Spinning it out at Thermo Electron
A mixture of American entrepreneurialism and Greek family values has given rise to a fashionable business model: the company as incubator. Does it work?
CAN companies grow big without becoming fat and faded? Fifteen years ago that question troubled George Hatsopoulos as he considered the future of Thermo Electron, then a $200m-a-year maker of energy and environmental equipment. Most new technology firms, he noted, were being started in Palo Alto garages, not within big companies; indeed, many were started by entrepreneurs who had walked out of big firms. Yet most of their start-ups failed, crippled by either the scarcity or high cost of capital. Might there be a way to blend the advantages of big and small within a single firm?
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Spinning it out at Thermo Electron”
From the April 12th 1997 edition
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