large margins
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This lecture is about optimal exercise strategies for callable bonds, which are bonds bundled with an option that allows the borrower to pay back the loan early, if she chooses. Using backward induction, we calculate the borrower's optimal strategy and the value of the option. As with the simple examples in the previous lecture, the option value turns out to be very large. The most important callable bond is the fixed rate amortizing mortg...more
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David Kelley, founder and CEO of IDEO Product Development, grew up in Ohio, where he survived on a diet of Velveeta cheese and white bread, He attended Carnegie Mellon and studied electrical engineering, but spent more time working on carnival floats. After graduation, he worked for Boeing on the 747. He learned early that in a large company, he didn't get to choose the people he worked with. He came to the Graduate Product Design Program ...more
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In the decades immediately following the French Revolution, Paris was at the center of a series of major developments in medical science, sometimes described as the transition from medieval to modern medicine. Although the innovations associated with the Paris School were in large part products of the ideological and institutional transformations brought on by the Revolution, they belong to a long list of challenges to the Galenic orthodox...more
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Tom Friel, Chairman of Heidrick and Struggles, discusses the challenges of building a great team and suggests that startups can attract great talent with a number of factors, including money, self-fulfillment, belief in the mission or belief in the founder. Friel argues that to attract and retain great talent, entrepreneurs should be generous with at least one or more of these factors and sufficient on the others. Furthermore, Friel adds o...more
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How do investors gauge whether a company is one from a pool of thousands worth their resources? KPCB parter Beth Seidenberg shares her firm's five measures for financial fortitude. In this clip, she outlines leadership, and how this is the most important talisman of a growing enterprise's success. In addition, she discusses the importance of large, fast-growing, under-served markets, and KPCB's willingness to take risk with new technologie...more
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In the 1990s, Yale discovered that it was faced with a deferred maintenance problem: the university hadn't properly planned for important renovations in many buildings. A large, one-time expenditure would be needed. How should Yale have covered these expenses? This lecture begins by applying the lessons learned so far to show why Yale's initial forecast budget cuts were overly pessimistic. In the second half of the class, we turn to the pr...more
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Rick Wallace shares the history of KLA-Tencor to show that it is important to follow one's business model. KLA revolutionized the industry by starting to charge for service instead of just offering it up for free. In order to enforce this, the founder had to risk losing IBM as a client. However, his bet paid off, and IBM finally agreed to pay for service. This has led to a large and profitable annuity stream for KLA-Tencor....more
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According to Komisar, creating visibility and driving sales are two different tasks. Marketing channels are pretty well honed, but driving sales requires more attention. As an entrepreneur, you play a large part in creating the demand for your product and Google is not going to do that for you. You have to convince people that your product will save them money, he says.
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Medtronic, Boston Scientific, and Johnson & Johnson all began as single-product ventures, says Mir Imran, CEO of InCube Labs and serial entrepreneur of medical devices. And while the medical community is rife with single-product ventures, a few of them do go on to become large enterprises offering a suite of products in multiple markets. What sets the bar for each venture? The market viability for each product they produce.
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February 11, 2009 lecture by Jefferson Tester for the Woods Energy Seminar (ENERGY301). In his talk "A Pathway for Widespread Utilization of Geothermal Energy--the Roles of Multi-scale Resource and Technology Research and Systems Analysis," Tester talks about the benefits and challenges of harnessing geothermal energy, and he asserts that it is a large resource that complements solar and wind energy and is both carbon free and scalable.
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Rick Wallace, the new CEO of KLA-Tencor shares his insights about managing a large organization. He describes his job as making trade-offs to ensure that all three constituents, investors, customers and employees, are happy with the company. While they all have separate and sometimes contradicting motivations, a company's long term success is heavily dependant on its ability to cater to these three constituencies.
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Adams talks about testing the viability of a new technology with potential customers. He recommends entrepreneurs conduct polls and surveys to determine whether there is demand for the technology in the market. Never commit to a large development effort without prototyping the technology first and taking it to a potential target market, he cautions.
