Turns out our hunch was correct. On Friday, Watertown, MA-based maker of advanced batteries A123 Systems filed for its long-anticipated IPO. Since the filing came on August 8, 2008—an exceedingly lucky date, according to Chinese numerology—and because A123 has big operations in China and was co-founded by Taiwan-born MIT professor Yet-Ming Chiang, we speculated that the timing might be meaningful.
I pinged a company official on Friday to try to see if numerology had indeed played a role in the filing, but received no word back at the time. After my story ran, though, I heard from Chiang, who confirmed the basic theory—but revealed that A123 availed itself of a couple more lucky eights than I had guessed.
As Chiang e-mailed: “It was not a coincidence that the ‘send’ button was pushed at 8:08am on 8/8/08, although I wasn’t the one who did it!”
Author: Robert Buderi
Bob is Xconomy's founder and chairman. He is one of the country's foremost journalists covering business and technology. As a noted author and magazine editor, he is a sought-after commentator on innovation and global competitiveness. Before taking his most recent position as a research fellow in MIT's Center for International Studies, Bob served as Editor in Chief of MIT's Technology Review, then a 10-times-a-year publication with a circulation of 315,000. Bob led the magazine to numerous editorial and design awards and oversaw its expansion into three foreign editions, electronic newsletters, and highly successful conferences. As BusinessWeek's technology editor, he shared in the 1992 National Magazine Award for The Quality Imperative.
Bob is the author of four books about technology and innovation. Naval Innovation for the 21st Century (2013) is a post-Cold War account of the Office of Naval Research. Guanxi (2006) focuses on Microsoft's Beijing research lab as a metaphor for global competitiveness. Engines of Tomorrow (2000) describes the evolution of corporate research. The Invention That Changed the World (1996) covered a secret lab at MIT during WWII. Bob served on the Council on Competitiveness-sponsored National Innovation Initiative and is an advisor to the Draper Prize Nominating Committee. He has been a regular guest of CNBC's Strategy Session and has spoken about innovation at many venues, including the Business Council, Amazon, eBay, Google, IBM, and Microsoft.
View all posts by Robert Buderi