Category: Entrepreneurship

“If You Lower the Hurdles to Innovation . . . , You’ll Get More of It”

(p. A2) You’d think from the debate raging in Washington that taxes are the key to economic growth. They aren’t. In the long run, innovation matters way more, and that depends on inspiration, experimentation and luck, not tax-law changes.

Yet presidents matter for promoting innovation even if it’s less glamorous than taxes. Their support often takes the form of directing money toward basic research or favored industries such as defense or renewable energy.

Under President Donald Trump the place to look is the regulators. Two of his appointees in particular, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai, have prioritized reducing regulatory hurdles to private investment as a way of boosting innovation. It’s too early to gauge their success, but the efforts merit more attention at a time when the growth debate is focused on steep, deficit-financed tax cuts.

. . .

At the FCC, Mr. Pai has targeted the “digital divide,” the gap in broadband access between some communities, especially in rural areas, and others. The share of U.S. households with a fixed broadband connection has stalled at roughly a third in recent years. Mr. Pai thinks the solution is “setting rules that maximize private investment in high-speed networks.”

Controversially, that includes a proposed rollback of his predecessor’s imposition of utility-like regulation so that internet service providers (ISPs) adhere to “net neutrality”—charging all content providers the same to access their networks. Without those limitations, he reckons ISPs will have more incentive to expand capacity and thus access; critics worry this will favor rich, established content providers over innovative newcomers.

. . .

. . . , Mr. Gottlieb’s and Mr. Pai’s theory is that if you lower the hurdles to innovation in specific sectors, you’ll get more of it. It offers a potentially more tangible payoff than fiddling with the tax code.

For the full commentary, see:

Greg Ip. “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; Why Innovation Tops Tax Cuts.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, October 26, 2017): A2.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Oct. 25, 2017, and the title “CAPITAL ACCOUNT; Trump’s Regulators Aim to Boost Growth by Lowering Hurdles to Innovation.”)

To Be Dangerous with Crispr Takes a Lot of Genetics Knowledge

(p. A11) “I frankly have been flabbergasted at the pace of the field,” says Jennifer Doudna, a Crispr pioneer who runs a lab at the University of California, Berkeley. “We’re barely five years out, and it’s already in early clinical trials for cancer. It’s unbelievable.”

. . .

Scientists have fiddled with genes for decades, but in clumsy ways.

. . .

Crispr is much more precise, as Ms. Doudna explains in her new book, “A Crack in Creation.” It works like this: An enzyme called Cas9 can be programmed to latch onto any 20-letter sequence of DNA. Once there, the enzyme cuts the double helix, splitting the DNA strand in two. Scientists supply a snippet of genetic material they want to insert, making sure its ends match up with the cut strands. When the cell’s repair mechanism kicks in to fix the cut, it pastes in the new DNA.

. . .

A . . . Crispr worry is that it makes DNA editing so easy anybody can do it. Simple hobby kits sell online for $150, and a community biotech lab in Brooklyn offers a class for $400. Jennifer Lopez is reportedly working on a TV drama called “C.R.I.S.P.R.” that, according to the Hollywood Reporter, “explores the next generation of terror: DNA hacking.”

Ms. Doudna provides a bit of assurance. “Genetics is complicated. You have to have quite a bit of knowledge, I think, to be able to do anything that’s truly dangerous,” she says. “There’s been a little bit of hype, in my opinion, about DIY kits and are we going to have rogue scientists—or even nonscientists—randomly doing crazy stuff. I think that’s not too likely.”

For the full interview, see:

Peterson, Kyle, interviewer. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; The Gene Editors Are Only Getting Started; Would you eradicate malaria-carrying insects? Change your baby’s DNA? Scientists soon may have the power to do both.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, July 8, 2017): A11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the interview has the date July 7, 2017, and the same title as the print versio.)

Doudna’s book, mentioned above, is:

Doudna, Jennifer A., and Samuel H. Sternberg. A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017.

Clayton Christensen Wrongly Predicted Bombardier Would Disrupt Boeing

Clayton Christensen and co-authors predicted in Seeing What’s Next that Bombardier was well-positioned to use disruptive innovation to leapfrog Boeing and Airbus.

