Category: Entrepreneurship

Slide Rule Whiz Kid Helped Invent Calculator That Made Slide Rule Obsolete

(p. B12) Jerry Merryman, a self-taught electrical engineer who helped design the first pocket calculator, died on Feb. 27 [2019] in Dallas.
. . .
In 1965, two years after he joined the electronics maker Texas Instruments without a college degree, the company asked Mr. Merryman and two other engineers to build a calculator that could fit into a shirt pocket.
He designed the fundamental circuitry in less than three days, and when Texas Instruments unveiled the device two years later, the moment marked a transformational shift in the way Americans would handle everyday mathematics for the next four decades.
“Silly me, I thought we were just making a calculator, but we were creating an electronic revolution,” Mr. Merryman told the NPR program “All Things Considered” in 2013.
With this device, Mr. Merryman and his collaborators, Jack Kilby and James Van Tassel, also pioneered rechargeable batteries and “thermal printing,” which used heat to print numbers onto a special kind of paper. Speaking with NPR, Mr. Merryman said he was reminded of their work whenever he used a cellphone or was handed a thermally printed receipt by a grocery store cashier.
. . .
After a stint with the railroad — he packed ice into refrigerator cars carrying bananas — Mr. Merryman worked as an engineer at a local radio station. Then, in the late 1950s, he enrolled at Texas A&M University in nearby College Station. He left without finishing his degree.
. . .
Mr. Merryman immediately joined a team that was developing what were called integrated circuits, the breed of microchip that would later drive personal computers. His boss was Mr. Kilby, who had helped build the first integrated circuit in 1958. (Mr. Kilby, who later shared the 2000 Nobel Prize in Physics for this work. died in 2005.)
Seven years later, these microchips had yet to find their market niche, and Texas Instruments’ president at the time, Patrick E. Haggerty, decided that the company needed to prove its worth with a consumer product. He called for a pocket calculator.
. . .
During his brief stint at Texas A&M, Mr. Merryman entered a contest alongside 600 other students. They competed to see who was best at using a slide rule, the wood and plastic device that helped with multiplication, division, trigonometry and other mathematical calculations.
After buying a used slide rule for $6, Mr. Merryman won the contest with a nearly perfect score. “Hearne Student ‘Pulverized ′em’ in A&M Contest,” the headline in the local paper read.
Just a few years later, he helped make the slide rule obsolete.

For the full obituary, see:
Metz, Cade. “Jerry Merryman, 85, Co-Creator Of Calculator That Fit in Pocket.” The New York Times (Saturday, March 9, 2019): B12.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date March 7, 2019, and has the title “Jerry Merryman, Co-Inventor of the Pocket Calculator, Dies at 86.” The online version says that the page number of the New York edition was D6. I cite the page number in my National edition.)

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“The Market Doesn’t Care If You’re Indigenous or Not”

(p. A8) MELBOURNE, Australia — It was a disempowering experience at a large corporate organization that prompted Morgan Coleman to become an entrepreneur.
Initially, he was proud to work there. But soon, as one of the few Indigenous employees, he felt patronized and unwelcome by some, and worried that his manager resented him because of his Torres Strait Islander background.
Now, as part of a growing number of Indigenous Australians finding success in the entrepreneurial world even as the rate of non-Indigenous business ownership has fallen, he feels his future rides solely on his merit.
“Whether I succeed or not, it’s entirely up to me,” Mr. Coleman, 28, said in a recent interview at the Melbourne offices of Vets on Call, the app he left his corporate job to start. “The market doesn’t care if you’re Indigenous or not.”

For the full story, see:

Kenneth Chang. “For Indigenous Australians, Defining a Destiny Through Entrepreneurship.” The New York Times (Monday, Feb. 4, 2019): A8.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 30 [sic], 2019, and has the title “”It’s Entirely Up to Me’: Indigenous Australians Find Empowerment in Start-Ups.”)

