Triumph of the Nerds

In the mid-1990's, a fantastic documentary was created on the rise of the computer industry, hosted by Robert Cringley. The three-part series chronicles the rise from the Altair through Windows 95. Long interviews with all the big names: Jobs, Gates, Ballmer, Jack Sams (who? the guy who worked to get Gates and team to provide DOS, thus launching an empire). When I teach entrepreneurship, I often spent a week of class time watching and analying the three-part series. Its a timeless classic, and each time I view it I see a different angle, particularly in today's technology climate.

There's three things I like to point out when viewing this fantastic, though low budget, series:

1) No one discussed business plans. Three days of interviews and history, and not once did Gates say "we projected the market..." I don't doubt that they considered it. But, in emerging technology markets, the business plan helps discipline thinking, but any estimations and assumptions are driving by passionate commitment to a company's trajectory, not a drawn out business plan.

2) A key to Microsoft's success was a tacit understanding of complementary assets. Microsoft's goal was to sell applications, but a complementary product, the operating system, was necessary and Microsoft was willing to step in to ensure the continued progress of IBM on releasing the PC. Moreover, the business press has forgotten that Microsoft made very little money on their deal with IBM. Where they launched an empire was Microsoft's reservation of rights to distribute their software to other companies.

3) In turn, IBM was blinded by their own success: assuming no other company could make a PC once IBM entered, they never worried about competitors like Compaq entering. Larry Ellison pointedly stated the truth: it is suspicious that IBM could give the market away. Why not buy Microsoft and partner with Apple? Could an organization have been that dense to miss these opportunities? Yes, see the history of Xerox PARC.

Happy 1 Year Anniversary!

It has been one year since I posted my last blog... exactly 1 year, in fact. After a 1-year hiatus, it is time to return to the blogosphere. Thanks very much for all the kind encouragement, both publicly and privately. So, I officially launch a committed (weekly) effort to "provide encouragement and advice for" / "make fun of" economics and entrepreneurship.

Wellpsring Worldwide's Managed Development Services incubator works with a number of technology start-ups. I'm not going to post inside information, for obvious reasons. Most importantly is the tautology problem: posting means its no longer insider information. Unless, I have just one reader.

Still, we can chronicle general learnings. Since landing at Carnegie Mellon 5 years ago, I've been fortunate enough to actively participate in 19 start-ups so far, which is enough to build points on a graph predicting what works and what doesn't. I've been a "related observer" in another 5 firms. These were mostly firms where I did not want to commit significant time to since each firm had something that indicated doom beyond the box office income of The Happening (M. Night, what happened?). Like the "entrepreneur" who repeatedly requested we not meet on weekends because he reserved them for hiking. Needless to say, there's a minimal level of commitment required in starting a technology company.

As a former business school professor, I blame the entire professorial profession for the proliferation of profligate prosaics-- that is, misleading homework and memorization exercises which aren't moving you closer to starting a company.

This year, the goal is to encourage entrepreneurs to see through the shallow rhetoric and understand at a deep level what it means to create an organization for the purpose of extracting economic rents or Schumpeterian entrepreneurial profits (that's the pointy-head academic definition of entrepreneurship).

So, please start looking around Monday mornings for a zap of entrepreneurship. We can't make anyone an entrepreneur, because anyone can be an entrepreneur. Its a matter of recognizing opportunity + unique resources to capture that opportunity.

Econ Dev Tour 2007!

I apologize for the skipped week(s), but June was hectic in kicking off the economic development conferences that accompany the summertime. I spent the last few weeks in Europe, namely the UK and Portugal, in various cities meeting with folks in economic development and university technology transfer. Let me recap some of the highlights and my reactions from the start of my trip, a few days in central-western England, the UK’s Black County, for a conference on entrepreneurship and economic development. I had the opportunity to speak with a number of great folks from the area, who were quite gracious hosts, I should add. I strongly recommend a visit, especially the Great Western Pub.

The conference embodied many of the themes I have encountered across the U.S., particularly at conferences on entrepreneurship and economic development. Here’s the most prominent 4 themes I found:

1. Real Estate = Economic Development. Much of the conference was targeted at real estate development, which was largely used synonymously with entrepreneurship and economic development. This is not unique to this conference, and many cities have mixed supporting start-ups with building renovation and land reuse. The interesting aspect of this mix is that rarely is the question asked: are new malls, train stations turned loft offices, and the like what our start-ups most principally need?

2. Where’s the Entrepreneurs? I was one of two people whom I could find at the conference who had previously started a technology company. It was interesting to sit through a large conference about encouraging entrepreneurship when there are virtually no entrepreneurs in attendance. This is how one gets back to point 1 above.

3. What makes you different? The question I like to ask first to everyone I meet at such a venue is “What’s your strengths as a city?” The answer is generally “livability, an educated work force, and technology.” But ever city says that. A regional development strategy has to account for uniquely valuable assets in the region. Its that simple.

