Global CEO, Enrepreneur, and Professor
Derek Lidow is a longtime global CEO, innovator and startup coach. He is widely-known as one of the world’s top experts on the electronics industry; his contributions range from patents to value chain applications that have forever improved companies as diverse as Sony, Samsung, Philips, Goldman Sachs and IBM. Among his many accomplishments, Derek a successful entrepreneur who built iSuppli, a leading market research firm. In 2010 he sold his company for $100 million to global information leader IHS.Today, Derek is giving back by teaching; Entrepreneurial Leadership and Creativity, Innovation and Design at Princeton and by working with young companies and aspiring entrepreneurs. He is a media commentator; Lidow’s coverage to date includes The New York Times, Wall Street Journal,BusinessWeek, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Economist, Nikkei, Reuters, and Taipei Times as well as many top bloggers. Derek’s degrees come from Princeton and Stanford where he earned a PhD in applied physics as a Hertz Foundation Fellow. He is based in New York City and Princeton, NJ.
On Innovation Navigation, Lidow started by explaining warm-up exercises he uses in his innovation class at Princeton, to get his students in the creative mindset. He then discussed entrepreneurial leadership and and to lead innovation. Start-Up success is similar to innovation “…in youre trying to impact the world.” According to Lidow, getting people to change in order to accomodate your ideas is key; however, leading change is a skill many are scared to tackle. Observation and understanding your customer is the key to successful change. He talked about the benefits of traditional bootstrapping in start-ups and innovation. At the end of his segment, Lidow talked about Apple’s innovation techniques in developing the iPad and the iPod Touch.