Good Luck Comes to Optimists Who Do Not Give Up

(p. C3) Luck occurs at the intersection of random chance, talent and hard work. There may not be much you can do about the first part of that equation, but there’s a lot you can do about the other two. People who have a talent for making luck for themselves grab the unexpected opportunities that come along.
The good news is that there’s plenty of luck to go around if you know how to look for it.
. . .
Think yourself lucky. Psychologist Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania told us that if he were looking for a lucky person, “the number one ingredient that I’d select for would be optimism.” Early in his career, Dr. Seligman did groundbreaking experiments on learned helplessness, showing that animals put in stressful situations beyond their control eventually stop trying to escape. People also have a tendency to give up and complain when they think they’re victims of bad luck.
“Believing that you have some control over what happens fuels trying,” Dr. Seligman said. “If there’s a potentially good event for me, am I going to seize the opportunity and follow up, or am I going to be passive?”

For the full essay, see:
Janice Kaplan and Barnaby Marsh. “Make Your Own Luck.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, March 3, 2018): C3.
(Note: ellipsis added; bold in original.)
(Note: the online version of the essay has the date March 1, 2018, and has the title “To Be Successful, Make Your Own Luck.”)

The essay is based on the authors’ book:
Kaplan, Janice, and Barnaby Marsh. How Luck Happens: Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love, and Life. New York: Dutton, 2018.

No End to “Tantalizing” Mysteries of Science

(p. A13) NASA’s Opportunity rover began its 15th year on Mars this week, although the intrepid robotic explorer may already be dead.
“I haven’t given up yet,” said Steven W. Squyres, the principal investigator for the mission. But he added, “This could be the end. Under the assumption that this is the end, it feels good. I mean that.”
The rover — which outlasted all expectations since its landing on Mars in 2004 and helped find convincing geological signs that water once flowed there — fell silent last June when it was enveloped by a global Martian dust storm. In darkness, the solar panels could not generate enough power to keep Opportunity awake.
. . .
Years ago, Dr. Squyres said no matter when the mission ended, he was sure that there would be some tantalizing mystery they would see just beyond reach.
On Thursday [January 24, 2019], he said that indeed seems to be the case. Opportunity was in the middle of exploring what looks like a gully that was formed by the flowing of water on ancient Mars. As expected, the gully looks eroded near the top, but the rover had not reached the bottom to look at where the sediments would have flowed.
The scientists had rejected some alternative hypotheses, but other ideas could also explain the landscape. “So far, the story is uncertain,” Dr. Squyres said. “The answer probably lies just down the hill.”

For the full story, see:

Kenneth Chang. “NASA’s Opportunity Rover May Have Reached Its End.” The New York Times (Saturday, Jan. 26, 2019): A13.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 25, 2019, and has the title “‘This Could Be the End’ for NASA’s Mars Opportunity Rover.”)

Former Biggest Retailer Sears Limps into Bankruptcy

(p. A1) For much of the 20th century, Sears defined American retailing with catalogs and department stores that brought toys, tools and appliances to millions of homes.
By the time Sears Holdings Corp. limped into bankruptcy on Monday [Oct. 15, 2018], the once-great company was shriveled and sickly. Decades earlier, it had been dethroned by Walmart Inc. as the biggest U.S. retailer. Then it was crippled by a chief executive with unorthodox strategies, and Amazon.com Inc., an endless online catalog that sucked profits out of the business.

For the full story, see:
Suzanne Kapner. “Sears, Once Retail Colossus, Enters Painful New Era.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Oct. 16, 2018): A1 & A6.
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 15, 2018, and has the title “Sears Reshaped America, From Kenmore to Allstate.”)

David R. Henderson Offers Advance Praise for Openness to Creative Destruction

In Openness to Creative Destruction, Art Diamond tells amazing story after story of entrepreneurs who have made our lives better. Read it and pinch yourself at your luck in being alive in the 21st century. And learn about how, as a citizen, to keep the innovations coming. Hint: Don’t give government too much power over us.

David R. Henderson, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution.

Henderson’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.

