Stanford Entrepreneurship Videos
Summary: The DFJ Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar (ETL) is a weekly seminar series on entrepreneurship, co-sponsored by BASES (a student entrepreneurship group), Stanford Technology Ventures Program, and the Department of Management Science and Engineering.
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Bartz talks about how people who failed within Buzzsaw, were often given new projects to work on. Failure was valued, she says. Rather than criticizing projects that failed, Bartz notes how people wanted to apply the knowledge they learned from mistakes into new projects.
Bartz believes you will spend more time at work than in personal activities. If you are in management, one of your responsibilities is to make sure you care for your employees with compassion and interest in their lives.
How do you take a task that you already know how to do and do it a whole different way? Bartz talks about lateral moves within companies to improve innovation. She looks forward to future technology that will allow the creation of rich media content.
Carol Bartz, president and CEO of Autodesk, Inc., argues that entrepreneurship is more important in large companies. The companies that survive do so because they know how to innovate, take risks, and reward risk-taking organizational behavior and structure.
Bartz explains that the way to earn her trust is to be blatantly honest. It is hard to unravel a situation if it has been covered up. For this reason, she looks to people who admit their mistakes.
Bartz talks about a slogan inside Autodesk called fail fast forward to counter a fear of failure within an established organization. Their goal was to have employees understand that failure is very acceptable within an established organization--the key is to identify it quickly, and move forward with lessons learned. This is an attempt to break free from those who are worried about risk-taking.
Bartz argues that you must understand how a company is run. Life is about horizontal and lateral moves. She also talks about the various positions she has held in the past, from analyst to VP of customer service. By the time she became CEO, she had acquired a strong background in various fields.
Autodesk's vision is to keep the design data in digital format. Wireless industry is essential in this area. A small team of engineers at Autodesk banded together and built a wireless product on the fly to address an immediate need.
What kind of attitude do you bring into a situation? Are you willing to change and take risks? Bartz reminisces about a team member with a negative attitude and explains how she looks for go-getter attitudes in finding new team members.
Bartz examines long-term balance and encourages people to catch themselves before they fall too far. Learn how to manage the various activities you are involved in, she says. Juggling is pertinent to career development.
Bartz shares her view on the concept of cycles. She challenges entrepreneurs to manage cycles in their personal life, professional life, and within product cycles and the market.
The following interviews were conducted during STVP's annual Roundtable on Entrepreneurship Education for Engineers, hosted at Stanford in October 2001. Five entrepreneurship center directors from leading entrepreneurship programs were invited to share their visions, successes and challenges. Their stories will provide a collection of models for other colleges and universities who are planning to establish an entrepreneurship center.
Kelley describes three important steps in starting a company: 1) Follow your passion 2) Hire great people 3) Focus on process. His passion is design, but there must be a balance between passion and business issues. People often worry too much about the financial side of the company and fail on the emotional side of the company, he says.
Kelley narrates his experience prototyping the Apple and the Microsoft mice.
Follow your passion, hire great people, and focus on process, says Kelley