From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 3:23 AM

UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann shares a story to illustrate how innovation occurs in the field of biotechnology. She describes the development of an innovative cancer drug at Genentech, even in the face of great skepticism, and the team effort it took to gain regulatory approval.

From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 3:15 AM

Square and Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey shares his childhood experience of falling in love with maps, while growing up in St. Louis, Missouri. Dorsey taught himself to program computers because he wanted to design maps, an activity that led to his deeper exploration of dispatch software develo...

From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 3:13 AM

UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann describes her unique career path from being a student, to becoming a practicing oncologist, to becoming an innovator at private sector firms. According to Desmond-Hellmann, her varied path not only offered a wide variety of experiences, but also informs her...

From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 3:06 AM

In this clip, Square and Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey articulates his passion to measure and instrument everything for the collection of data. Based on his experience of having to "fly blind" at Twitter, when it came to early systems and data, the first thing Dorsey programmed at Square was th...

From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 3:04 AM

UCSF Chancellor Susan Desmond-Hellmann is interested in bringing together the brightest minds from many fields to find ways to reduce costs in the health sciences through innovation. She describes a pioneering degree program at UCSF that seeks to build these connections between experts to examine...

From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 2:32 AM

Square and Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey describes the experience of having the right idea, but at the wrong time. In 2000, Dorsey had early ideas on how individuals could share updates across networks. He shares a humorous story of first trying out his idea on the original Blackberry device, w...

From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 2:27 AM

As CEO of Square, Jack Dorsey sees himself as a "Chief Editor," charged with addressing the flood of inputs and ideas that come into the company. In this capacity, Dorsey focuses on three major areas: 1) Team Dynamics, 2) Internal and External Communication, and 3) Financial Management. Dorsey a...

From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 2:10 AM

Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Square and Twitter, explains the value in writing a story from the user’s perspective. He discusses Square's vital use of narratives to understand what customers truly experience when using the product. According to Dorsey, all of a company's other strategies...

From: Stanford ECorner on Tue, Feb 22 2011 1:52 AM

"A recession is a great time to start a company," says Square CEO and Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey. Dorsey explains the numerous reasons why this idea is true, and how the idea for Square came about over the last few years. Dorsey describes the idea jumping to life when he reconnected with an ...

From: Stanford ECorner on Wed, Feb 09 2011 5:03 PM

Serial entrepreneur and Calera Founder Brent Constantz creates amazing advisory boards and regularly updates company operating plans. By doing both of these things, even the craziest of ideas can gain the credibility needed to gain momentum and thrive in the business world.

From: Stanford ECorner on Wed, Feb 09 2011 5:03 PM

When entrepreneurs are working with big ideas, they also need to remember to grow the company, says Calera Founder Brent Constantz. But with that said, Constantz also urges founders with big ideas not to be easily lured from their big vision, due to external pressures to accumulate small monetar...

From: Stanford ECorner on Wed, Feb 09 2011 5:03 PM

Serial entrepreneur and Calera Founder Brent Constantz discusses the tension that can develop between a founder’s goals and an investor's desire for a quick return on investment. Constantz shares a story from his days in the med-tech sector to illustrate this point.

From: Stanford ECorner on Wed, Feb 09 2011 5:03 PM

Founder Brent Constantz says his firm, Calera, has never had a written business plan. As a serial entrepreneur, Constantz has developed a few ideas about business plans: 1) Only competitors read business plans, and 2) A business plan is the only thing that is never going to happen.

From: Stanford ECorner on Wed, Feb 09 2011 5:03 PM

Founder Brent Constantz describes the early breakthrough moments at Calera, including realizing the value in actively sequestering carbon dioxide. According to Constantz, this insight supports his idea that the most successful strategy for cleaning up the environment is to make doing so a prospe...

From: Stanford ECorner on Wed, Feb 09 2011 5:03 PM

Upon starting his third company, serial entrepreneur Brent Constantz decided not to take on outside investment, a decision that reaped benefits. Constantz also describes serving as the sole board member, which meant avoiding the loss of time management teams suffer when dealing with larger board...

From: Stanford ECorner on Thu, Feb 03 2011 5:02 PM

CEO Aaron Levie is happy to borrow ideas from any source to improve Box.net’s product, marketing, and support. Levie shares how Box learned from the best in different businesses to improve in these areas, including taking insights from the consumer web space to improve products, learning how to ...

From: Stanford ECorner on Thu, Feb 03 2011 5:01 PM

According to Aaron Levie, CEO and co-founder of Box.net, successful startups need to be agile when testing ideas in the market and quick to shut down ideas that don’t work. Beyond the power of learning to "fail fast," Levie advises close examination of who you are actually competing with to disc...

From: Stanford ECorner on Thu, Feb 03 2011 5:01 PM

Box.net CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Levie explains how his company decided on competing in the enterprise software-as-a-service market. After a competitive analysis, Box realized their product offering was more innovative than many legacy solutions currently being used by large organizations. Levie...

From: Stanford ECorner on Thu, Feb 03 2011 5:01 PM

Box.net Co-Founder and CEO Aaron Levie articulates his vision to build a new type of enterprise software company. According to Levie, everyone at Box.net is driven to build a product that they would each want to use all day. Traditionally, enterprise software works on longer development cycles, ...

From: Stanford ECorner on Thu, Feb 03 2011 5:01 PM

Box.net Co-Founder and CEO Aaron Levie recognized an opportunity to commercialize the cloud for data storage and file sharing when a number of factors changed. The changes included the dynamic improvements in data and storage efficiency, the global demand for a more mobile workforce, and the arr...