Speaker:Donna Dubinsky

From wiki

Donna Dubinsky

• Watch Donna Dubinsky's Lecture, Lessons of an Entrepreneur
  
• Review Donna Dubinsky's accompanying slides
  

Biography

Donna Dubinsky has played an integral role in the development of personal digital assistants (PDAs) serving as CEO of Palm, Inc. and co-founding Handspring with Jeff Hawkins. Her management skills helped keep Palm Inc. financially viable after the failure of its pen computing software in the early 1990s. Fortune Magazine has nominated her together with Hawkins to the Innovators Hall of Fame while Time Magazine named the pair as part of its Digital 50 in 1999 for their contribution to the development of the PDA.

A 1977 graduate of Yale College, is co-founder and CEO of Numenta, Inc., and has the distinction of having led three innovative technology companies. After Yale she received an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1981. She worked initially at Apple Computer, and then as a founder of Claris Corporation, before joining Jeff Hawkins shortly after he founded Palm Computing in 1992. Palm introduced the PalmPilot, which became the first successful handheld computer, in 1996. She served as President and CEO of Palm Computing, which was acquired by U.S. Robotics and then subsequently by 3Com Corporation. The PalmPilot was the fastest-selling computer and consumer electronics product in history at that time, with 1 million units sold in its first 18 months.

In 1998, Dubinsky and Hawkins left Palm to co-found Handspring Inc., a handheld computing and communications company. Handspring shipped the Visor handheld computer, quickly capturing 25% of the handheld market. The firm also became a leader in the emerging category of smartphones, developing the Treo, a category-defining product. Handspring merged in 2003 with Palm’s hardware group to create a new company, now called Palm, Inc., where Dubinsky serves as a director. Palm is a market leader in the field. In 2005, Dubinsky and Hawkins founded their present firm, Numenta, a technology development firm that is creating a new computer memory system modeled after the human brain’s neo-cortex.

Dubinsky also serves as a director of Intuit Corporation, which develops business and financial software for small businesses, and as a trustee of the Redwood Neuroscience Institute. She is also a trustee of the Computer History Museum, where she plays a leadership role in the capital campaign to support the museum’s permanent site in Mountain View, California.

Lecture Summary

Donna Dubinsky describes her 25 years in the computing industry and
her efforts toward developing the first personal digital
assistant (PDA). She discusses the many challenges her companies
overcame throughout the years as she founded and operated both Palm
and Handspring. In this lecture, Dubinsky presents 5 key lessons:

1) It's all about the team.
2) You can't row straight with only one paddle (have multiple strategic tracks)
3) Strategies don't move mountains, bulldozers do.
4) Ignore sunk costs -- Just because you've invested in it in the past does not mean it is the right thing to invest in going forward. It may be that you need to change your plans.
5) Manage by how things are, not how you wish they were.