ABOUT THE AUTHORS

HENRY KRESSEL served as a senior partner and managing director at Warburg Pincus, a leading global private equity firm, for more than thirty years. During his tenure, he successfully led and managed investments, both domestic and international, in diverse fields of technology and services, including semiconductors, financial services, energy generation and storage, software, and communications equipment and services. Many of these companies were listed on the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. Collectively, these investments generated many billions of dollars in enterprise value.

Henry began his career as a scientist and engineer. He served in senior management of R&D of electronic products and devices at RCA Corporation, both in the solid-state product division and at RCA Laboratories, where he was a vice president. He holds thirty-one US patents and has published 130 scientific papers, as well as a widely used textbook on semiconductor lasers. He has led the development of numerous breakthrough devices, including silicon transistors, LEDs, integrated circuits, semiconductor lasers, solar cells, microwave devices, and solid-state imagers. He developed one of the most successful silicon transistors in history, as well as the core heterojunction technology for semiconductor lasers now in universal use for communications and other applications. In recognition of these accomplishments, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. He is a Fellow of the both the American Physical Society and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE).

Henry earned an MS in applied physics from Harvard University, an MBA from the Wharton School, and a PhD in engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. He has served as Regents Lecturer at the University of California, San Diego and lectured extensively at North Carolina State University, the University of Colorado, the California Institute of Technology, and Columbia University. He has served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Yeshiva University and on the advisory committees of the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Cambridge. He was also a consultant to the US Air Force and NASA, as well as to the National Science Foundation. He is the coauthor of four previous books, including Investing in Dynamic Markets: Venture Capital in the Digital Age.

NORMAN WINARSKY is President of SRI Ventures at SRI International, a world-renowned research institute founded by Stanford University in 1946. He is a founder and leader of SRI’s venture strategy and process, which has resulted in more than sixty ventures worth over $20 billion, including companies such as Nuance, Intuitive Surgical, and Siri. Norman helped create and build companies in areas ranging from artificial intelligence, natural language, and computer vision, to medical devices, robotics, and nanotechnology. He has been a board member or board adviser to many of these companies. He was a cofounder and board member of Siri, which was spun out from SRI in January 2008 and acquired by Apple in April 2010. Siri has become a worldwide phenomenon, establishing the breakthrough market category of virtual personal assistant.

Before joining SRI, Norman was vice president of the Mathematics and Computer Science division at RCA Laboratories and Sarnoff Laboratories. He was also a visiting scholar at Stanford University, an invited member of the mathematics department of the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton, New Jersey, and a mathematics professor at the State University of New York at Albany.

In 2000, Norman and his team won an Emmy Award for outstanding achievement in technological advancement, specifically “a unique technology to predict how viewers will perceive the quality of digitally processed TV images or still pictures.” In addition, he has received RCA Laboratories’ highest honor, the Sarnoff Award.

Norman works with entrepreneurs, start-ups, research institutes, and major companies to create breakthrough ventures or products. He also advises them on the framework and practice for successful innovation. He has been a keynote speaker at hundreds of corporations, institutes, and universities.

Norman earned BA, MS, and PhD degrees in mathematics from the University of Chicago, with highest honors. He lives in Palo Alto, CA with his wife Lisbeth. His children, Hanne, David, and Peter, and their families, also reside in the Bay area.