(p. B8) Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. said it would acquire Bombardier Inc.’s regional-jet business for $550 million in a transaction that puts the companies on different paths in the aviation sector.

The deal unveiled Tuesday [June 25, 2019] marks the Canadian company’s exit from the commercial passenger-aircraft business following failed bets that it could compete with Airbus SE and Boeing Co. in the 100-seat single-aisle plane category.

Bombardier has restructured its aviation division over the past two years, highlighted by its joint venture with Airbus that put the European plane maker in charge of the production and sales of the 110- to 130-seat planes that the Montreal company had originally conceived as the CSeries. Those jets are now rebranded as the Airbus A220.

For the full story, see:

Vieira, Paul. “Bombardier to Sell Jet Unit.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, June 26, 2019): B8.

(Note: bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date June 25, 2019, and has the title “Mitsubishi to Acquire Bombardier’s Regional Jet Unit for $550 Million.”)

The Christensen book mentioned above, is:

Christensen, Clayton M., Scott D. Anthony, and Erik A. Roth. Seeing What’s Next: Using Theories of Innovation to Predict Industry Change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 2004.

In Batteries We Don’t Need Perfect; We Need Goodenough

(p. B5) In the race to make the next leap in battery technology, there is a 96-year-old who won’t give up.

Four decades ago, John Goodenough helped invent the battery that is used to charge cellphones, iPads and many other of today’s electronic goods. His work made batteries more powerful and portable by introducing lithium cobalt oxide to their inner workings.

Now Dr. Goodenough wants to kill off that creation by removing the cobalt that meant his lithium-ion battery could charge faster and last longer. In April [2018], the World War II veteran published research with three co-authors that he said is being used to develop a prototype of a liquid-free and cobalt-free battery.

“My mission is to try to see if I can transform the battery world before I die,” Dr. Goodenough says. “When I’m no longer able to drive and I’m forced to go into a nursing home, then I suppose I will be retiring.”

. . .

“He is driven by scientific curiosity, and he really wants to do something for society with the science he does,” says Arumugam Manthiram, a professor of engineering at the University of Texas at Austin who has worked with Dr. Goodenough for 33 years.

. . .

Dr. Goodenough arrives at the university between 8 and 8.30 a.m. and leaves around 6 p.m., working from home throughout the weekend, Dr. Manthiram says.

. . .

Despite having dyslexia, Dr. Goodenough excelled and went to study mathematics at Yale University.

. . .

. . . , Dr. Goodenough is supervising what he says is his final doctoral candidate, a 24-year-old materials science and engineering student.

“Dr. Goodenough says I’m going to be his last Ph.D. student, but apparently he says that every couple of years and then takes on new candidates,” says student Nick Grundish.

For the full story, see:

Sarah McFarlane. “Meet the 96-Year-Old Battery Pioneer Who Keeps Going and Going.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Aug. 11, 2018): B5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 9, 2018, and the title “The Battery Pioneer Who, at Age 96, Keeps Going and Going.”)

iPhone Made Internet “Almost Ubiquitous”

(p. B3) By essentially compressing a powerful, networked computer into a pocket-size device and making it easy to use, Steve Jobs made the internet almost ubiquitous and fundamentally altered decades-old consumer habits in areas like music and books. What’s more, the functionality packed into the iPhone made it a digital Swiss Army knife, supplanting existing tools from email to calendar to maps to calculators.

. . .

Along the way, smartphones disrupted communication. By offering faster, easier ways to communicate—text, photo, video and social networks—“the iPhone destroyed the phone call,” says Joshua Gans, professor at the University of Toronto and author of the book, “The Disruption Dilemma.” “It’s funny we even call it a phone.”

For the full story, see:

Betsy Morris. “What the iPhone Wrought.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, June 24, 2017): B3.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 23, 2017, and the title “From Music to Maps, How Apple’s iPhone Changed Business.”)

The Gans book mentioned above, is:

Gans, Joshua. The Disruption Dilemma. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2016.

FAA to Slightly Ease Regulation of Supersonic Test Flights

(p. B3) . . . , the FAA is poised to propose first-of-their-kind noise standards targeting takeoffs and landings of supersonic aircraft during test flights. Such maneuvers can exceed current standards for comparably sized conventional aircraft operating around airports. Some of the proposed supersonic jetliners are projected to be about one-third longer than the roughly 120-foot length of an older Boeing Co. 737.

