Sony Ericsson, the London-based mobile handset maker, is shutting its Seattle-area office, as first reported by Engadget and Triangle Business Journal. Sony Ericsson is cutting about 2,000 out of 9,900 jobs globally, including closing offices in Research Triangle Park, San Diego, Miami, Kista, Sweden, and Chennai, India. The moves are part of a company-wide restructuring that includes moving its North American headquarters from Research Triangle Park to Atlanta, GA.

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It turns out that Don Dodge—famous among entrepreneurs for putting a personal face on Microsoft’s operations in New England, until his unceremonious termination earlier this month—was only in job limbo for about about an hour and a half. Dodge sends Xconomy word this morning that he has been hired by Microsoft archrival Google.

Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of engineering, was the first person to contact him with a job offer, “90 minutes after the news of the layoff hit” on November 4, Dodge says in a blog post about his move.

At Microsoft, Dodge was director of business development for the Emerging Business Team. In an e-mail, Dodge says he’ll have a similar role at Google: “My main job will be working with developers helping them build apps on Google technologies and platforms. Startups will always be my first love, so I will spend as much time as possible with developers at startups.”

Dodge says he will spend his “20 percent time”—the one day per week that Google employees are encouraged to spend on personal projects—working with Google Ventures, the venture funding wing led by Rich Miner from Google’s Cambridge office and Bill Maris from the company’s Mountain View, CA, headquarters. “There are some obvious synergies there,” Dodge writes.

Dodge’s job shift will ultimately take him away from Massachusetts. But he says he’ll be working from Google’s Cambridge office through the holidays, and that he will be “back in Boston so often people will think I still live here. It was the same after I left Silicon Valley…they think I still live there.”

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch broke the story about Dodge’s new job last night, and Dodge himself shared more details about it this morning.

In previous public statements about his departure from Microsoft, Dodge has been diplomatic to the point of saintliness. But in today’s post he takes the gloves partway off, writing that “laying off 5,000 people when you have $37B in cash and huge profits is not cool.”

He also takes a few jabs at Microsoft products—calling Microsoft’s Outlook e-mail management program “tired,” saying that his Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone “didn’t measure up,” and commenting that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser is too slow. At Google, naturally enough, Dodge will be using Gmail to manage his e-mail, getting an Android-powered mobile phone, and using the Google Chrome browser. And it’s probably safe to assume he won’t be doing many searches on Bing.

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Just came back from the Washington Biotechnology & Biomedical Association’s annual meeting in downtown Seattle, where 500-plus biotechies and distinguished guests (including more than a few local politicians) gathered for a quiche-and-berries breakfast and some keen networking.

The keynote speaker was Elias Zerhouni, the former director of the National Institutes of Health and now a senior fellow at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Just a few highlights from his talk here:

Zerhouni laid out the top five challenges in public health, as he sees it. Nothing too surprising, but a good way to frame the whole healthcare discussion:

1. The shift from acute to chronic conditions. (“This is a worldwide issue,” he emphasized. “This is the new global health horizon.”)

2. Aging population.

3. Health disparities.

4. Emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases. (Pandemics, for example.)

5. Emerging non-communicable diseases. (Things like obesity and depression, the latter of which the World Health Organization predicts will be the No. 1 cause of disability and dysfunction for people aged 25-44.)

As a world-class radiology researcher, Zerhouni also spoke to the scientific challenges the industry faces. He said the fundamental scientific barrier to doing “translational” research—that which leads to new products like drugs or devices—is the complexity of biological systems involved in diseases. “The explosion of data does not equate to explosion of knowledge,” he said. (This is a common theme across all fields of science and technology.)

On this front, Zerhouni stressed the importance of both external and internal sources of innovation. Meaning, the state of Washington should “find ways of bringing in collaboration on the translation or creation of knowledge.” He pointed out that “building relationships with the Asian Rim is probably your strategic advantage.”

