CMA Presents "Technology and Business—Harder Than Science?"

Consider a promising technology and predict where it will be in five years. Your accuracy will be laughably low. Even more amusing is the even lower prediction accuracy of whether a technically based start-up business will succeed.

Why, with so many obviously smart people involved, is this so? What don't people get? What are some of the variables (including unknown unknowns!) and why are they so poorly assessed? Is there a better way? How can we increase our success rate?

Dr. Ken Pickar offers a unique perspective on these issues. Since 1998, he has been a Visiting Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Caltech, where he teaches courses in Entrepreneurship, Management of Technology, and Product Design for the Developing World, and coaches start-up ventures. From 1999 to 2003, he was the J. Stanley Johnson Professor at Caltech. He is a founder and co-principal investigator of the National Science Foundation–funded Entrepreneurial Postgraduate Fellowship Program. Prior to Caltech, Dr. Pickar was based in industry for many years, most recently at AlliedSignal Aerospace where he was Senior Vice President, Engineering and Technology, and chairman of the corporate technology board.

This event is free. All members of the Campus and JPL communities and retirees are welcome.