Derek Lidow is a professor of practice at Princeton University, [1] author, speaker, entrepreneur, former CEO and founder of iSuppli, and former CEO of International Rectifier. Lidow is author of three books: Startup Leadership: How Savvy Entrepreneurs Turn Their Ideas Into Successful Enterprises (2014, Wiley), [2] What Sam Walton, Walt Disney, and Other Great Self-Made Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Building Valuable Companies (2018, Diversion), [3] and THE ENTREPRENEURS: The Relentless Quest for Value (2022, Columbia University Press). [4] He is also a media commentator; Lidow's coverage to date includes The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Economist, Nikkei, Reuters, and Taipei Times as well as many top bloggers.
Lidow's book, articles and speeches cover topics on innovation, entrepreneurship, startups, leadership and creativity. He joined Princeton university's Keller Center as the James Wei Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship for the academic year 2011–2012. At Princeton he has created three novel classes: "Entrepreneurial Leadership," "Creativity, Innovation, and Design" and "The History of Entrepreneurship".
Lidow holds degrees from Princeton and Stanford. He received his BSE summa cum laude from Princeton University in 1973, and a PhD in applied physics as a Hertz Foundation Fellow at Stanford University in 1976. [5] Lidow's PhD thesis identified a new type of atomic interaction in the presence of intense beams of light. [6]
In 1977 Lidow began a 22-year career at International Rectifier, founded by his grandfather and his father Eric Lidow (CEO at the time) in 1947, as a Production Engineer. He then served as Vice President of Operations, and was promoted in 1985 to Executive Vice President for Marketing and Administration. Lidow became President of International Rectifier's Power Products Division in 1989, and was elected to the board of directors in 1994. In March 1995, Mr. Lidow replaced his father as the chief executive officer, serving alongside his brother Alex Lidow who remained CEO until 2007.
After leaving International Rectifier, Lidow founded iSuppli [7] in 1999, [8] a market research firm sold to global information company IHS in 2010 for $95 million. [9] [10] Lidow was also a member of the board of directors for United Silicon Carbide Inc., [11] a technology company. [12] Lidow is widely cited as an expert on the electronics industry. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] His contributions range from multiple technology patents [18] to supply chain applications [19] used by companies like Sony, Samsung, Philips, Goldman Sachs and IBM.
Today, Lidow is a professor of practice at Princeton, where he teaches and publishes on leadership, [20] innovation, entrepreneurship, and the history of entrepreneurship. [21]
Lidow is author of the book Startup Leadership: How Savvy Entrepreneurs Turn Their Ideas Into Successful Enterprises. [22] In addition, his writing has been published in numerous blogs and publications, both online and off. [23] [24] He is also author of Building on Bedrock: What Sam Walton, Walt Disney, and Other Great Self-Made Entrepreneurs Can Teach Us About Building Valuable Companies. [3] His most recent book is THE ENTREPRENEURS: The Relentless Quest for Value (2022, Columbia University Press). [4]
Lidow has extensively researched the emergence of entrepreneurial behavior is various cultures around the world. His article, Prehistoric entrepreneurs: rethinking the definition, [21] and book, THE ENTREPRENEURS, trace entrepreneurial behavior back to hunter-gatherers groups living 9,000 years ago. The emergence of entrepreneurs before any social or political hierarchies has forced a reexamination of what is an entrepreneur and what part they played in shaping the societies of the world.
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
Niklas Zennström is a Swedish entrepreneur and technology investor. He is co-founder of the charity organization Zennström Philanthropies.
Mark Jonathan Pincus is an American Internet entrepreneur known as the founder of Zynga, a mobile social gaming company. Pincus also founded the startups Freeloader, Inc., Tribe Networks, and Support.com. Pincus served as the CEO of Zynga until July 2013, then again from 2015 to 2016.
The Darden School of Business is the graduate business school of the University of Virginia, a public research university in Charlottesville, Virginia. The school offers MBA, PhD, and Executive Education programs.
The Fuqua School of Business is the business school of Duke University, a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. It enrolls more than 1,300 students in degree-seeking programs. Duke Executive Education also offers non-degree business education and professional development programs.
The Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business is the graduate business school of Rice University, a private research university in Houston, Texas. Named in honor of Jesse Holman Jones, a Houston business and civic leader, the school received its initial funding in 1974 through a major gift from the Houston Endowment Inc., a philanthropic foundation established by Jones and his wife, Mary Gibbs Jones. The schools offers the Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Accounting (MAcc), and Doctorate in Philosophy (PhD) degrees, as well as an undergraduate business major. In addition, the school offers several joint degree programs, including the MD/MBA with Baylor College of Medicine, MBA/ME with Rice’s George R. Brown School of Engineering, and MBA/MS with Rice’s Wiess School of Natural Sciences. The school also provides an undergraduate business minor, executive education, and certificates.
