Intellectual Ventures

Willy Franzen — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:30:53 +0000

One of the books that I’ve been reading lately is SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance. It’s a great follow-up to the original Freakonomics, and it once again shows how changing your mindset can lead you to all kinds of new ideas (this is a really important lesson for job seekers). One of the companies that is mentioned in the book is Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, WA based invention company. They’re all about ideas. Things like product design, product development, manufacturing, marketing, sales, and service all come later, and Intellectual Ventures doesn’t want anything thing to do with those processes. They just invent, invent, invent. The company isn’t tied to one specific area—they’re working on problems like stopping Malaria, preventing hurricanes, and counteracting negative effects from climate change should they ever happen.

An Intellectual Venture for Your Career

For Intellectual Ventures it’s all about owning the intellectual property. They want to come up with the ideas, make them work, and then let other companies do the rest. The business side will be about licensing the technology to the right people on a non-exclusive basis possibly including spin-off companies, but for now it’s all about building a technology portfolio. Intellectual Ventures has been actively inventing since 2003, and since then they’ve filed thousands of patents. These patent applications “span a broad range of areas including computer software and hardware, user interface design, semiconductors, biomedical devices, advanced medical procedures, digital imaging, nanotechnology, nuclear energy and advanced particle physics.” As you can probably tell from that list of topic area (and the company’s name), Intellectual Ventures is filled with extremely smart people. It was founded by two former C level Microsoft executives.

If you’ve always been fascinated by invention and you think that you have the intellect, then you should check out Intellectual Ventures’ Jobs page. They have 50 positions posted right now, and most require a high level of education and experience, but a few seem suitable for new grads. Whether or not a position is right for you will rely heavily on how relevant your background is, so it makes more sense to browse the listings yourself to see what fits. You should also note that Intellectual Ventures has satellite offices in Silicon Valley, Austin, Tokyo, Beijing, Singapore, Seoul, and Bangalore.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you read SuperFreakonomics yet?

Christie’s

Willy Franzen — Tue, 06 May 2008 12:48:36 +0000

In less than a decade the common perception of auctions has changed dramatically. Auctions used to be reserved mostly for the wealthy, but now much of the world’s auctioneering happens on eBay, managed by a computer. An auction is the purest way to sell an item, for the person who values the item the most typically wins. It’s quite democratic that the luxury of this form of sale has been brought to the masses, but much of the culture and tradition associated with auctions has been lost in translation. Luckily, auction houses like Christie’s have adapted to the online world while maintaining their auras of international glamour. Founded in 1766, Christie’s is now the “world’s leading art business with global auction sales in 2007 that totaled $6.3 billion.”

Going Once, Going Twice

To many the idea of a live auction is extremely intimidating. The prices seem exorbitant, the cultural norms are hard to figure out, and there’s always a chance that you will lose control of yourself and bid more than you can afford. The truth is that even Christie’s, one of the most respected names in the industry, can be quite approachable. The prices of items that they sell range from $200 to over $80 million – there’s certainly some room in there for almost anyone. Christie’s also offers an online video introduction as well as guides on How to Buy and How to Sell at their auctions. Christie’s main focuses are on fine art, jewelry, photographs, wine, furniture; however, they are likely to deal in almost anything that generates cultural interest.

Sold! to the College Kid Sitting in the Back Row

Christie’s has “85 offices in 43 countries and 14 salerooms around the world including London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Geneva, Milan, Amsterdam, Tel Aviv, Dubai and Hong Kong.” At a few of these locations, they appear to be hiring at the entry-level. Their Careers site is simple to navigate, but quite light on information. For instance, they have job listed in New York, but there are no descriptions for the jobs. Openings such as Exhibition Coordinator (Jewelry), Inventory Controller (Jewelry), Senior Administrative Assistant/Junior Writer (Proposals), and Junior Specialist/Sale Coordinator (Sporting/Maritime/19th Century Paintings) all sound like they could be perfect for a new college grad, but there’s just no way of knowing without contacting them. Their job listings outside of North America, such as Junior Specialist (South-East Asian Art) in Singapore, do include job descriptions, which is strange.

We often hear that working at auction houses entails hard work and low pay, but it’s hard to pass up the glamour of working at Christie’s. We wish that we could tell you more, but you’ll have to do the rest of the research on your own. It will be good practice for becoming an expert in 19th Century Sporting Paintings, or whatever you choose to pursue.