the opportunity came, when Rod gave me the call, it was just too exciting,” he says. “This is the seventh startup I’ve been involved in, and it’s the third one I’ve led.” IntelliVid, of course, is one of those. The other is Trenza, a Second Life-like startup that folded when the dotcom bubbled popped in 2001.
“I think it’s a revolutionary concept,” Sobalvarro says of Brooks’ idea of providing affordable robotics that can enable even Mom-and-Pop operations to improve productivity. “The opportunity here is to reduce integration cost and really make it possible for people to apply robotics to areas where robotics has never been applied before,” he says. “And that’s really the key–making robotics something workers can work with the same way as a tradesman works with a drill.”
One other heartening detail from Heartland, at least for us at Xconomy. The company’s office is almost directly across the street from the Middle East Restaurant, home to Xconomy’s annual Battle of the Tech Bands, which we just announced will be held on January 22, 2009—an announcement that didn’t escape the attention of Brooks. “We’re just waiting for the next Battle of the Bands,” he says. “But we don’t have a band.”
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.
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