In this week's podcast, BusinessWeek's executive editor, John Byrne, and senior writer, Michael Orey, discuss how snapping up thousands of patents can make Intellectual Ventures a leader in innovation -- or litigation.
When visitors walk into the headquarters of Intellectual Ventures, they come face to face with the full-size head of a Tyrannosaurus rex—the special-effects model used in the film “Jurassic Park II”. Is that a hint that the company wants to eat IT companies alive?
As he showed me around his best-equipped-in-the-universe kitchen, I half-expected Nathan Myhrvold to introduce himself as "Bond, James Bond." Myhrvold, the 46-year-old former chief technology officer for Microsoft, left the the company in 2000 with well over $100 in his pocket in order to roam the world with his wife and twin teenage boys.
Nathan P. Myhrvold, the frenetic and intellectually versatile founder of Microsoft Research, may turn out to be the Thomas Edison or Edwin Land of his generation.
Microsoft's former technology chief is branching out. He's looking for industries where efficiencies multiply every couple of years--in infotech, sure, but biology too.
Nathan Myhrvold created Microsoft's research group and left with a vast fortune. Now he's created his own organization to keep innovation humming.
We love to curse the New Economy. Oh, do we feel betrayed. All that Internet stuff — look where it got us. Laid off. Bankrupt. Thinking Krispy Kreme is a hot investment opportunity.