Biography : Scott Thompson, New Yahoo! CEO, Ex Paypal Chief

Who is Scott Thompson ?

Scott Thompson, New Yahoo! CEO, Ex Paypal Chief.

“Scott brings to Yahoo! a proven record of building on a solid foundation of existing assets and resources to reignite innovation and drive growth, precisely the formula we need at Yahoo! His deep understanding of online businesses combined with his team building and operational capabilities will restore the energy, focus, and momentum necessary to grow the core business and deliver increased value for our shareholders. The search committee and the entire Board concluded that he is the right leader to return the core business to a path of robust growth and industry-leading innovation” Roy Bostock, Chairman of the Yahoo! Board

Scott Thompson, New Yahoo! CEO 2012

Scott Thompson Biography

Scott Thompson is the President of PayPal. Scott previously served as PayPal's senior vice president and chief technology officer where he oversaw information technology, product development, and architecture for PayPal.

Prior to PayPal, Scott worked for Inovant, a subsidiary of Visa formed to oversee global technology for the organization. As executive vice president of technology solutions at Inovant, he was responsible for all development, support and maintenance of Visa's global payment system.

Scott was also chief information officer of Barclays Global Investors, where he implemented a new strategic technology platform and global infrastructure. In addition, he has worked with Coopers and Lybrand, delivering information technology solutions to leading financial services clients such as Wells Fargo. Scott received a bachelor's in accounting and computer science from Stonehill College.

Scott Thompson In Paypal and Ebay

Mr. Scott Thompson serves as an Advisor of Ignite Capital. Mr. Thompson served as the President at PayPal, Inc. He served as the Chief Technology Officer of PayPal, Inc. since February 7, 2005. Mr. Thompson has overall responsibility for growing the global leader in online at payments PayPal. He served as a Senior Vice President of Product Development, Technology, and Operations at PayPal, Inc. from February 7, 2005 to January 2008. 

Mr. Thompson oversees all aspects of global payment systems, including product roadmap, architecture, information management, and operations. Mr. Thompson focuses on the technology issues of the Ignite Capital. He also served as a Senior Vice President at Ebay Inc. from February 7, 2005 to January 2008. Mr. Thompson joined PayPal from Inovant LLC. From September 2001 to February 2005, he served as an Executive Vice President of Technology Solutions of Inovant LLC, where Mr. Thompson was responsible for all development, support, and maintenance of Visa's Global Payment System, which processed tens of billions of transactions in 2004. 

From April 2000 to February 2005, he served as an Executive Vice President and Global Chief Information Officer for Inovant/VISA International. From August 1997 to April 2000, Mr. Thompson served as the Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President, Systems Group at Visa U.S.A., Inc. From 1998 to September 2001, he served as the Chief Information Officer and Executive Vice President of Technology and Support Services for Visa USA.

Mr. Thompson served as the Chief Information Officer of Barclays Global Investors, where he implemented a new strategic technology platform and global infrastructure. In addition, Mr. Thompson has worked as a Partner with Coopers and Lybrand. He serves as Board of Advisor at Yola, Inc. He has been Director of PerkStreet Financial, Inc. since November 16, 2011. He has been a Director of F5 Networks Inc., since January 2008, Vertica Systems, Inc. since August 11, 2010, Splunk, Inc. since November 2011 and Zuora Inc. since September 2008. 

Mr. Thompson serves as a Member of Advisory Board at FastScale Technology, Inc. He served as a Member of Strategic Advisory Council of Tablus Inc. Mr. Thompson holds a B.S. degree in Accounting and Computer Science from Stonehill College. (Busines Week)

Scott Thompson Awards

Scott Thompson received the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year© Award in 2011. The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year© award is the world’s most prestigious business award for entrepreneurs, spanning more than 140 cities and 50 countries worldwide.

Yahoo! makes ex-PayPal chief Scott Thompson new CEO

Yahoo! has officially made ex-PayPal chief Scott Thompson its new CEO, the company has confirmed, with Thompson taking up the new role – as well as a board position – on January 9 2012. The potential hire was rumored this morning with insiders tipping its announcement as imminent; according to Yahoo!, his “primary focus will be on the core business” and will include decisions on “specific investments or dispositions of assets” as the company attempts to turn around its ailing fortunes.

The Yahoo! board is obviously hoping Thompson can bring some of his PayPal shine to its own bank account. While at the payments company, he saw the user-base more than double and pushed revenues over the $4bn mark.