For the politicians in the audience, Zerhouni noted, “Today when you get elected or not elected, the main driver is jobs, jobs, jobs.” He said his dream is that in a few years, biomarkers and healthcare stats will impact political campaigns, to the tune of, “In my district, Body Mass Index has dropped from X to Y.” (Luke previously reported on the issue of jobs being the driver of public support for biotech.)

The last issue Zerhouni addressed was a particularly interesting one: culture wars around science and technology. “Don’t be oblivious to the political, cultural, and moral aspects” of biotech and biomedical work, he said. “Be careful to not assume that everyone in the world believes what you do is holy and good.” Having dealt with the profound issues of evolution vs. creation in Washington DC—most notably in the context of stem cell policy—Zerhouni was sharing some hard-earned wisdom that everyone in the room could take home with them.

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Seattle-based RealNetworks is cutting 4 percent of its worldwide staff today, about 70 out of 1,700 jobs, according to All Things Digital. The report cites the economic downturn and cost-cutting as reasons for the move. Last week, RealNetworks (NASDAQ: RNWK) reported a small profit for the third quarter, the company’s first profitable quarter since the first three months of 2008.

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Don Dodge, admired by many technology entrepreneurs as Microsoft’s enthusiastic ambassador to the startup world, is one of those swept up in today’s big round of layoffs at the software giant. Dodge was director of business development for the Emerging Business Team, working from Microsoft’s offices in Cambridge, MA.

Dodge revealed the news in a post on his own blog today. He said the termination came as “a total surprise” and that his managers, who include corporate vice president for strategic and emerging business development Dan’l Lewin, “offered no explanation.”

As Greg reported earlier, the layoffs announced today affect some 800 people across the company, including employees based in Washington and Massachusetts. The company hasn’t revealed specifics about which locations were affected most severely, so it isn’t known whether Dodge is part of a larger contingent of Cambridge-based Microsoft employees being let go.

Dodge is a veteran of Web and software companies Forte, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove, who joined Microsoft as a result of its acquisition of Groove in 2005. He is extremely well known in the technology community in Boston and around the country as a booster of startup-based entrepreneurship.

Dodge was philosophical in his blog post about getting a pink slip. “Today I start thinking about the next chapter in my life,” he writes. “Being totally consumed with my job and traveling every week has left no time to think about other opportunities. That changes today. I couldn’t be more excited about the future….I will be blogging more often now, and that excites me. There are lots of topics that I have wanted to dive into but just haven’t had the time. I will be seeing more friends too. Again, I have been so busy traveling that I haven’t had time to connect with friends all over the world. It’s all good.”

Reaction to Dodge’s dismissal from the blogosphere has been swift, incredulous, and angry. Michael Arrington, founder of TechCrunch, is calling the decision “a huge mistake for Microsoft,” since Dodge was “the face of Microsoft” to many in the startup community. “He travels constantly, speaking at events whenever he’s asked, and makes a big effort to give young startups the attention they deserve. This is a guy who gives a heck of a lot more to the community than he ever takes back…Don invested years of his time making Microsoft seem more human. He wasted all that time, apparently.”

Dodge said in a Twitter post today that his “phone has been ringing off the hook” since he posted the news.

Dodge has been a guest blogger for Xconomy, contributing a piece on the Web 2.0 investing bubble in June 2008 and a piece on venture capital fundraising in September 2008.

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Microsoft has confirmed it is cutting 800 positions across the company today, in its third round of layoffs this year. About a quarter of the jobs are in the Seattle area, and an unspecified number of employees in Massachusetts are impacted, among other regions. It is not yet clear which product groups and divisions will be most affected. The news was first reported by TechFlash, and confirmed by PaidContent.

Back in January, Microsoft announced 1,400 layoffs and a plan to eliminate up to 5,000 jobs over the course of 18 months. That was followed by a second round of cuts (an unspecified number) in May. But today’s cuts seem to push the total number of job losses beyond the originally stated 5,000—though with the company continuing to hire in some areas as it cuts in others, it is hard to track the exact number. The latest round of layoffs comes on the heels of Microsoft’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) announcing an 18 percent quarterly decline in profits as compared with the third quarter of last year.

