Entrepreneurship and Innovation in 2009 and Beyond: Massachusetts vs. Silicon Valley (MP3) November 20, 2009

This is a Stereo MP3 audio transcription of the excellent presentation that was given this morning by Ronald Croen, Founder, former CEO and Chairman of Nuance Communications, who is now Tufts University’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence for 2009-2010. The talk was given at IBM’s Waltham Innovation Center, in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Ronald Croen, a co-founder of Nuance, has served as Chairman of the Board of Nuance Communications. Croen held the positions of President and CEO of Nuance from July 1994 – March 2003. Previously, he served as a consultant to SRI International, an independent research, technology development and consulting organization, for the commercialization of its speech recognition capability. From 1987 to 1989, Croen served as Managing Director of European Operations, and from 1983 to 1987 as Vice President and General Counsel of The Ultimate Corp. Croen holds a J.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a B.A. from Tufts University.

The topic of the presentation was:

Entrepreneurship and Innovation in 2009 and Beyond: Massachusetts vs. Silicon Valley

091120_004 [mp3 raw file – click to listen on most computers]

091120_004 – Ronald A. Croen [Imeem Hosted Stream]

(This mp3 Stereo Audio Recording is a large file, and you may want to save it directly to your computer’s hard disk drive for listening – you can do so by right-clicking on the filename, above, and using the ‘save link as…’ option)

I had a wonderful opportunity to meet and speak with Bobbie Carlton, the founder of Massachusetts Innovation Nights at the Charles River Museum of Industry in Waltham, and I want to take the opportunity here to thank her for her efforts in arranging this new breakfast Massachusetts Innovation gathering. I think some thanks also go to the gracious corporate host, IBM, whose Waltham Innovation Center is truly an impressive facility; I enjoyed their tour of the facility after Mr. Croen’s presentation.

There was a terrific question-and-answer session with the attendees at the conclusion of the presentation which featured a lively debate and brought up some fascinating points; I recommend you listen to this towards the end of the mp3 audio transcription.

There are some great videos of Ron Croen’s presentation available here.