Medtronic Founded in Garage

(p. A1) In the mid-1950s, heart pacemakers were bulky devices that had to be wheeled around on carts and plugged into a wall socket. A heart surgeon in Minneapolis asked Earl Bakken if he could make something better. After consulting a back issue of Popular Electronics, Mr. Bakken within a few weeks fashioned a wearable pacemaker powered by a battery.
. . .
Mr. Bakken, who died Oct. 21 [2018] at the age of 94, had no inkling he was creating anything more than a local repair shop when he and a brother-in-law, Palmer Hermundslie, set up Medtronic. “We didn’t analyze or study the market,” he wrote in “One Man’s Full Life,” a 1999 memoir. “We just did it.”
Medtronic’s inventions eventually sustained him physically as well as financially. “I’m on my second pacemaker, and I’m on about my third or fourth insulin pump,” he told the St. Paul Pioneer Press in 2010. “So I’m glad I invented the company, or I wouldn’t be sitting here.”
. . .
Noting his talents, university medical personnel sometimes asked Mr. Bakken to fix their equipment. He noticed that few hospitals had technical staffs to maintain their electrical gear. A chat with his brother-in-law, Mr. Hermundslie, prompted them to fill that niche by setting up a repair shop inside a garage.
. . .
In 1957, a power outage was blamed for the death of a baby dependent on a plug-in pacemaker. A University of Minnesota heart surgeon, Dr. C. Walton Lillehei, asked for alternative technology. Mr. Bakken found a design for an electronic metronome in Popular Electronics and used that as the model for a circuit. He housed the circuitry in a metal box small enough to be taped to a patient’s chest. After a successful test on a dog, Dr. Lillehei began using the device. Articles he wrote about it created a stir, and soon Medtronic was receiving orders from around the world.

For the full obituary, see:
James R. Hagerty. “Founder Started Medtronic as a Local Repair Shop.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2018): A6.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Oct. 26, 2018, and has the title “Medtronic Founder Earl Bakken Turned a Tiny Repair Shop Into a Giant of Medical Technology.”)

The autobiography mentioned above, is:
Bakken, Earl E. One Man’s Full Life. Fridley, MN: Medtronic, Inc., 1999.

Bureaucratic FDA Delays Approvals for Fear “We’ll Be Toast”

(p. A21) Oct. 30 [2018] marks the 36th anniversary of the FDA’s approval of human insulin synthesized in genetically engineered bacteria, the first product made with “gene splicing” techniques. As the head of the FDA’s evaluation team, I had a front-row seat.
. . .
My team and I were ready to recommend approval after four months’ review. But when I took the packet to my supervisor, he said, “Four months? No way! If anything goes wrong with this product down the road, people will say we rushed it, and we’ll be toast.” That’s the bureaucratic mind-set. I don’t know how long he would have delayed it, but when he went on vacation a month later, I took the packet to his boss, the division director, who signed off.
That anecdote is an example of Milton Friedman’s observation that to understand the motivation of an individual or organization, you need to “follow the self-interest.” A large part of regulators’ self-interest lies in staying out of trouble. One way to do that, my supervisor understood, is not to approve in record time products that might experience unanticipated problems.

For the full commentary, see:
Miller, Henry I. “Follow the FDA’s Self-Interest; While approving a new form of insulin, I saw how regulators protect themselves.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, Oct. 29, 2018: A21.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 28, 2018.)

P&G Bureaucracy Suffocates New Chapter

(p. A5) Vermonters Paul and Barbi Schulick sold their vitamin business to Procter & Gamble Co. in 2012, hoping P&G ‘s PG’s deep pockets would fund research needed to nurture the small-but-profitable company.
Instead of growing, New Chapter, founded in 1982 by the Schulicks, spiraled downward.
. . .
The Schulicks kept roles at the company training managers and running research and development at its offices in Brattleboro, Vt., but this month they quit. They said excessive bureaucracy hurt New Chapter and that P&G–coming off a fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz–ramped up pressure for profitability and vetoed plans to develop breakthrough products.
M”The patience factor has really worn out” at P&G, Mr. Schulick said in an interview. “There is a lot of pressure to meet targets, and we weren’t responding fast enough.”