Microsoft is also leaving the door open for additional cuts—a move that seems honest, but could be demoralizing to employees and prospective hires. In a statement given to Xconomy (and to PaidContent first), a Microsoft spokesperson wrote: “Earlier this year, we announced that in order to reduce costs, increase efficiency and prioritize our focus areas, we would eliminate approximately 5,000 positions by June 2010. Today, we are eliminating around 800 positions spread across multiple businesses and locations and have completed our reduction plan sooner than we had anticipated 11 months ago. At the same time, we continue to hire in priority areas, but also understand that continuing to manage our businesses closely, as we always do, can mean additional headcount adjustments.”

The spokesperson added, “We are not breaking out figures by location, but I can confirm that Massachusetts was impacted by today’s job eliminations. We are working with the individual employees to assist them through this transition.”

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Greylock Partners, a Silicon Valley venture firm formerly based in the Boston area, announced today it has hired Reid Hoffman, the co-founder and executive chairman of LinkedIn, as a partner. Hoffman, who has also been an angel investor, will focus on early-stage consumer Internet and software investments, as well as advise entrepreneurs from Greylock’s portfolio companies. Greylock also announced it has closed a new $575 million venture fund. The VC firm has previously backed companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, Data Domain, Farecast, and ZipCar.

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Seattle-based Big Fish Games announced today it has hired Michael Vernon as chief financial officer and Ian Hurlock-Jones as chief technology officer. Vernon is a veteran of Seattle-area firms aQuantive and Zumobi, while Hurlock-Jones comes from Fox Interactive Media and Buy.com. Big Fish, a leading developer and distributor of casual games, announced it was opening its European headquarters in Cork, Ireland, in April. The company also has a small office in Vancouver, BC, which former CFO Glenn Walcott told me about last year. Big Fish raised $83.3 million back in September 2008.

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This morning I checked my e-mail, powered by Google, and then used Google Maps to find my way to the Google Kirkland open house. It reminded me a little bit of the scene in “Being John Malkovich” when Malkovich, the actor, finds a portal into his own brain and sees that everyone looks like him and says nothing but, “Malkovich, Malkovich.” OK, I guess the analogy would fit better if I also worked for Google and uttered “Google, Google” all day—but that might even happen sometime, if Google’s pace of hiring keeps up. (Just kidding.)

Engineering and site director Scott Silver, who’s been on the job since June (succeeding Peter Wilson, who left the company), introduced the new Kirkland facility, which has been officially open since August 31 and employs more than 350 people in a unified campus setting. He gave a little history of Google’s Kirkland operation—the first office was at Carillon Point in 2004, Google’s first major presence in the Northwest—and how it has grown and contributed to the company’s products. Google Talk, which does Internet telephony and instant messaging, was born and raised in Kirkland, for instance.

Other areas of focus for the Kirkland office include:

—Search: Webmaster tools, and instant indexing for real-time news.

—Advertising: AdPlanner (see below), AdWords Opportunities (helping advertisers optimize search ads), Google Analytics, and Campaign Insights (a new service released last week that’s around making brand ads more effective).

—Applications: Google Talk, Google Talk Video (within Gmail), Google Maps (including a new application for directions on mobile phones), the Chrome Web browser, YouTube video clips, and Google Sync (for synchronizing your mobile phone).

—Infrastructure: system and corporate billing software for supporting applications at huge scales.

Silver, a former Amazon and Netscape veteran, said he’s “quite proud of what we’ve done here, and immensely happy to come to this day,” and to be able to say Google is here to “create great products and find great engineers.”

