4-25-18

Bob Taylor:
Xerox brings to market an even pricier STAR computer instead of the Alto, but that market wasn't a success for either Xerox or Lisa2 (though it was for Sun Microsystems)
finally gets forced out of Xerox PARC, and many of his team leave
did some similar work for DEC
saw his vision of computer communication come true but felt that his vision of team research was neglected

Al Acorn:
did Atari make a mistake in allowing other companies to make games for their console? more open to innovation
50 new video arcades opening each week was going to come to an end
1983 video game business crash because of market saturation and competition from home computers, which had become less expensive
Atari never recovers, Nintendo releases its first machine in 1985 with a closed system (could not be used to play games from other companies)
Acorn works on a variety of projects for other companies

Fawn Alvarez
big innovation of 1982: voice mail replaced answering machines
how will the culture of a Silicon Valley company change when it sells itself to IBM with its white shirts and tie culture?
her wide experience with the company was useful

Mike Markkula
Apple reaches $1 billion in 1983
Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple in 1985 and started a new startup to build a more expensive PC called NeXT, returned in 1997 when Apple bought his startup
Markkula slowly left, most proud of endowing a university program in ethics

Sandra Kurtzig
the software business eventually went in a different direction
she kept a significant role in the industry and eventually stated another company

Regis McKenna
not only did marketing for Apple but advised them of the importance of developing brand new products (note the importance and difficulty of this lesson)
Macintosh 1984
color monitors 1991
Powerbook laptop 1991 (at one point had 40% of laptop sales)
iPod music player 2001
iPhone 2007
iPad 2010

Niels Reimers:
one more step in how universities worked with startups--policy that they would accept stock in payment for patent licenses
consulted to other universities after leaving Stanford and a couple of years at Univ. of California San Francisco

Bob Swanson
Genentech sold first 60% then entirely to large pharmaceutical company Roche
Swanson retired and died young of brain cancer