The Soul of the Entrepreneur

Despite the plethora of degrees, honors and accolades, this month's guest is a down-to-earth guy. Andrew Csinger, Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of British Columbia, is an engineer at heart and a man with a wide variety of interests, some of which he shared with us in this month's interview.

His keen ability to look into the impact of technology on society marks him as not your typical computer science Ph.D. As such, he has a wide-range of projects in the works as diverse as his new book, Talent and Treasure, a look at the soul of an entrepreneur and expounding on the cross currents of miniaturization and mobilization.

It was this last that caught my eye. As cell phones become ubiquitous, nearing 100% in most developed and many developing nations, the opportunities for business as well as, personal use lag behind. We've only just begun to explore the mobile platform. As our guest notes:"... the impressive technology-based business advances of the last two decades (will) seem like antique slow motion."

Much of what will drive this trend is "miniaturization". This is, of course a trend that we should realize will drive growth in cell phone capability, as it has driven technological advances in everything form early radios to computers. Every new technology in this and the previous century has morphed from a room-sized apparatus to fit into your hand, each ever more rapidly.

Where does this take us with cell phone technology? It has taken 10 years or so to get from suitcase-sized "bag phones" to credit card sized "cell phones". Much of the focus has been on developing applications and... training users how to take advantage of all this new technology. Will it take a Mac type breakthrough to get us over that barrier in mobile technology, as the easy to use Apple interface revolutionized the PC in 1984? Only then, perhaps, miniaturization can take over and drive further growth.

We need only look back into Dr. Csinger's list of role models to see that he expects an big thinker to lead the way in this quest. His list is an eclectic group of inventors, businessmen and philosophers. He references Albert Camus (I’m not the weirdest person on the planet) as well as, Buckminster Fuller (If it can be imagined, it can be designed; if it can be designed, it can be built)

It is in this last statement that we find the kernel of an idea, one that is yet to manifest itself, except in laboratories and universities across the globe, as well as, in garages and increasingly in the new home of the entrepreneur - Starbucks.

This soul of the entrepreneur, which Andrew Csinger certainly has, makes his comments an interesting read. I'm sure you'll enjoy them as much as I did.


Q: Who were your early role models and what were the main things you learned from them?

A: Buckminster Fuller: if it can be imagined, it can be designed; if it can be designed, it can be built. Bertrand Russell: there must be a logical explanation. Albert Einstein: things are not what they seem. Bill Gates: it helps to be in the right place at the right time. Steve Jobs: It's not JUST about the money. Albert Camus: I'm not the weirdest person on the planet. Warren Buffet: Quality Counts. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: Quality Counts All The Time. A mentor at IBM Labs during my early University days: "Winning isn't everything. It's Everything." One of my academic supervisors on the occasion of a conference trip: "Don't drink the water and bring plenty of toilet paper." Often repeated by great men over the centuries in all walks of life: "Stand on the shoulders of giants." This is how you learn. This is how you build great buildings, great people, great companies.


Q: What key trends do we need to be aware of?

A: Miniaturization has found its match in mobilization. The intersection of these trends will make the impressive technology-based business advances of the last two decades seem like antique slow motion. Huge personal empowerment is coming to a mobile platform near you, if we don’t screw it all up with trade embargoes and war, and that sort of thing.


Q: What inspired you to create Talent and Treasure?

A: The public is mystified by the entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur, working with entrepreneurs every day. Although I'm also still mystified, I'm in a good position to shed some informal but credible light on what makes them tick. There's lots you can read about the Entrepreneur, lots of academic theories and biographies, but nothing in the middle, nothing that speaks to the soul of the entrepreneur. This book tries to capture, mostly through portrait photography and short interviews, that which defines the entrepreneur. We all want to know. And in this tumultuous global economical roller coaster, we all need to know...


Q: What did you learn in the process of putting together this book?

A: That executing on a concept like this is an entrepreneurial undertaking. That I'm still an entrepreneur :-)


Q: List a few of your business sites.

www.mobioidentity.com
www.minesense.com
www.sparkintegration.com
www.crowdfanatic.com
www.plantiga.com


Andrew Csinger has held a variety of executive management roles and advises senior management on technology transfer, market and corporate development, and mergers and acquisitions in the high technology arena. He holds several patents.

Dr. Csinger is Entrepreneur in Residence at the University of British Columbia, and Adjunct Professor in the Cognitive Systems Group, where he divides his attention between fostering a culture of entrepreneurialism and lecturing on the subject of Digital Trust. He is advisor or director to a number of local startups including Cryptolex Trust Systems (www.cryptolex.com), Scalable Analytics (http://www.scalableanalytics.com), CrowdFanatic (www.crowdfanatic.com) and Spark Integration Technologies (www.sparkintegration.com). Andrew was recently EVP of Product Strategy and Development at Dategrity Corp., a spin-out from the Votehere Corporation, where strong privacy technology is being developed to meet rapidly emerging compliance needs and enablement opportunities.

Andrew was Senior VP and CIO of Group Telecom from 1998 to 2002. GT's successful initial public offering took place in March 1999. During this period, GT became Canada's most successful Competitive Local Exchange Carrier, with 400,000 kilometers of fibre, 1500 employees in offices from coast to coast, a quarter billion revenue run rate and over a billion dollars in financing.

In 1998, he developed and operated the first PKI Certification Authority and Repository to be licensed under Washington State Digital Signature legislation. This seminal work influenced the later adoption of federal U.S. law (the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act of 2000, or "E-Sign Act"), and was an early model for the adoption by other states of the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA).

In 1996, he founded Xcert Software Inc., a technology leader in the emerging business of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). Xcert was acquired by RSA Technologies Inc.

Andrew received his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from UBC and a Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from McGill University. A Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Post-Doctoral Fellow at Simon Fraser University, and a visiting scholar at the German Center for Artificial Intelligence in Saarbrucken, his work on artificial intelligence techniques has appeared in journals and conferences around the world. His research focused on user-modeling by computer in intelligent multimedia interfaces.

Dr. Csinger is regularly invited to speak at conferences and events, about technology and its effects on society and business.