Earlier in the week I did a panel discussion on “empathy in business” with a great group of co-panelists: Angel Cabrera, President of George Mason University, Bill Drayton, CEO and Founder of Ashoka Innovators for the Public, Carly Fiorina, formerly CEO of HP and currently CEO of Carly Fiorina Enterprises, and Julie Rogers, President and CEO of the Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation.  It was a very interesting conversation, and one that showed pretty clearly that as you triangulated on … [Read more...]

About 8 years ago, I came very close to licensing some technology from the Naval Research Lab to start a company to do something extraordinary. The technology was a retinal prosthetic – an implant that would substitute for the degraded rods and cones of an unseeing human eye.  I remember my conversation with the scientist very well. He was excited about the invention’s ability to allow blind people to see again.  I agreed, but also suggested something else: if the technology worked as … [Read more...]

Last night I watched a very competitive and engaging Super Bowl along with 100 million other Americans.  As a group we watched the same commercials, taxed our neighborhood water infrastructure at the same moments and screamed at the TV at the same time.  It struck me as I was watching the game that the Super Bowl was one of the few events all Americans experience in the same way.  It is rare because we exist in a world of ever increasing narrow casting. As technology allows us to receive … [Read more...]

If you have been watching Europe over the last year or two (or have been reading my blog), you know that there is a slow motion car crash happening over there.  As I have written about previously, the European Union is caught in an apparently unreconcilable conflict between Germany’s fear of inflation and a need to rationalize government spending and investment in a more flexible manner.  I am afraid that a breakup of the Euro is looking more and more likely, and in light of the path that … [Read more...]

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The momentum and excitement surrounding entrepreneurship in the Greater Washington Region is palpable.  I see this every day in my various roles in our community.  My days are now full of meetings and interactions with entrepreneurs and supporters who are heavily engaged in making our region a strong entrepreneurial ecosystem.   Having been in our region since 1998, I am struck by a few aspects of the current situation that are particularly important: Much of what is driving this … [Read more...]