However, Yahoo!’s problems – and the road ahead – certainly seem more troubled than what PayPal faced. The company has 700m users, though has struggled to find a role in the current online ecosystem. “Speed is important but we will attack both the opportunity ahead and the competitive challenges with an appropriate balance of urgency and thoughtfulness” Thompson says of the challenge. Acting CEO Tim Morse will return to his role as CFO when Thompson joins Yahoo! next week.
Source : Wikipedia and Busines Week

Jonathan Ive Biography, Who Is Jonathan Ive?

Who Is Jonathan Ive? Sir Jonathan Paul "Jony" Ive, KBE (born February 1967) is a British designer and the senior vice president of industrial design at Apple Inc. He is the leading designer and conceptual mind behind the iMac, titanium and aluminum PowerBook G4, G4 Cube, MacBook, unibody MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPod, iPhone, and iPad.

ve was born in Chingford, London. He was brought up by his teacher father and attended the Chingford Foundation School and went on to attend Walton High School in Stafford, then studied industrial design at Northumbria University (Newcastle Polytechnic at the time). Once enrolled in Walton, it became clear that he attained many technical and drawing skills through his father. Ive met his wife, Heather Pegg, while in secondary school. She is a year younger than Ive. They married in 1987 and have twin sons and now live in San Francisco.

Ive has said that he knew he was interested in “drawing and making stuff” since around age 14. The idea of design was long in his mind, but he was unsure about exactly what he would design. His interests were very broad — from furniture and jewellery to boats and cars. He was never sure about where his interest would lead. It wasn’t until he met with various design experts that he was able to see some standard ground in wanting to further his study in product design.

Ive was not always adept with computers and found them quite frustrating. Technology to him was difficult to grasp or may not have been for him. Once he discovered Apple’s Mac computers, he felt more at ease. He realized they helped his once confusion and brought a newer and greater outlook to the technology of computers. For him, this was a significant discovery because he was hoping to enhance his design skills using computers

Jonathan Ive Photo

Jonathan Ive Biography

Why is Jonathan Ive famous

As Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple Inc. since 1997, Jonathan Ive is acknowledged as the chief creator behind many of the company's immensely successful products, including the iMac, iBook, PowerBook G4, iPhone, and perhaps his greatest innovation, the iPod.

Jonathan Ive Quote

" It's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better."

70 Magnetism of Jonathan Ive

A shy, detail-obsessed industrial designer may not be a woman's initial choice as the type of man she would generally go for, and although Jonathan Ive does fit this description, he doesn't otherwise seem to fit into the mold of the stereotypical geeky technical whiz. In 2007, he was featured in an article that appeared in The Observer entitled "The 50 Men Who Really Understand Women," owing to what some have called his flair for "feminizing" the design of computers and hand-held gadgets. Despite the fact that he's happily married, Jonny Ive can be considered quite the catch owing to his senior position at Apple, which earns him in excess of $2,000,000 a year.

88 Success of Jonathan Ive

Thanks to the enormous popularity and sheer design genius of a number of products that Jonathan Ive has developed for Apple, the modest and highly innovative Englishman is generally regarded as one of the most brilliant industrial designers of his generation. In addition to staggering sales figures for inventions such as the iPod and iPhone, he has won all sorts of accolades for his revolutionary designs. He was named the Design Museum's first-ever Designer of the Year in 2002, and earned that title again in 2003. 2003 also saw his induction as a member of the Royal Designers for Industry, while the following year he was awarded the RSA Benjamin Franklin Medal. In 2005, Jonathan Ive earned three of his four Silver Pencils from the British Design & Art Direction (D&AD) association, while in 2006, he was named a Commander of the British Empire. He has also won the Industrial Designers Society of America's Industrial Design Excellence Award, the Cooper-Hewit National Design Award and an MDA Personal Achievement Award. In January 2008, London's Daily Telegraph named him the most influential Briton in America, as his creations continue to sell in the millions.

Jonathan Ive Biography

Jonathan Paul Ive was born in February 1967, in London and was raised in Chingford, England. As a child, he became fascinated with how objects were put together, and spent much of his time taking things apart in order to discover the nature of their construction. Following high school, he headed north to attend Newcastle Polytechnic (currently Northumbria University) where he studied art and industrial design. After graduating with first-class honors in 1989, he moved back to the south of England to work at the Tangerine design consultancy agency in London, where he honed his skills designing everything from power tools and televisions to combs and toilets.

Jonathan ive joins apple

In 1992, Jonathan Ive was offered a full-time position at Apple Computers and relocated to Cupertino, California. The company had been a client of Tangerine and was on the verge of bankruptcy at the time of his arrival. It wasn't until 1997 when cofounder Steve Jobs returned to occupy the chief executive's chair that Apple's fortunes began to turn around. Jonathan Ive was named Senior Vice President of Industrial Design shortly after Jobs' return, as the company entered a period of unparalleled ingenuity and commercial success.
Source : Wikipedia and Askmen

Biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson Book Review

Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing.

