With the passing of Steve Jobs yesterday, it gives pause for me to reflect on my own 30 year career. There have been some amazing advancements in technology that have enriched people's lives over that time. And I was lucky to be in on the ground floor of a few things that are now accepted as required and necessary.
Spent three years at Philips Consumer Electronics in the very early 90's. HDTV was being developed in the research lab and we salespeople were evangelizing how it would revolutionize how consumers watched TV. A few early adopters moved heaven and earth to get their hands on a $10,000+ unit before there was much programming or even a delivery mechanism for content. Today there are units for under $250 with sparkling quality.
We introduced the world's first DVD Player to the consumer market, and I was lucky enough to be one of the four guys that headed up the retailer roll out. For you fellow geeks and semi-geeks it was called Compact - Disc Interactive (CD-I) and was 5-10 years ahead of it's time. We had invented the CD and that had just started to take hold so it was time to evolve into the DVD. CD-I cost $1000, had very little software, Photo CD capability, and a high end audio CD player. Today there are quality units for well under $100 available and most people have 2-3 in their home.
Philips asked me to help them sell a new product in 1990 that only Sony and a couple of other Japanese companies had on the commercial market. Large screen 330 pixel CRT video "replay" boards then only existed in a handful of sports venues around the world and cost $5 - $10 million to install. Spent 18 months flying all over god's creation evangelizing the need for more of these. The New York Islanders, Meadowlands Racetrack, National Aquarium in Baltimore, Crystal Cathedral, Tennessee Volunteers, and Miami Heat became customers. 20 years later there are dozens of manufacturers, installations can be had for well south of $1,000,000, and they have incredible resolution and clarity. Every college and pro sports venue of any significance have installations, and even some high schools.
Philips owned a Canadian-based company called Head Start. This group was one of the 4-5 largest PC manufacturers for the consumer market at the time. IBM and Packard Bell were one and two I believe. Anyway, the units we were selling when I got there had a 186 processor, no windows operating system, a 4.8 baud fax modem, floppy disks, and we used a software called PROFS for e-mail. If you were lucky enough with this $5,000 unit to not have your phone line drop, you could e-mail the word "Hello" to someone in under 10 minutes beginning to end. Today my I-Phone has exponentially more features, speed and power and costs a fraction.
ALS Research today is much like the Consumer Electronics industry was in the late 80's and early 90's. They have to sell the sizzle before the steak to get investor and donor dollars. Press releases on new discoveries are shepherded almost monthly. Promising stem cell discoveries are in the news continually. Researchers that never before even spoke are sharing information (anyone ever think Microsoft would have partnered with Apple or Philips with Sony?). Private Equity and Big Pharma paying more attention to ALS Research is mandatory and this is all part of the game that the industry is adapting to. Never before has the phrase "Innovate or Die" had more meaning.
The last 20+ years prior have been like black and white TV (Riluzole) with three channels, the same shows year after year, and not much change. However, I have seen more activity in the past two years than in the last 20. Many of us are frustrated that it takes 10-15 years from concept to market with today's drugs in the marketplace. Innovate or Die.
For a current ALS patient like me, our best hope lies in drugs already in Phase 2 and 3 Clinical trials. Much like the early adopters in the Consumer Electronics industry drove innovation, we PALS have to participate in the these Clinical Trials to move the timeline forward as well. The system never produces things as quickly as those in need want them to. But we have no choice but to do what we can and allow it to innovate. It is impossible to connect the dots looking forward, it only works in retrospect looking back. You have to have faith and believe that these brilliant and dedicated researchers will ultimately succeed. Innovate or Die.
Somewhere very soon tomorrow, today, or maybe 5-10 years ago, some researcher may well discover, or will have already discovered, the cure for ALS. He or she doesn't know it yet, we PALS don't know it, and the investment community hasn't figured it out yet. But it's there...trust me...it's there!
Someday my son and daughter (and maybe even me if I am incredibly lucky), as we celebrate the cure, will look back at this blog entry and see that these comparisons really did prove to be prophetic.
In closing, here is a link to Steve Jobs delivering his commencement speech to the
graduates of Stanford University in 2005. In it he talks about getting
fired from Apple in 1985, life & death. Truly inspirational!
Innovate or Die....We choose to innovate!
