Ed Zander of Motorola Teaches a Valuable Lesson by Naivete

I had breakfast this morning with small technology IP powerhouse, Motorola's CEO, Ed Zander, with a bunch of other people. Zander is an attractive personality, a great schmoozer and salesman for all things Motorola. So when I had a chance to ask him a question, I was looking for an entertaining, but highly informative look at the workings of the inner sanctum of corporate America - "circa" Fortune 500 decision-making among high-tech moguls and captains industry.

What I got was . . . well . . . different.

"Ed, switching gears (from much promotion of new wireless communications and entertainment devices) to display technology: could you please speak a bit about the corporate decision making process at Motorola related to your interesting IP related to NED (nano-emissive displays)? Specifically, given competition from LCDs, OLEDs, and plasma can you tell us about the process the company goes through on these types of decisions related to which direction you are going and how you 'place bets' on emerging technology?"

He gave a winning smile, sort of combined with a blank stare and just said, "I haven't a clue?"

He went on to make some additional comments about how "process engineering" and folks at the "executive VP level" are the ones who would work on subjects like this, and pretty much begged off on the question, but he left no doubt that he wasn't involved, and (really, nothing against Mr. Zander here) that he could probably not give a good description of the key elements of NED, that it involves carbon nanotubes, much less have the ablility to compare and contrast the key display technologies any better than you or I.

At first I was disappointed, then I experienced Samadhi - ok - not Samadhi so much as enlightenment . . ok, not that either, but I realized something.

Whether the company will ever use NED or ANY OTHER TECHNOLOGY OR IP IT DEVELOPS, the decision to make, use or manufacture it will be STRICTLY BUSINESS. A day will come when the engineers and finance guys (maybe marketing and sales by that time) will have to show Ed Zander the costs and benefits to switching to NED or starting to incorporate it. On that day, just like today, Ed Zander won't care a whit about whether the technology is new, cool or even if it's better. The hard cold numbers will tell him all he needs to know about it.