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Robert Cringely, in the course of writing about Sun's new black box data center in a shipping container, has a good story about the founding of Sun, one that emphasizes the difficulty of convincing existing behemothic organizations (profit or non-profit) to embrace innovation. Excerpt:
There [the government reps] saw the Stanford University Network (S.U.N.) Workstation as designed by grad student Andy Bechtolsheim. . . . Stanford, itself, wanted no part of the deal . . .so they gave Andy permission to sell the boxes if they were built by an outside vendor using no university resources. . . .
Poor Andy never found a manufacturer, either, though he visited every company of note in Silicon Valley including 3Com and IBM. The IBM meeting was especially important, so Andy, who did not own a suit, went for help to the Stanford Drama Department where they fitted him with a set of white tails for his "formal" meeting with IBM in San Jose. But since the Drama Department didn't have any size 13 formal shoes, Andy wore his sneakers. Bechtolsheim is SV legend, having been involved in the early days not just of Sun but of Microsoft, Cisco, and Google.
posted by James DeLong @ 11:04 AM | Markets: Business, Investment & Innovation
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