4. Profit driven economic development. Growing up in the 70’s and 80’s, I embodied Alex P. Keaton’s ideals. As I went off to college, I knew my eventual studies had to be a mix of economics and business. I joined the College Republicans. As you might imagine, I’m as much a free-market capitalist as the next guy.

All that said… it is tricky to mix profit motives with economic development. Specifically, throughout Europe (and the U.S.) I ran into a number of incubators and support organizations who charge high rent or take sizeable portions of their companies. Not all such organizations did, but many. Advocates of such an approach rightly argue that there needs to be some cost or any person will start a company to take advantage of the free space. I generally agree with the idea, but not the implementation. First, isn’t encouraging anyone to start a company the idea? Second, there’s other ways to screen that don’t take ownership and money out of the company.

Lastly, and most importantly, the debate is in the outcomes. Throughout my travels, I have observed that the more you charge in rent (or the costlier you make it), the more incubator spaces you have that house local R&D branches of big companies and small, stable (often service-oriented) companies. These are the two types of companies that can actually pay rent but don’t need to have their own large space.

Entrepreneurial Arbitrage

We have all heard the arbitrage business strategy: “Our goal is to develop a working product and be acquired by Company X.” In the current climate of lucrative acquisitions by Google and their competitors, it is tempting to be enticed by the fast sell.

Let’s define Entrepreneurial Arbitrage as the explicit strategy of creating firm built on replicable technology or business models whose sole essential asset is lead time. This is arbitrage to the extent that many firms create businesses around the goal of simply arriving slightly ahead of competitors in a market or while a worthy suitor, a major established company in the market, is considering entry. Development then simply becomes a make-buy decision for the acquirer. This is also a dangerous strategy for the other 99.9% of firms that aren’t going to be the subject of an intense public bidding war.

The perceived low barriers to entry and promise of network effects encourages many to enter software space with an Entrepreneurial Arbitrage approach. Web apps, portals, social networking and the like have attracted many, but this approach is starting to spread to other markets with higher entry costs and for which the network effects are less clear, such as what I call Social Acceptance Network Effects or SANE (more on that in a future blog).

In my experience, there’s two types of technology start-ups out there. Those that focus on being purchased by the Googles and Microsofts of the world and those that are focused on building products protected from the Googles and Microsofts of the world. I always advice companies to adopt the latter approach for three reasons:

1. Putting many eggs in one basket: its tempting to customize “just a little more” to cater to the suitor’s needs—if the suitor doesn’t come through, the start-up is stuck with extras that are merely distractions from a real business model.
   
2. The perceived success (likelihood of success times net cash received) is much lower than folks think: for every MySpace, there are 10 unknown failures out there.
3. Acquisitions take a long time. It is easy to think that an interested acquirer is a once-in-a-lifetime chance. You can still build your core product around sound, protected business principles, and when the time is right you can still sell your company.

There’s diet cola version of Entrepreneurial Arbitrage: building to a potential partner’s specifications. It is a fine line between being a good partner and being distracted from building that initial prototype or beta version, in the case of software.

Bottom line(s): focusing on building the first product is always first priority, and Entrepreneurial Arbitrage threatens that needed focus. Building to be bought is exciting, but its also like playing the lottery. If the company isn’t acquired, there’s little future left since little effort was put in to a sustainable business model.

The Need to Pollinate

When I began looking at entrepreneurship as an academic, I would be commonly asked by seasoned captains of industry, “How can you study entrepreneurship if you haven’t done it yourself?” My immediate response was always a dire analogy: if you had cancer, would you rather receive advice and prescriptions from a studied oncologist or a cancer-survivor?

Most people opted for the doctor, though some people stuck with the patient. I’m not sure the latter answer is often genuine. Regardless, the point was made.

My answer is “both.”

I realize that wasn’t presented as a choice. And, that’s my real point. To date, it hasn’t been offered. The vast majority of universities have supported research faculty; economic development organizations have supported Executives-in-Residence. The policy failure has been to not coordinate these two valuable groups in any truly meaningful way.

I’d like more professors armed with rigorous research methods and thinking and the experience, even if a short-lived failure, of starting a company. Entrepreneurship, like many social phenomenon, requires both the tacit knowledge and skills garnered through first hand experience, and a rigorous review of past entrepreneurial events which comes with a broad analysis… not just opinion papers based on anecdotal evidence derived from an individual’s personal experience, which often passes as research among experienced entrepreneurs. Admittedly, this leaves a small list of eligible mentors today, and we have to work harder as a society to bring these groups together.

To date, policy, business, and academia have largely failed to converge on how to encourage and train in entrepreneurship. I argue it is in large part because the marriage of research and experience has been wholly dismissed by both sides. Seasoned entrepreneurs have not sought, or even found it helpful, to conduct rigorous empirical research, and university research faculty, at least in my experience, have not deigned to get actively involved in start-ups.

Why not? Two words: incentives and gate-keeping.

Incentives: Entrepreneurs typically lack the research skills and incentives to be involved in rigorous research projects. I mean rigorous, not just simple marketing reports and white papers. And, there’s no apparatus to provide seasoned entrepreneurs such experience. A few people, like Hank Chesbrough of University of California Berkeley (full disclosure: Berkeley is my alma mater), represent a rare exception.

