Thursday, March 29, 2007

Kodak Venture Program

I'm reading a very interesting book on business incubators, and there's a great paragraph in the early history of incubation that goes as follows:

"Kodak established a major corporate venturing program in the early 1980s and attracted over 4000 internal venture proposals. Some 300 of these received seed funding, more than 100 were commercialized as separate units or adopted internally, and only 14 became new businesses, spun into the holding company, Eastman Technologies. By 1990, only one of these was still operating independently as a Kodak subsidiary and in 1989 Kodak announced it was discontinuing new venture activity. "

That really makes me appreciate what my dad had to go through to get DISCUS Electronic Training up and running, and eventually purchased by Kodak. I did a Google search on "Eastman Technologies" and found a fantastic description of the environment that fostered this development:

"Creating the venture capital arm called Eastman Technologies in the mid-80s meant that Kodak generously funded some innovative startup companies, like the one I worked for, Edicon Systems Division. The entrepreneurial design teams for the (dozen? I think--can't remember) venture companies were made up of thinkers, hard workers, scientists, patent-holders, and really brilliant, mostly passionate people. The brainpower and spirit of innovation at Edicon and the other Ventures in the late 80s and early 90s was real. I saw it. I felt it. There was, in truth, a dot-com spirit pre-dot-com, in those days. Ventures were staffed by the brightest and best from in and (more importantly) outside of the company in the beginning. Out-of-the-box (pun intended) thinkers who thought they could make a difference in the world, or at least in the world of technology and digital imaging. 

If Kodak had launched Eastman Technologies ten years later, something would have popped for the old red and yellow box. I am 97-percent sure of that. "

Wow. Exactly what I'd like to see happen again in Rochester, and a big reason why I'm so eager to get the Infotonics Commercialization Center off the ground. Unfortunately, there are forces in play that have little interest in economic development, more more interest in gaining power, influence, and spending taxpayers money (which they have no feelings of responsibility to spend with care.)


Monday, March 26, 2007

Audrey is getting bigger

We had our 4 month checkup today... and she's still in the 95th percentile for length, weight, and head circumference. Yup, she's growing like a weed! Of course, today also meant shots... which weren't particularly appreciated. So, it was also a long day for the little one. Here's some new pics to enjoy!