• Nathan Myhrvold on the Importance of Inventors

    When Nathan Myhrvold "retired" as Microsoft 's Chief Technology Officer, he wandered into a wilderness decidedly different from many retirees. His was a wilderness where people with "crazy ideas" needed help. He wanted to make their ideas "less crazy" and help generate new solutions to global problems. Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures an investment firm that supports some of the most visionary inventors, and gives them the resources and structural support to take good ideas and turn them into products. And as a company, Intellectual Ventures now files between 500 and 600 patents a year, according to Myhrvold--making them one of the 30 most prolific invention outfits in the country (even though they are much smaller than other companies on the list). Charlie Rose spoke with Myhrvold recently about the importance of supporting inventors. Here's an excerpt: You can watch the full interview here .

  • Microsoft's Ballmer Says Now is a Good Time to Start a Business

    Last week Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer went back to his old business school, Stanford, and spoke to a class of students studying entrepreneurship. And he told them that this is "really a good time to start a business." The global economic crisis, as bad as it is, has provided a corrective measure for good entrepreneurs. Ideas that are worth funding will get it, while bad ideas will not take advantage of a broken system. “The ideas that weren’t good enough shouldn’t have been funded and they won’t be funded today,” Ballmer tells the students. And "t here may be more opportunites in the long run, even if the Entrepreneurial opportunities are less 'frothy' than they might have been in the short run." Here is Ballmer's lecture: