BUSH GIVES XEROX NAT’L MEDAL OF TECH….

[Anonymous]

Xerox’s inventor-in-chief
An
innovation revival has lifted profits to $1.2 billion. Fortune’s Geoff
Colvin asks CTO Sophie Vandebroek: Can the company keep it up?
June
2007– If all goes as scheduled, President Bush will hand Xerox’s
Sophie Vandebroek the National Medal of Technology at the White House
in late July. It will be a sweet moment for her and for a company that
was built on a world-changing innovation – xerography – but that lost
its way for a while in the Digital Revolution.The story of how Xerox’s
Palo Alto Research Center in the 1970s failed to capitalize fully on
two of the most critical elements of the personal computer – the
graphical user interface and the mouse – has become legend. In 2000,
then-CEO Paul Allaire admitted that the company’s business model didn’t
work anymore – a conclusion Wall Street had already reached. A year
later Xerox’s innovation ranking among its peers plunged to tenth
(i.e., last) on Fortune’s annual list of America’s Most Admired
Companies.Fortune’s Geoffrey Colvin talks with Xerox’s Chief Technology
Officer, Sophie Vandebroek about the struggle to come up with new
products and services.Recent years have been better. At a shade less
than $16 billion, revenues have not changed much since 2003, but Xerox
(Charts, Fortune 500) has increased profits every year, added $7
billion in market cap, and more than tripled its profit margins.One key
to the turnaround: Xerox has become an innovation power again,
producing new technologies that can read, understand, route, and
protect documents, among other things. Leading that effort is
Vandebroek, 45, the company’s chief technology officer since late 2005.
Her task is to keep Xerox at the leading edge of infotech progress in
ways that make shareholders richer.Born and raised in Belgium,
Vandebroek has a doctorate in electrical engineering from Cornell; she
first joined Xerox in 1991. Before an invited audience in New York
City, she talked with Fortune’s Geoff Colvin about the difference
between invention and innovation; why Xerox employs anthropologists;
how to make girls passionate about engineering; and much else.

[Author]

July 18, 2007 at 2:09 PM