Jean Case is an American businesswoman, author, and philanthropist who is chair of the board of National Geographic, CEO of Case Impact Network, and CEO of the Case Foundation. She is married to AOL co-founder Steve Case.
The phrase women in business refers to female businesspeople who hold positions, particularly leadership in the fields of commerce, business, and entrepreneurship. It advocates for their increased participation in business.
Vivek Wadhwa is an Indian-American technology entrepreneur and academic. He is Distinguished Fellow & Adjunct Professor at Carnegie Mellon's School of Engineering at Silicon Valley and Distinguished Fellow at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School. He is also author of books Your Happiness Was Hacked: Why Tech Is Winning the Battle to Control Your Brain—and How to Fight Back, Driver in the Driverless Car,Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology, and Immigrant Exodus.
Dan Mallin is a Minnesota entrepreneur, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Magnet 360, Co-Founder of The Minnesota Cup, Entrepreneur-in-Residence of the Gary S. Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School of Management, and a Board Member of various organizations.
Faysal A. Sohail is an American venture capitalist and Managing Director at Presidio Partners in San Francisco. Sohail was a co-founder of Silicon Architects and on the founding team of Actel Corporation, two influential companies in the computer chip industry. Sohail serves as the Chairman of the Advisory Board of InoBat Auto, a European electric vehicle battery producer. In addition to that, he holds the position of Chairman of the Board at Our Next Energy (ONE), and serves as a board member for both Ascend Elements, and Wildcat Discovery Technologies, focusing on the sustainable energy sector.
Suren G. Dutia is an advocate for entrepreneurship and has served as a Senior Fellow of the Kauffman Foundation from March 2011 to December 2016. He has also served as a Senior Fellow with the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, Washington University in St. Louis. From February 2006 to May 2010, Dutia served as the Chief Executive Officer of TiE Global based in Silicon Valley. With 61 chapters in 17 countries, TiE is one of the largest non-profit organizations involved in fostering entrepreneurship globally. Dutia founded the San Diego chapter of TiE in 2000 and was its President for three years. With the Kauffman Foundation, Dutia has been involved in varied initiatives, including building and growing entrepreneurial ecosystems, immigration policy, and mentoring a number of grantees who contribute to fostering innovation and entrepreneurship. Dutia has also authored papers on topics such as Diasporas networks, AgTech, Startup boards and Founder-CEO transition planning. In addition, Dutia also serves on the Advisory Board of the Center for Digital Transformation, University of California, Irvine.
Alphabet Energy was a startup company founded in 2009 at the University of California, Berkeley by thermoelectrics expert Matthew L. Scullin and Peidong Yang. The company uses nanotechnology and materials science applications to create thermoelectric generators that are more cost effective than previous bismuth telluride-based devices. The company is based in Hayward, California. It started with a license to use silicon nanowire developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. They moved from UC Berkeley to offices in San Francisco in 2011, and later to Hayward.
Bill Aulet is the Managing Director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship at MIT and Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management and MIT Sloan Executive Education. He is also the author of Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup.
Heidi Messer is an American entrepreneur and investor who has founded several global businesses, most notably LinkShare and Collective[i]. Messer served as a board member, President, and Chief Operating Officer of LinkShare, contributing to the sector of online marketing commonly referred to as affiliate marketing.
S. Thomas Emerson, Ph.D., also known as Tom, is an American serial entrepreneur, angel investor and educator. Emerson co-founded three technology companies, Periphonics Corporation, Syntellect Inc. and Xantel Corporation. Emerson served as CEO of each company.
Alex Lidow is CEO and co-founder of Efficient Power Conversion (EPC), former CEO of International Rectifier and is the co-inventor of the HEXFET power MOSFET, a power transistor. Lidow is co-author of the book GaN Transistors for Efficient Power Conversion. He has authored numerous peer reviewed publications on related subjects, and received the 2015 SEMI Award for North America for the commercialization of more efficient power devices. Lidow was one of the lead representatives of the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) for the trade negotiations that resulted in the U.S. – Japan Trade Accord of 1986 and testified to Congress on multiple occasions on behalf of the industry.
Natasha Gajewski (née Rana) is the CEO and Founder of Symple Health.
The Global Entrepreneurship Summit is an annual event organized by the federal government of the United States, in partnership with foreign government hosts. The summit originated from an event organized by the Obama Administration called the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, which was held in April 2010 in Washington, D.C. It brought together entrepreneurs from the United States, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and Southeast Asia to discuss the importance of social and economic entrepreneurship, establish entrepreneurship as an important area of policy focus, and strengthen mutually beneficial relationships between entrepreneurs.
Deepak Hegde is an Indian born American business scholar. He is the Seymour Milstein Professor of Strategy at the New York University, Stern School of Business.