In my posting late last week I mentioned that Silicon Valley Reporter Michael S. Malone was exploring Turner’s Frontier Thesis and its applicability to entrepreneurship. After a little research I realized that Michael S. Malone is no joke.
He has been writing for the Mercury News for years and has penned some successful non-fiction books on some of the greatest companies and entrepreneurs in modern US economic and social history.
Check out his book Bill & Dave: How Hewlett & Packard Built the World’s Greatest Company. While I haven’t read the book and don’t know that much about HP, the company’s roots are embedded in Stanford University and in many ways represent the ‘ideal’ archetype of a regional economy where major universities are entrepreneurially engaged; from students to administrators.
Here is an interesting one liner from “S. Witten” a reviewer at Amazon.com (also an HP retiree), “I especially enjoyed the beginning sections about Bill & Dave’s childhoods and the early years at Stanford.”
I have studied Stanford as an entrepreneurial university in some of my classes with David Hart, Zoltan Acs, and Richard Florida. Frederick Terman, a leader at Stanford and a visionary regarding industry/university relations, appears to have played a prominent role in HP’s early years. Packard and Hewlett earned degrees at Stanford and completed fellowships with Terman.
I am definitely going to read Malone’s book to learn more about the role that Stanford played in building such an amazing and world leading company.
I just have to decide if I should check it out of the library and deal with the responsibility of returning it when I will not be on campus much this summer or if I should buy a used copy for $2 at Amazon marketplace (plus a $2-3 for shipping) and have complete freedom? Clearly, freedom is not really free.
I’ll let you know about the great things I learn from Malone’s HP book and see what we can do to improve entrepreneurial opportunities on campuses that don’t have a Frederick Terman.
