Innovation. It’s become a buzzword, and even Judith Estrin, who wrote 75,000 words about it in her new book “Closing the Innovation Gap,” readily admits it.
“Innovation is a word that has become such a sound bite that people actually tune out when they hear it,” she says. But in the next breath she adds that there is no concept more important to building successful businesses, careers and even families, than innovation.
“Innovation really, really matters,” she says. “I’m talking about a capacity to change. We need to incorporate ongoing change into our lives.”
That was a key message Estrin, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former top exec with Cisco Systems, brought over the weekend to a gathering of about 75 Cincinnati entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, corporate execs, students and academics. She was joined in a first-of-its kind, high-wattage session by two other Silicon Valley heavy hitters: Reid Hoffman, the CEO and founder of the rapidly growing social network LinkedIn, and Ellen Levy of the Valley’s pre-eminent venture capital firm, Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
They were brought to Via Vite downtown by CincyTech and Neyer Holdings to share their thoughts on social networking and innovation. The event was something of a follow-up to the InOneWeekend entrepreneurship event of the summer, also sponsored by CincyTech, Neyer and others, in which about 100 people gathered on UC’s campus over a long weekend to dream up, develop and launch a new company, and in the process, create a new network of people interested in entrepreneurship.
The firepower for last weekend’s event came largely through the effort of Stephen Boord, Neyer’s managing director of merchant banking, who called on some of the connections he made in his 15 years working in the Valley's business world before moving to Cincinnati.
Soapbox was there and is happy to share some sound bytes from an event that was designed to keep the region’s entrepreneurial spirit flourishing.
How does LinkedIn’s founder use LinkedIn?
Reid Hoffman started LinkedIn in May 2003, sending out 102 invitations to connect. The company is now doing about a million people every 60 days, but many users are still trying to figure out how to unlock the power of the electronic business network. Hoffmann offered one way to do that, with a story of a friend at a start-up who needed a marketing person and asked Hoffman for some names. Off the top of his head, Hoffmann could think of two, but he did a LinkedIn search for marketing expertise among his contacts and found 14, greatly increasing the potential options for his friend. “Our brains are not computers,” he says. “You don’t necessarily remember all the things about all the people you’re connected with.”
On innovation and leadership
Estrin sees the immediate post-World War II period as a high point for innovation in the U.S., and says we need to get that spirit back. The early- and mid-1990s were a time of fruitful innovation during the dot-com boom, she says, but it turned into greed, shutting off the willingness to experiment.
“You need to create an environment where people have a chance to think,” she says. “Innovative people use the leadership in each one of us to create.”
“Top-down inspiration and bottom up-leadership – that’s when magic happens.”
On market timing and innovation
Hoffman, who is on the board of four other companies and an investor in three more, says he spent 10 months building a company and then found that he only got a third of it right. Use the marketplace to test and develop the product, Hoffman advises.
“If you’re not embarrassed by your product launch, you’ve launched too late,” he says. “You want to get to market as fast as possible.” LinkedIn, he says, was launched without a major feature that he was advised was needed. That feature still hasn’t been added and LinkedIn appears to be catching on.
On risk and failure
“One reason Silicon Valley celebrates risk-taking is not because they like falling off the cliff, it’s because they learn from it,” Hoffman says.
Levy tells about a company she co-founded called the Dr. Spock Co., which didn’t really fulfill its promise, mainly because the money and everything else came too easily. “We didn’t stick with a laser focus as it if it was hard,” she says.
On chaos
“One of things LinkedIn did well was not impose rules on how it could be used,” says Levy, a member of LinkedIn’s advisory board. “If you impose rules in the beginning, you constrain how people use it. We should be careful not to end that period of chaos too soon.”
On the individual and entrepreneurship
“Every individual now is essentially becoming a small business,” Hoffman says. “All the things that matter to small businesses matter to you – your brand, your ability to gather resources from disparate sources and pull together people you know.”
On patience
“In a funder or a leader, it’s the patience to let something develop,” Estrin says. “In an innovator, it’s tenacity.”
On face-to face contact in the era of online social networking
“These tools do not replace the human touch,” Estrin says. “You can’t make up for human touch.”
About the panel
Judith Estrin is CEO of JLABS, LLC, and formerly chief technology officer for Cisco Systems. Beginning in 1981, Estrin co-founded three other successful technology companies: Bridge Communications, Network Computing Devices, and Precept Software. She’s been named three times to Fortune Magazine's list of the 50 most powerful women in American business and sits on the boards of directors of The Walt Disney Company andFedEx Corporation.
Before founding LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman was EVP at PayPal, where he was in charge of all external relationships and payments infrastructure. Reid serves on the board of directors for Grassroots.com, JumpStart Technologies, SixApart, and Vendio. Reid is an angel investor in Ironport, Friendster and Nanosolar. Earlier in his career, he worked at Apple Computer, Fujitsu Software Corporation, and SocialNet.com.
Ellen Levy is the network advisor at Draper Fisher Jurvetson. She is also an industry fellow at the UC Berkeley's Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. She spent several years leading Stanford University's Media X Program and was managing director at NeoCarta Ventures and at Softbank Venture Capital. She’s worked in executive management level positions in a number of technology companies, including startups Softbook Press (sold to Gemstar/TVGuide) and WhoWhere (sold to Lycos).
David Holthaus is the Innovation and Job News Editor for Soapbox
Photographs of the event provided by Bill Cunningham
To receive Soapbox free every week click here.