Trying to see the big picture by digging into the details of the past. Also, bikes, because they can save the world.
On September 10, 1981, Linear Technology Corporation was officially incorporated.
That was forty years ago. Forty years before that was 1941 when wireless meant a radio with five vacuum tubes, when computers were people with slide rules, and when robotics was a new science fiction term coined by Isaac Asimov…
Long ago, a shallow, marshy lake existed not far from the front window of my home. Its shores were thick with willows; its reach changed by miles with the seasons. Streams — what the Spaniards called arroyos — trickled down from the mountains to feed the lake. The arroyos meandered…
No matter when you were born, you witnessed a revolution in the use of synthetic chemicals — better living through chemistry.
The revolution was slow, barely perceptible, like a drop in the bucket. Drip, drip, over your whole lifespan.
The phrase “a drop in the bucket” suggests something insignificant and…
This is what it looks like to cross the tipping point. Over 95% of the kelp forest along the Northern California coast has disappeared in a matter of a few years. If you’ve ever walked the beaches and seen the kelp washed up on the shore; if you’ve ever kayaked…
Robert H. Swanson, Jr., built a company — a culture — that was the most profitable in the semiconductor industry, yet flew below the radar. Its employees famously ‘never left’ in Silicon Valley where job-hopping is applauded. Once called the Toughest CEO in the Valley, he attracted and retained many…
When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to go back and read the Constitution, to remind themselves what impeachment means, or to understand how the electoral college works, or to figure out what limits our freedoms have, then perhaps it’s helpful to be reminded that…
I’ve said this phrase and I’ve had it said to me.
I’ve also been on both sides of the phrase, “management agrees with your idea and wants to implement the change immediately.”
Implementing a Pivot
Every company faces market dynamics and needs to pivot quickly to adapt. A “pivot” can be a change in strategy, a redefinition of product features, a shift in market…
How the right people, a unique place, and the Panic of 1837 proved we could get along
Historians tend to smooth out the ebb and flow of circumstances. Lessons to be learned sometimes hide in the eddies of a distant time and place. One such eddy current bubbled up along the Kalamazoo River in the 1840s.
The most concise history of the area involves Native Americans allying…
Part visionary, part con-man, my hometown’s namesake left little more than his name. Unfulfilled dreams, possible corruption, then vanished.
Young and brash from a wealthy family, he lost patience for medical school in Massachusetts. Restless again after being admitted to the bar at 25 in Vermont, he headed west to practice law. The brand new Erie Canal expedited his trip across New York. After reaching Detroit, he crossed the…
