The recent award of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman has been noted with great press attention to the fact that the pair met many doubts in the course of their research and that their successful collaboration started in a chance meeting in a copy room. Not on a Zoom session. Notes The Wall Street Journal: “Pair met with doubts, now win Nobel Prize.”
In my career in technology development and investing, great achievements in the face of skepticism are more common than generally believed and are the basis of my belief in the importance of promoting the work of talented, innovative individuals free to follow their instincts.
My experience has spanned management of a great laboratory – the RCA Laboratories –and private equity investment management of technology product and services companies. Throughout, I have found that great results follow great ideas from exceptionally creative individuals able to find solutions to problems others find impossible to solve.
But such ideas must be realized with excellent execution that solves blocking problems expeditiously. This was the case in the Nobel-winning technology that enabled mRNA vaccines and remained true in my experience in other fields. The great innovators must have equally great execution. This is where great management teams led by exceptional leaders enable success.
At the RCA Laboratories, the development of color television had many roadblocks in the ability to produce three-color electronic images, and uneconomic schemes were proposed. One individual found a practical solution and saved the project.
In semiconductors, integrated-circuit chips were poor at dissipating the heat generated in switching. One scientist designed the CMOS (complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor) architecture that eventually became standard in the industry and now allows billions of devices on a chip the size of a large thumbnail – and allows smartphones with the features we want.
In semiconductor lasers, my work was initially discouraged because of previous results that showed the high currents needed for lasing would destroy the devices. My work, followed by others, eliminated the cause of failure, and lasers now operate for many years.
In every case that I cite here, the original contribution was followed by excellent development that took ideas into the market.
I could cite many examples from my investing years where individuals enabled breakthroughs. My favorite is the emergence of Ethernet communications.
Two engineers working on their own modeled the transport of digital computer information on ordinary twisted-pair copper lines used in analog telephone systems. There was much skepticism about the practicality of such transport. Their work showed how software could overcome severe limitations in telephone networks and allow high digital data rates to be transported.
Level One Communications was founded (and funded by us) and became, under the leadership of Robert Pepper, the market leader in Ethernet chips before being acquired by Intel. Now the technology is everywhere.
I am delighted that the work of these laureates is getting so much attention. They remind us that committees don’t invent anything. Talented individuals do when given the freedom and resources to accomplish the deemed impossible.
Henry Kressel is a technologist, inventor, author and longtime private equity investor at Warburg Pincus.