The High-Tech Research and Entrepreneurship Challenge

Traditionally it was understood that research was the responsibility of scientists or academic faculties. In many places, having an investigator start an enterprise was seen under a negative light and is still the case in many parts of the world today. However, this perception is gradually changing. In many places developing a company from excellent research ideas with commercial potential is becoming more and more accepted. Although this is a strong positive, it remains challenging as scientists do not think with the same mindsets as business people. Furthermore there are often misunderstandings stemming from these different mindsets between business people and scientists which can paralyze common progress.

Presenting ideas to fellow researchers, as scientists are accustomed to, is significantly different than selling the same ideas to investors in the business community. Additionally, while business people and entrepreneurs often are well connected and have various links, in both their horizontal and vertical markets, within the international business community, scientists and researchers usually do not and are often are isolated to academic centers limited to their area of specialization. In this talk, I will present many of the tribulations that I went through as I constantly traversed both researcher and entrepreneur worlds, pioneering various technologies such as simultaneous multithreading (SMT) in computer architecture as a research faculty while also starting several companies in the United States and abroad beginning in the late 1990’s and continuing up to the present.