I followed up with Silver afterwards, and he confirmed Google Kirkland is actively hiring software engineers, but he didn’t say how many positions are open at the moment. He said his team is doing hundreds of interviews per month, “and we’d love to do more.” I asked him about the 800-pound gorilla down the road, Microsoft, and whether Google is recruiting much talent from …Next Page »

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GamerDNA, the Cambridge, MA-based startup building an online community where avid gamers can find recommendations for new games, has cut its staff nearly in half, shrinking from 13 employees to seven, according to a story today in Mass High Tech. Jon Radoff, the company’s founder and CEO, confirmed the layoffs in an e-mail to Xconomy, but declined to discuss them further, saying he was “trying to focus more on the future than the tough decision we just had to make.” GamerDNA, formerly called GuildCafe, raised $3 million in Series A funding from Boston’s Flybridge Capital Partners in April 2008.

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Wilmington, MA-based Charles River Laboratories (NYSE: CRL) has eliminated 115 positions at subsidiary CTBR Bio-Research in Senneville, Quebec, according to an article yesterday in the Montreal Gazette. A spokesperson quoted in the article attributed the cuts to the postponement of contract clinical research and development projects by the company’s pharmaceutical-industry clients. It’s not Charles River’s first round of layoffs since the recession began—the company cut about 3 percent of its global workforce back in February. We’ve updated the Boston Tech Layoff Tracker with the newest information.

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Portland, OR-based research and publishing firm Clean Edge released a report today on job trends in the cleantech and energy industry. The highlights include a survey of salaries across a range of cleantech positions worldwide, performed in partnership with Seattle-based PayScale, the salary comparison firm. For example, the survey tracked median salaries for solar energy installers ($40,000), entry-level wind turbine technicians ($52,600), mid-level LEED-certified green architects ($58,700), and smart-grid hardware design engineers ($87,700). The survey also found that business analysts in green industries earned $61,500—13 percent more than non-green analysts—and senior accountants in green industries earned $67,300, or 16 percent more than their non-green counterparts.

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Every second year, the Technology Alliance gathers policymakers and leaders from the innovation community at a retreat designed to explore issues affecting Washington’s technology sector and to map out strategies to increase our state’s long-term competitiveness. We organize the retreat around what we call the “three drivers” of a vibrant innovation economy: excellent K-12 and higher education systems; strong research capacity at our public and private research institutions and companies; and a robust entrepreneurial climate that nurtures the growth of young startups generating new technologies, services and jobs in our state.

This year’s conversation was all about talent.

Much has been made by our organization and others about the need to increase our students’ college and work readiness; to improve science and math teaching and learning in our schools; and to invest in high-impact, high-demand programs at our public universities. These have been priorities of our organization and our partners in the innovation community for a long time. Now, it’s time to get serious. Washington is at a crossroads. We have the framework to enact meaningful education reform with the enactment of Senate Bill 2261, and the design of an important new tool to track student progress and teacher effectiveness through a longitudinal data system.

The latter is particularly important when one considers the data we heard at the retreat, and a lack of awareness on the part of many in our state who could help drive change. Here are just a few key points we heard during our retreat that everyone in this state should know:

• According to Postsecondary Opportunity, our education pipeline isn’t so much leaking as it is hemorrhaging: for every 100 students who start 9th grade, only 69 graduate from high school four years later; only 33 of those enter college the following fall; only 24 return sophomore year; and only 17 earn a four-year degree within 6 years of enrollment. We start with 100 high school freshmen, and we get 17 college graduates. Seventeen.

• Meanwhile, we were told that 80-90 percent of parents surveyed expect that their kids will get a bachelor’s degree. That is particularly sad when you remember that our high school graduation requirements do not, at present, align with the minimum requirements to enter our public baccalaureate institutions.

• Kati Haycock, president of The Education Trust, shared sobering data on our performance internationally. We in the tech community know we are competing not just with other states but with the rest of the world. We don’t do well: in the 2006 PISA test given to 15-year-old students in 26 OECD countries, the United States ranked 22nd in mathematics and 19th in science.

