JLABS, LLC
Judy Estrin is CEO of JLABS, LLC, formerly known as Packet Design Management Company, LLC. She is the author of Closing the Innovation Gap, published in September, 2008. Prior to co-founding Packet Design, in May 2000, Estrin was chief technology officer for Cisco Systems. Beginning in 1981 Estrin co-founded three other successful technology companies: Bridge Communications, Network Computing Devices, and Precept Software. In 1998 Cisco Systems acquired Precept, and she became Cisco's chief technology officer until April 2000.
Estrin has been named three times to Fortune Magazine's list of the 50 most powerful women in American business. She sits on the boards of directors of The Walt Disney Company and FedEx Corporation as well as two private company boards - Packet Design, Inc. and Arch Rock. She also sits on the advisory councils of Stanford's School of Engineering and Stanford's Bio-X initiative. She holds a B.S. degree in math and computer science from UCLA, and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University.
Related Links: http://www.jlabsllc.com/
Last Updated: Sat, Oct 25, 2008
Not only does innovation drive the economy, says JLABS CEO Judy Estrin, but it influences the very quality of our day-to-day life. However, Estrin believes real innovations need decades of institutional push and resources behind them to develop. Here she asserts that we've become too shortsighted and more risk averse when it comes to developing new technology, and that this cultural shift away from innovative breeding grounds is to our own long-term detriment.
JLABS' CEO Judy Estrin breaks down innovation into three varieties. First, there's incremental innovation, which is a significant improvement on an existing tool (such as the shift into Web 2.0). Estrin also spotlights breakthrough innovation, which are significant revolutions in tools and thinking (akin to the discovery of DNA). A third type, orthogonal innovation, is about repackaging an existing tool in a new fashion to create a new user experience - consider what the iPod and iTunes did for the MP3. All have merits for the entrepreneur and the engineer alike.
The low-hanging fruit of problem-solving has been plucked, says Judy Estrin, CEO of JLABS, and the remaining modern challenges are so complex, they can only be solved by a group effort. Teams working toward innovation not only require talent, but also a genuine blend of cognitive diversity - members with different backgrounds, varying life experiences, and diverse fields of study. Only through this kind of collaboration can larger, global problems be divided and conquered.
Leadership, funding, policy, education, and culture are all concepts that leaders should keep in mind when trying to foster innovation in any organization. Judy Estrin, CEO of JLABS, breaks down these five influential elements and discusses their interplay. Effective and strategic leadership is perhaps the most important element. The right leadership and the right culture will facilitate adequate funding, strategic policies, and education that can contribute to furthering new ideas.
Nobody wants to fail, but we need to be willing to take that plunge - and self-analyze to learn from our failures, says JLABS CEO Judy Estrin. If not given the opportunity to fall short of new goals, engineers and thinkers will be incapable of setting their sights high. Luckily for the entrepreneurialy-minded, Silicon Valley is a forgiving place, and those with great ideas are often given credit just for stretching and broadening new notions into the marketplace.
How did the floodgates of research, development, and innovation slow to a trickle, and how will the nation as a whole suffer as a result? Judy Estrin, CEO of JLABS, outlines the depletion of the resources behind engineering, technology, and science, and how these areas of study have been denied the necessary nutrients to thrive. While we can't go back and recreate the great research labs of past decades, we can close the innovation gap. Should we fail to do so, says Estrin, entrepreneurs will no longer be able to find the talent to develop new ideas - or the science-minded middle-class consumer market to buy them.
Judy Estrin, co-founder of several technology companies, introduces her talk about her perspective of the IT market and lessons learned as an entrepreneur.
Estring talks about how it is important for entrepreneurs to think in terms of cycles. There are many different kinds of cycles, such as economic and technology cycles, she notes. Silicon Valley, in the last decade, seems to have forgotten about cycles. We began to believe that everything was up, and nothing would come down, she adds.
Estrin declares that technology cycles have to start with a break-through innovation, something significantly disruptive. When it happens we don't know it is a break-through technology, she notes. In time, however, applications are built around this technology, she adds.
Estrin talks about the three cycles in IT networks: 
Estrin talks about the three parts of the IT cycle, particulary the enterprise productivity cycle. Enterprises have changed the way they did business. They use the internet to communicate with others, bringing IT to small and medium businesses. Enabling technologies have fueled this cycle, which is in its maturation phase, where IT is in minimal demand and there is over capacity.
Enterprises use the internet to connect with partners and customers in new ways, says Estrin. This differs from the bubble part of the dotcom in that the bubble was driven by people who thought the internet was a business, she notes.
Estrin talks about how dominant vendors are vendors that are so strong in their market that it is hard for a start up to work around them. It is great to partner with them and very hard to go up against them, she adds.
Estrin talks about the personal connectivity cycle. The cycle of connecting people is the notion of people being able to connect to each other and connect to information anywhere. This means true mobility and ubiquitous, high bandwidth connectivity, she says. The enablers of this cycle are economic and behavioral. From an IT demand perspective, she explains, the real win is in the consumer devices and services and not in the IT infrastructure. Related issues are business models (walled garden, AOL vs. seamless systems, Internet), affordable broadband to the home, and making technology easier to use. The consumer market is not an easy market for a startup to begin with and to innovate in, she notes.
Estrin talks about how the last cycle is about connecting embedded devices, as opposed to connecting computers. The real win in this is when we can build a completely new architecture for networks that are self-configuring, she says. Interesting work in academia is targeting this area. She talks about technology enablers in this cycle and the focus on low power, and not performance.
Estrin talks about the key things that entrepreneurs can do to adapt to the climate today: 1) Adjust the business model and expenses. 2) Ask yourself, can I afford to run this business at critical mass? 3) Look for areas of incremental growth. 4) Lead with tight execution skills and flexibility.
Innovation will drive the next cycle, says Estrin. Startups don't succeed in validated markets; the role of startups is to create a new market, she says. As an entrepreneur, you have be able to take that risk in an unvalidated market, she adds.
Estin talks about the history of Packet Design and how it adapted to the downturn in the economy. Packet Design started in 2000 as a technology company with the idea of bringing researchers and developers together under the notion that they would work on 5-6 projects and either spin out or license technologies. This model was successful for 3 years, but after that more money was needed as there was no licensing business.
Start ups are difficult and risky, says Estrin. Lots of combined skills are necessary. Attention to details, hard work and a lot of luck play an important role in the success of a company, she says. The environment is risk averse today--customers, funders and employees. Start ups have to be creative and find alternative funding, she adds.
Estrin explains how it is difficult to reach critical mass in a tough economic environment, which prevents startups from growing enough to compete. She gives a personal example of Precept attempting to enter the market, but not reaching critical mass by the time Microsoft entered the market as well.