Fortune.” The Wall Street Journal
(Weds., December 19, 2007): D9.