Buy Now From Amaozn.com

At a time when America is seeking ways to sustain its innovative edge, and when societies around the world are trying to build digital-age economies, Jobs stands as the ultimate icon of inventiveness and applied imagination. He knew that the best way to create value in the twenty-first century was to connect creativity with technology. He built a company where leaps of the imagination were combined with remarkable feats of engineering.

Although Jobs cooperated with this book, he asked for no control over what was written nor even the right to read it before it was published. He put nothing off-limits. He encouraged the people he knew to speak honestly. And Jobs speaks candidly, sometimes brutally so, about the people he worked with and competed against. His friends, foes, and colleagues provide an unvarnished view of the passions, perfectionism, obsessions, artistry, devilry, and compulsion for control that shaped his approach to business and the innovative products that resulted.

Driven by demons, Seteve Jobs could drive those around him to fury and despair. But his personality and products were interrelated, just as Apple’s hardware and software tended to be, as if part of an integrated system. His tale is instructive and cautionary, filled with lessons about innovation, character, leadership, and values.

Amazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Walter Isaacson

Q: It's becoming well known that Jobs was able to create his Reality Distortion Field when it served him. Was it difficult for you to cut through the RDF and get beneath the narrative that he created? How did you do it?

Isaacson: Andy Hertzfeld, who worked with Steve on the original Macintosh team, said that even if you were aware of his Reality Distortion Field, you still got caught up in it. But that is why Steve was so successful: He willfully bent reality so that you became convinced you could do the impossible, so you did. I never felt he was intentionally misleading me, but I did try to check every story. I did more than a hundred interviews. And he urged me not just to hear his version, but to interview as many people as possible. It was one of his many odd contradictions: He could distort reality, yet he was also brutally honest most of the time. He impressed upon me the value of honesty, rather than trying to whitewash things.

Q: How were the interviews with Jobs conducted? Did you ask lots of questions, or did he just talk?

Isaacson: I asked very few questions. We would take long walks or drives, or sit in his garden, and I would raise a topic and let him expound on it. Even during the more formal sessions in his living room, I would just sit quietly and listen. He loved to tell stories, and he would get very emotional, especially when talking about people in his life whom he admired or disdained.

Q: He was a powerful man who could hold a grudge. Was it easy to get others to talk about Jobs willingly? Were they afraid to talk?

Isaacson: Everyone was eager to talk about Steve. They all had stories to tell, and they loved to tell them. Even those who told me about his rough manner put it in the context of how inspiring he could be.

Q: Jobs embraced the counterculture and Buddhism. Yet he was a billionaire businessman with his own jet. In what way did Jobs' contradictions contribute to his success?

Isaacson: Steve was filled with contradictions. He was a counterculture rebel who became a billionaire. He eschewed material objects yet made objects of desire. He talked, at times, about how he wrestled with these contradictions. His counterculture background combined with his love of electronics and business was key to the products he created. They combined artistry and technology.

Q: Jobs could be notoriously difficult. Did you wind up liking him in the end?

Isaacson: Yes, I liked him and was inspired by him. But I knew he could be unkind and rough. These things can go together. When my book first came out, some people skimmed it quickly and cherry-picked the examples of his being rude to people. But that was only half the story. Fortunately, as people read the whole book, they saw the theme of the narrative: He could be petulant and rough, but this was driven by his passion and pursuit of perfection. He liked people to stand up to him, and he said that brutal honesty was required to be part of his team. And the teams he built became extremely loyal and inspired.

Q: Do you believe he was a genius?

Isaacson: He was a genius at connecting art to technology, of making leaps based on intuition and imagination. He knew how to make emotional connections with those around him and with his customers.

Q: Did he have regrets?

Isaacson: He had some regrets, which he expressed in his interviews. For example, he said that he did not handle well the pregnancy of his first girlfriend. But he was deeply satisfied by the creativity he ingrained at Apple and the loyalty of both his close colleagues and his family.

Q: What do you think is his legacy?

Isaacson: His legacy is transforming seven industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, digital publishing, and retail stores. His legacy is creating what became the most valuable company on earth, one that stood at the intersection of the humanities and technology, and is the company most likely still to be doing that a generation from now. His legacy, as he said in his "Think Different" ad, was reminding us that the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

About the Author

Walter Isaacson, the CEO of the Aspen Institute, has been chairman of CNN and the managing editor of Time magazine. He is the author of Einstein: His Life and Universe; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life; and Kissinger: A Biography, and the coauthor of The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife and daughter.