Based on size, the FAA wants to permit more takeoff noise for supersonic craft than would be allowed under existing standards, but in every case no more than is now permitted for the largest wide-body airliners.

The FAA’s primary goal, according to Mr. Elwell, is to make sure “we don’t become a hindrance to the movement of this technology” into commercial applications.

Bombardier has restructured its aviation division over the past two years, highlighted by its joint venture with Airbus that put the European plane maker in charge of the production and sales of the 110- to 130-seat planes that the Montreal company had originally conceived as the CSeries. Those jets are now rebranded as the Airbus A220.

. . .

The anticipated regulations won’t deal with noise constraints at higher altitudes and supersonic speeds, where controlling sonic boom remains a major design and operational challenge requiring a new generation of quieter, more fuel-efficient engines. But for some time, supersonic proponents have lobbied Congress and tried to persuade the FAA to take preliminary steps to remove hurdles to development flights.

For the full story, see:

Andy Pasztor. “Supersonic Flights Poised for Return.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, June 18, 2019): B3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date June 17, 2019, and has the title “FAA Seeks to Enable Return of Supersonic Passenger Aircraft.”)

IBM’s Watson AI Platform Is Not Curing Cancer

(p. B1) Can Watson cure cancer?

That’s what International Business Machines Corp. IBM 0.03% asked soon after its artificial-intelligence system beat humans at the quiz show “Jeopardy!” in 2011. Watson could read documents quickly and find patterns in data. Could it match patient information with the latest in medical studies to deliver personalized treatment recommendations?

“Watson represents a technology breakthrough that can help physicians improve patient outcomes,” said Herbert Chase, a professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University, in a 2012 IBM press release.

Six years and billions of dollars later, the diagnosis for Watson is gloomy. Continue reading “IBM’s Watson AI Platform Is Not Curing Cancer”

The “Amazon Effect”: Customers Now Expect Other Sellers to Deliver Reliably Fast

(p. B4) Many Amazon.com Inc. customers have become accustomed to reliable two-day shipping, forcing other retailers to offer similar service. Businesses are making new demands of their suppliers as they trim inventories and reduce supply-chain costs. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in July said it would penalize companies that made deliveries too late or too early.

“It’s the Amazon effect—customers are putting more pressure on their supplier to know where their product is,” said Bart De Muynck, a supply chain analyst with Gartner Inc.

For the full story, see:

Jennifer Smith. “‘Amazon Effect’ Engenders Deals for Tracking Firms.” The Wall Street Journal (Wednesday, Aug. 30, 2017): B4.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 29, 2017, and the title “‘Amazon Effect’ Sparks Deals for Software-Tracking Firms.” Where there are minor differences in wording, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Obamacare Architect Ezekiel Emanuel “Will Be Satisfied” with 75 Years

(p. A13) Ezekiel Emanuel, a 61-year-old oncologist, bioethicist and vice provost at the University of Pennsylvania, says he will be satisfied to reach 75. By then, he believes, he will have made his most important contributions, seen his kids grown, and his grandkids born. After his 75th birthday, he won’t get flu shots, take antibiotics, get screened for cancer or undergo stress tests. If he lives longer, that’s fine, he says. He just won’t take extra medical steps to prolong life.

“People want to live to 100 but your horizon of what life is becomes much, much narrower,” he says.

For the full story, see:

Clare Ansberry. “TURNING POINTS; The Advantages—and Limitations—of Living to 100.” The New York Times (Tuesday, May 21, 2019): A13.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date May 20, 2019, and has the same title as the print version.)

Amish Embrace Smartphones and Internet, at Least for Entrepreneurship

(p. 6) A young woman, wearing a traditional full-length Amish dress and white bonnet, stepped away from a farmer’s market, opened her palm and revealed a smartphone. She began to scroll through screens, seemingly oblivious to the activity around her.

Not far away, a man in his late 60s with a silvery beard, wide-brimmed straw hat and suspenders adjusted the settings on a computer-driven crosscut saw. He was soon cutting pieces for gazebos that are sold online and delivered around the country.

The Amish have not given up on horse-drawn buggies. Their rigid abstinence from many kinds of technology has left parts of their lifestyle frozen since the 19th century: no cars, TVs or connections to electric utilities, for example.

