Mary, >>>"We did question however, whether the scientific establishment could ever do
anything commercially successful. By that I mean they could could do moon shots
(eg, NASA) or develop the Atom Bomb (eg Los Alamos) where cost or ROI had
no meaning,..."<<<
Big difference. People that run Los Alamos or Lawrence Livermore kinds of places probably go there right out of school or from the military. They learn the "cost plus", or produce at any cost mentality and keep it throughout their careers. In private industry, you learn that budget is right up there with specs and schedule. There is no future producing the best widget if you go out of business doing it. The PHDEE's, CS, Material Science, Physics, etc. grads can learn this very well, probably much more easily than a business grad can learn enough to run a very high tech company like Intel. In my experience, the only non-technical CEOs of such companies that make it are the ones that really strive to learn a lot about the technology. Otherwise, they can be easily snowed by less than honest underlings who pull the technical wool over their eyes.
Tony |
