Wednesday, October 27, 2010

2010 All-Stars

MHT Distinguished Achievement Award winner Ray Stata: Fostering creativity and risk taking

Ray Stata co-founded Analog Devices Inc. in 1965. He was president from 1971 to 1991, and CEO from 1973 to 1996. He has been chairman of the board since 1973.

Education: Bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering, MIT.

Track record: Led Analog Devices to a market cap near $10 billion. He’s also the founder of Stata Venture Partners, a vehicle for his private investments in 30 to 40 companies, most of them early-stage startups. In 1997, his donation supported the construction of MIT’s Ray and Maria Stata Center, designed by architect Frank Gehry. He’s on MIT’s Executive Committee, and is chairman of the Visiting Committee of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is co-founder and was the first president of the Massachusetts High Technology Council, where he co-chairs the Massachusetts STEM Collaborative.

How he got here: “I was brought up in farm country outside of Philadelphia, and worked in an environment of farmers. There’s a certain attitude toward the world that grows out of that kind of occupation. There’s nobody to turn to. There’s no boss some place who provides the money and the advice. You’ve got to figure it out on your own. The self-employed farmers are really entrepreneurs. They have to learn to fend for themselves.”

What makes him tick: “I have a particularly strong aversion to authority. I’ve found that a lot of creative and talented people have kindredship in that. We have recruited and hired a lot of entrepreneurs at Analog Devices who think the way I think about that. This changing of the world and finding new opportunities has always been the most interesting part of Analog’s development. When I stepped down as CEO and had more time, I became an (angel investor) to help other entrepreneurial people achieve, and to contribute to their doing that, just as I had done at Analog.”

On maintaining the entrepreneurial spirit in an established company: “Innovation drives success. You can’t have innovation without great innovators. You have to create and maintain an environment where people will have the opportunity and encouragement to take risks and try new things. It’s been the same all the way along. It’s still the case today. We have to keep reminding the company of our strategy: innovation is the thing we seek. If we do that well we succeed. If we don’t we fail.”

On business advocacy for education: “For 20 years, it’s been kind of beating your head against a wall. Nobody would be interested or concerned. Now all of a sudden the clouds have lifted a bit. All of this I think because (President Barack) Obama has shown a real interest in improving schools, particularly in the cities. (Obama’s) Race to the Top program — that’s an area now where I’m optimistic after working for 20 or 30 years with virtually no results. This is an area where I think business leaders have to jump into that and make it clear just how important our public education system is.”

— Galen Moore

Eric Giler on Ray Stata
Eric Giler, a 2009 Mass High Tech All-Star, founded and led Brooktrout Technology Inc., and viewed Stata’s long-lived leadership of Analog as an ideal. Since Brooktrout was taken private in 2005, he’s been CEO of two companies — Groove Mobile, and now WiTricity Corp., making wireless battery charging systems, where Stata Venture Partners is an investor. Over Giler’s 30-year high-tech career, Stata has been a help to him, he said, in an eclectic list of crossroads and encounters.

As an inspiration: “There are very few high-tech founders of businesses that have grown businesses from zero to very large companies. Ray is one of them. When I go back and say, ‘How did he influence me?’ — I believed from an early day that it was possible to start a business and build a large business and run it as well.”

As counselor: “Fast forward a few years: Brooktrout did very well. It got VC funding. It went public in 1992. I continued to run it for close to 20 years. And I got a call from Ray one day. Ray said, ‘I have an idea for you that you might be interested in at Brooktrout.’ Ray had an investment in India. He suggested it was something we might be interested in purchasing or licensing because it would position us competitively. I went in there thinking, how can he know what our business does? And he got it exactly right. We ended up buying the technology for exactly the reasons he suggested.”

As career advisor: “In 2005 Brooktrout went private, and I found myself — as oftentimes happens — out looking for what to do with my life. I called Ray and said, ‘Can I come talk to you?’ He immediately sent me over to the venture mentoring service at MIT. I went into this VC-backed company Groove Mobile for the next few years.”

As a VC: “You can imagine now another couple of years forward, to 2008 when I got the phone call about WiTricity. Ray had backed (founder) Marin Soljačić at MIT and did the original funding with Stata Venture Partners and his partner in that, Lee Barbieri. If Ray thinks something is a good idea for you to do, I would take his advice 100 percent of the time.”