But computers and cellphones are making their way into some Amish communities, pushing them — sometimes willingly, often not — into the 21st century.

New technology has created fresh opportunities for prosperity among the Amish, just as it has for people in the rest of the world. A contractor can call a customer from a job site. A store owner’s software can make quick work of payroll and inventory tasks. A bakery can take credit cards.

But for people bound by a separation from much of the outside world, new tech devices have brought fears about the consequence of internet access. There are worries about pornography; about whether social networks will lead sons and daughters to date non-Amish friends; and about connecting to a world of seemingly limitless possibilities.

“Amish life is about recognizing the value of agreed-upon limits,” said Erik Wesner, an author who runs a blog, Amish America, “and the spirit of the internet cuts against the idea of limits.”

. . .

Referring to technology, Mr. Smucker said, “You have to do what you have to do to stay in business. People are starting to understand that.”

There are probably 2,000 successful Amish businesses in the Lancaster area, many of them multimillion-dollar enterprises, said Donald B. Kraybill, a retired professor at Elizabethtown’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies.

This “very entrepreneurial, very capitalistic” tendency, he said, was all the more remarkable because it was channeled through a “culture of restraint.”

Many Amish people draw a bright line between what is allowed at work — smartphones, internet access — and what remains forbidden at home.

For the full story, see:

Kevin Granville and Ashley Gilbertson. “In Amish Country, the Future Is Calling.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sunday, Sept. 17, 2017): 6-7.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Sept. 15, 2017, and has the same title as the print version.)

Bill Gates Spending $400 Million to Develop Expensive High-Tech Toilets for Poor Countries

(p. B1) BEIJING — Bill Gates believes the world needs better toilets.

Specifically, toilets that improve hygiene, don’t have to connect to sewage systems at all and can break down human waste into fertilizer.

So on Tuesday in Beijing, Mr. Gates held the Reinvented Toilet Expo, a chance for companies to showcase their takes on the simple bathroom fixture. Companies showed toilets that could separate urine from other waste for more efficient treatment, that recycled water for hand washing and that sported solar roofs.

It’s no laughing matter. About 4.5 billion people — more than half the world’s population — live without access to safe sanitation. Globally, Mr. Gates told attendees, unsafe sanitation costs an estimated $223 billion a year in the form of higher health costs and lost productivity and wages.

The reinvented toilets on display are a culmination of seven years of research and $200 million given by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which the former software tycoon runs with his wife, since 2011. On Tuesday [Nov. 6, 2018], Mr. Gates pledged to give $200 million more in an effort get companies to see human waste as a big business.

. . .

(p. B5) . . . China’s toilet revolution has led to excesses — a problem that critics say could plague the Gates effort as well.

To win favor with Beijing, local officials have tried to outgun one another with newfangled latrines, many equipped with flat-screen televisions, Wi-Fi and facial-recognition toilet paper dispensers. (Thieves have been known to make off with entire rolls.) There were even refrigerators, microwave ovens and couches, prompting China’s tourism chief at the time to instruct officials in January to rein in their “five-star toilets” and avoid kitsch and luxury.

Though the products on display on Tuesday were nowhere as flashy, Mr. Gates has drawn criticism for giving thousands of dollars to universities in developed countries to create high-tech toilets that will take years to pay off — if they ever do.

“Sometimes doubling down is necessary, but you’ve got to be reflective,” said Jason Kass, the founder of Toilets for People, a Vermont-based social business that provides off-grid toilets. “Has any of the approaches done in the last five years created any sustainable lasting, positive impact vis-à-vis sanitation? And the answer, as far as I can see, is no.”

. . .

Mr. Gates acknowledged that some reinvented toilets, in small volumes, could cost as much as $10,000, but added, “That will pretty quickly come down.”

“The hard part will be getting it from $2,000 to $500,” he said. “I’d say we are more confident today that it was a good bet than where we started, but we are still not there.”

For the full story, see:

Sui-Lee Wee. “Bill Gates Wants to Build A Better Toilet.” The New York Times (Friday, Nov. 9, 2018): B1 & B5.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed date, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Nov. 6, 2018, and has the title “In China, Bill Gates Encourages the World to Build a Better Toilet.”)