Dr. Sri SridharanA multi-talented and visionary mentor Dr. Sri Sridharan built one of the first computers in India in 1966 at IIT Madras. [Sounds so cool to say that - though not exactly true. Yes, he did build a 1-bit half-adder with donated discrete component parts. A half-adder is an essential part of an ALU {Thank you General Electric}. Well, it was cool enough!! Remember it was waaay back, and no one had seen a computer when he built it. So they couldn't tell it was not a whole computer.]. In 1967 he wrote his first computer program in FORTRAN for simulating the Madras state electrical power grid. He arrived in New York in 1967 with a fellowship to teach computers [a subject he hardly knew] and earned his doctorate in Artificial Intelligence in 1971. His thesis was about a computer program he designed and built for automatic synthesis of organic chemical molecules using AI search techniques. It produced some cool novel syntheses for Vitamin A and Estrogen/Prostaglandin. He spent time in academic research at Stanford University (working on projects with fancy names like Dendral, Meta-Dendral which were applying Artificial Intelligence to Mass Spectrometry). But some cool stuff happened while at Stanford. Lovely daughter, named Radhika, was added to the family in 1973. Sri got to sit face to face with some wonderfully famous people like Joshua Lederberg (Nobel, Genetics), Karl Pribram (Neuropsychology), Carl Djerassi (Organic Chemistry, inventor of "the Pill" or oral contraceptive, eco-sensitive pest control Zoecon), Ed Feigenbaum (Expert Systems), Paul Ehrlich (Conservation Biology, he got another award 'in lieu' of Nobel) and Luca Cavalli-Sforza (Nobel, Genetics and Cultural Evolution). The impact of such people on a young mind is tremendous. Horizons expand. These were scientists, but they seemed to know no boundaries. Once for example, sitting in Joshua's office, the meeting was interrupted briefly by a phone call from a Senator in Washington DC. While Sri quietly waited, Joshua was in conversation about how the country was dealing with chemical and biological weapons. He was influencing policy, there, right in front of him. That gave that young boy both courage and the ambition not to know boundaries. That kind of resolve happens, in a flash, speechlessly. A short stint at Technische Universität (Munich) threatened to make him prematurely famous. He got a Humboldt Fellowship and all around him reacted totally stunned - saying "but you are so young" [go ahead, say that with an accent and emphasis on the last word, please]. Ja, du bist so jung. He decided to go someplace where people liked young bright minds. Rutgers University kept him for 10 years. During this time he became versed in a variety of academic subjects including Chemistry, Graph Theory, Genetics, Law, Psychology and Linguistics. Actually he has publications in reputable journals on applying computer algorithms in many of these areas. He has published widely, been the editor for JACM (don't worry about it) and Artificial Intelligence journals. He also founded the Pitman/Morgan-Kaufmann series of monographs in Artificial Intelligence. In 1989 he was Program Chair for the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Nearly 6000 people attended the conference at the Renaissance Center in Detroit. He was responsible for sorting through several hundred papers. The review panel of 43 well known people - acted like they were cats - Sri acted like he was herding them. But everything eventually did get done, done on time and done very well. He left academia for industry in 1984. He has worked in various leadership positions at BBN Labs (Cambridge, MA), FMC Corp. (Santa Clara, CA) and Intel (Chandler, AZ). [Hey, leadership is also a matter of perspective. He led. Don't ask who followed.] On a project for the Air Force, he led a team that won a contract to demonstrate real-time enhancements to cockpit automation software for the next generation fighter pilots. The project itself was enormously successful, and the Air Force officer cited them in a commendation for singular contributions. Much more gratifying that was the amazing team work and the experience of flow. Here is where Sri learned letting go style of management, that now underlies the Trust workshops and his executive coaching. Intel brought him to Phoenix, AZ, which induced a short period of euphoria. At Intel he witnessed the demise of interest in AI, rebranded himself as a "strategic technologist". This meant he got to play with new and emerging stuff like Object Orientation, Enterprise Integration, Internet and web protocols. Being a strategist, he kept saying "tomorrow" or "any time now". Being a technologist he really did have a lot of fun. In his most recent corporate position, he served as the Chief Architect for Knowledge Management at Intel. The KM strategy he formulated for Intel balanced emphasis on people and technologies, process and culture. He initiated storytelling within Intel. So most people at Intel don't remember that he worked to compile and deliver knowledge using knowledge bases and portals on the one hand and connecting people through communities and expertise yellow pages. They just remember a graying bald smiling man who loved to tell stories. In a very short time he miraculously became "gramps" without having any grandchild.
He just (tempus fugit it was in Fall 2000) semi-retired from Intel. Semi-retired means that he works twice as hard as before and gets no paycheck. Dumb choice. But look at what happened in the stock market. Now he dedicates his time to nurturing startup companies find firm ground. [That is why he is working harder than ever without a paycheck? See!] At his "retirement party" he commented that the thing he is proudest of about his work at Intel was all the wonderful people he hired into Intel, oriented them, coached them and then had them migrate to various divisions. Now there are "Sri people" in just about every division and location. He has command of Internet technologies, e-biz, software development, programming languages and software engineering. He has contributed to the companies he has worked by scanning emerging technologies, positioning them for appropriate introduction for internal use. In this role, he has worked with numerous startup companies, assessed their technologies and business viability, formed partnerships and negotiated deals. Sri is based in Phoenix, Arizona and spends summers away usually in CA. He is involved in local organizations that promote entrepreneurs. He has served on the Board of Directors of AZSoft.NET and has served on the Phoenix Environmental Commission. His passions are photography (still and video) and world travel. He writes poetry in his spare time and is a trained storyteller. Each time he shaves off the hair on his head, he pretends he is a Buddhist. He speaks Hindi and can pretend he speaks French when he visits former French colonies (Morocco, Martinique, St. Martin). In Paris they ask him to speak Anglais, s'il vous plait (Comme lousy accent havez vous). He is founding a new (embryonic) organization called TrustNet that will serve to advance our knowledge of trust. TrustNet offers "performances", including storytelling, executive retreats, corporate workshops. A new outgrowth of TrustNet called "OnTrust" is building online software support and a trust simulation game. Being an incurable optimist, he suffers from delusions that one can actually help increase the capacity to trust in and among organizations. Read that one carefully. It does NOT say, once can increase trust. Just that there are opportunities that warrant trusting and past experiences and predispositions induce one to trust less than warranted. To increase capacity to trust, one has to revise and redesign business processes, websites, open up knowledge flow and increase transparency. Further there has to be a fair mix of incentives and rewards. To learn more, just call Sri. It is a great topic and he loves to share, inquire and stimulate conversation about all this. A white paper is available, but you will have to ask for it. One component of TrustNet is a corporate workshop on ways of improving trust in and among organization. Information on the Corporate Trust workshop TestimonialsI am very impressed by the farsight and the insight you have provided to all of us. We are all amazed at what you pulled together overnight! Well, you should see what was thrown away from the testimonial collection! |