For the full story, see:
Sharon Terlep. “At P&G, Vitamins Maker Loses Energy.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, July 20, 2018: A5.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date July 19, 2018, and has the title “They Sold Their Startup to P&G. It Struggled. They Quit.”)

Benjamin Powell Offers Advance Praise for Openness to Creative Destruction

Productive entrepreneurship is not automatic. Art Diamond’s new book brilliantly illustrates how free markets allow entrepreneurs to innovate in ways that disrupt economy activity and, crucially and contrary to popular fears, ultimately reorganize production in ways that allow us to live longer, richer, and more flourishing lives.

Benjamin Powell, Professor of Business Economics, Texas Tech University. Author of Out of Poverty, and other works.

Powell’s advance praise is for:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming June 2019.

Worn Down by Growing Regulations, American Entrepreneurs Leave China

(p. A1) SHANGHAI–Fifteen years ago in California, a tall technology geek named Steve Mushero started writing a book that predicted the American dream might soon “be found only in China.” Before long, Mr. Mushero moved himself to Shanghai and launched a firm that Amazon.com Inc. and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. certified as a partner to serve the world’s biggest internet market.
These days, the tech pioneer has hit a wall. He’s heading back to Silicon Valley where he sees deeper demand for his know-how in cloud computing. “The future’s not here,” said the 52-year-old.
For years, American entrepreneurs saw a place in which they would start tech businesses, build restaurant chains and manage factories, making potentially vast sums in an exciting, newly dynamic economy. Many mastered Mandarin, hired and trained thousands in China, bought houses, met their spouses and raised bilingual children.
Now disillusion has set in, fed by soaring costs, creeping taxation, tightening political control and capricious regulation that makes it ever tougher to maneuver the market and fend off new domestic competitors. All these signal to expat business owners their best days were in the past.
The Trump administration is making a hard-nosed challenge to China using trade tariffs, in-(p. A12)vestment controls and prosecution of technology thieves, and many in American business are cheering, if silently, having soured on the market after years of trying.
. . .
From Silicon Valley in 2003, Mr. Mushero felt China’s rumblings and started writing his book, “Off-Shoring the Middle Class.” He saw U.S. companies save money by shifting accounting, X-ray evaluations and other technical jobs overseas. China, he thought, was becoming globalization’s “one-stop-shop” for manufacturing, basic tech work and advanced research.
He predicted a broad shift to China of not only factory work, but U.S. white collar jobs, too.
. . .
At a Starbucks in mid-2008, he sketched out “a napkin business plan” for a new company called ChinaNetCloud (Shanghai) Co. with Mr. Eron. China was overtaking the U.S. as the biggest internet market, and the partners would trail-blaze into cloud services by managing the online operations of local businesses.
. . .
Tougher regulations and competition deterred foreign players. China’s reputation for technology theft kept many out of the market, which reduced the number of Mr. Mushero’s potential clients. In 2013, the American Chamber of Commerce said only 10% of its members trusted data security enough to consider cloud services in China.
Walt Disney Co. tapped ChinaNetCloud to manage the computers hosting some interactive games in 2012, including one based on its hit movie “Frozen.” Mr. Mushero looked forward to more work with the U.S. entertainment giant, but Disney scrubbed the gaming push in mid-2014. Disney declined to comment. Online gaming in China is dominated by big domestic tech companies; it is derided by regulators as chaotic and harmful and hit regularly with new rules.
. . .
On a recent drizzly afternoon, flanked by framed commendations from Amazon and Microsoft for his firm’s achievements in China, Mr. Mushero said that after New Year’s he will head back to California, where he sees burgeoning demand for corporate online services, to market the company’s cloud-management tools.

For the full story, see:
James T. Areddy. “American Entrepreneurs in China Are Heading Home, Disillusioned.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Dec. 8, 2018): A1 & A12.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 7, 2018, and has the title “American Entrepreneurs Who Flocked to China Are Heading Home, Disillusioned.”)