Gate-keeping: The tenure system rewards focused effort on publications, grant dollars, and teaching ratings. Experience and impact on the community are simply not considered. No rational faculty would engage actively while simultaneously maintaining a research agenda full-time and expect to remain clearly on the tenure track.

Bottom line: more cross-pollination is needed. We cannot expect effective entrepreneurial mentoring, training, and teaching until we take seriously the experiences and criteria necessary to train someone in this area. Effective mentoring, training, and teaching requires letting faculty both gain experience firsthand and pursue research agendas in this area, while simultaneously encouraging experienced entrepreneurs to develop research skills and be a participant in empirical research projects on entrepreneurship.

Philanthropic organizations, government agencies, and policy makers can make a difference by encouraging such joint programs. But, this burden largely falls on universities to adopt more flexible positions within their graduate schools and faculty rosters.

Deming on Regional Development

Applying statistical thinking to thinking about economic development: today, I offer a simple list that takes a page from Deming’s approach to business. This list provides a follow-on to the previous post on regional metrics. Based on a few emails I received, I realize I should have been to be clearer: Something needs to be measured, but my main point is that its worth thinking carefully about how statistics can lie to us if we don’t first recognize the truths behind numbers. So, in today’s blog, I offer three examples of metrics pitfalls.

1. Absolute success does not necessarily translate to competitive advantage.
Regional metrics commonly examine growth trends in a variety of industries and technology areas, then focus investment recommendations on the largest (by absolute numbers) or fastest growing economies. Even if a region or company in a region measures well on an activity, industry, or business model, that does not make it the platform for growth. Here’s a straw man: we have all seen consulting reports noting (paraphrased) “Region X has a rapid growth in green chemistry patents and employees, among the top 10% in MSA’s. Thus, green chemistry is a central investment opportunity.”

Another straw man example we’re all familiar with: regions are chasing biotechnology in all its forms. In conversations with policy makers, elected officials and foundations in cities across the U.S., I consistently hear something along the lines of “We’re creating a biotech corridor built on our (large medical school/local drug companies/excellent reputation for health care/etc.,.).” A major medical school with a specialty area is insufficient if (a) other regions have similar levels of expertise (thus competitors for your resources) and (b) the particular technology area does not create agglomeration economies.

These observations tells us very little. Rather, to be a competitive advantage and a platform for growth, a region must exceed other organizations in other regions, AND the regional activity or asset cannot be competed away in the medium-term (3-10years). Metrics on which industries are driving a region today have to categorically respect which industries and opportunities are easily competed away and should qualitatively capture likelihood of outsourced jobs, codified (rather than tacit) knowledge base, and specialized complementary assets all create situations where industries can be competed away.

2. A misunderstanding of “the direction of causality”.
We use this term in economics frequently to describe research proposing a conclusion about an outcome being caused by a specific activity, when in fact it is the activity that is being caused by the outcome. Richard Florida’s “Creative Class” argument has been criticized on these grounds: Do creative innovators move to regions and thus cause economic prosperity, or do creative types move to regions where there is prosperity because prosperity means more resources for artistic, scientific, and other creative endeavors to be creative? Just correlation alone does not prove a good econ dev strategy. Good metrics have to respect that one can plausibly assume away or control for “reverse causality”.

3. You can be fooled by the success of a start-up
A success start-up or two does not guarantee regional growth. Regional growth requires new firms generate positive externalities (wealth, jobs created that are not internalized by the company) for the region. Has Ann Arbor, Michigan (Headquarters of Domino’s Pizza) turned into the economic center of pizza making? Why not? Because while efficient delivery was valuable business innovation, pizza franchising does not generate the externalities necessary for agglomeration. In fact, there has been recent academic debate over whether such common drivers of externalities (knowledge spillovers) truly exist, and what determines them.

Pizza is a trite example to prove a point, but the same type of thinking holds true for semiconductors, agile robotics, biotechnology, tissue engineering, and so on. Simply establishing metrics based on counts, trends, etc., which I most commonly see regions engaging in these days--without implicating any one in particular, fails to recognize the competitive characteristics needed. We would rather have a moderately growing industry with promise of agglomeration than a rapidly growing, but unprotectable (easily moved) industry.

With these ideas laid out, future blogs will address the apparent elements of agglomeration economies (if such a thing truly exists).

OK, I skipped a week. But, I had an excuse...

A number of folks emailed me last week. Some to prod along another blog entry; some to tell me they told me so. When I restarted an effort for a weekly blog on economic development in April, there were naysayers: "You won't keep up with regular blog entries".

Then, my lack of attention to my recently refounded blogging effort became public:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07146/789186-96.stm

So, now fueled by prodding emails and Ms. Shropshire's article, I hereby pledge to pick up where I left off-- with Tuesday blog entries on entrepreneurship and tech-based economic development. Keep your eyes peeled tomorrow!