• In higher education attainment, the U.S. is one of only two OECD nations (out of 30) in which today’s young people are less educated than their parents.

• Teacher quality matters more than anything else. Studies …Next Page »

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This article was written with Geoff Mamlet.

Today, some of our legislators will hold a hearing at the State House to discuss changes in Massachusetts’ non-compete laws. They would do well to heed our own past as an open employment state.

In the mid-1780s, Samuel Slater was a young apprentice in England working for the men who created the world’s first mass production system: a system which produced thread from cotton. At the time, Britain was intent on protecting its technology, and it was illegal for British citizens to emigrate and take with them the knowledge of British technology. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Slater.

The American textile industry was desperate for a way to compete against the British. They offered a bounty of $100 to people willing to import British technical knowledge. “For which man will bring us English models, will be given monetary funds for his reward.”

Slater, at the end of his apprenticeship, emigrated to the US, taking with him his knowledge of the British mill technology. Arriving in Beverly, Massachusetts, Slater used his skill to build there the first cotton mill in America. He went on to produce numerous improvements to the British designs.

The innovations introduced by Slater are recognized as having kicked off the industrial revolution in America, and he became known as its father. By 1810, there were 50 mills spinning cotton into yarn or thread. By 1815, there were 140 mills within 30 miles of Providence alone, with 26,000 people on the payroll.

The freedom Slater had in Massachusetts to practice his trade, despite restrictions elsewhere, made our region the center of a technology boom that changed the world.

We would like to leave our legislators with this thought: today’s Massachusetts non-compete law does not prevent a young person from following in Slater’s footsteps. It merely encourages that young person to do so in California. Surely this is short-sighted.

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Kirkland, WA-based Digeo, a 10-year-old home entertainment company backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, has been sold to Arris, a broadband communications firm based in Suwanee, GA, for about $20 million in cash.

Digeo is known for its high-definition digital video recorder, called Moxi. The acquisition gives Arris expertise, intellectual property, and talent in video networking and multimedia services delivery. Arris will gain about 75 Digeo employees (mostly engineers) in Kirkland, which will raise its R&D costs by about $3 million per quarter, the company said.

“Arris delivers the market position necessary to take the Moxi vision to the next level,” said Digeo’s CEO, Greg Gudorf, in a statement. “I am extremely pleased that the Digeo team will continue to drive the evolution of the Moxi platform.”

But observers point out that the purchase price means a substantial loss on the investment for Allen. PaidContent reports Digeo’s total funding was more than $110 million. In an interview with TechFlash, Gudorf said fewer than 10 Digeo employees would lose their jobs in the acquisition, and that he will stay with Arris during the transition. The news of Digeo’s layoffs was first reported by the Seattle Times.

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Last night, Google hosted a series of technology talks at its Fremont office in Seattle. The goal was to give the tech community a look at the core technologies and problems Google is working on in the Northwest—the first time Google Seattle has spoken publicly in detail about a number of projects it’s pursuing. Between its Seattle and Kirkland, WA, offices, Google has more than 500 employees here, making it one of the three largest outposts for the Internet giant outside of its Mountain View, CA, headquarters (the other two are in New York and Zurich, Switzerland).

Brian Bershad, Google’s Seattle site director, said the company has gone through a period of six or seven months of slowed growth (along with everyone else). But it has emerged from that and is hiring again. “We’re back in the mode where we’re looking for extremely strong talent,” Bershad said.

Three tech talks followed. I heard nothing earth-shattering, but Google provided an in-depth and unusually transparent look at how its local engineers are pushing the state of the art in the company’s key products. Some of this was clearly aimed at building relationships with the local technology talent pool. Here’s a brief recap:

—Stephen Adams, a staff software engineer, discussed his project on Web browser security. Like any browser, Google Chrome, which has 30 million users, needs periodic updates (software patches) to stay secure from viruses and other bugs. The problem is these patches are huge and take a lot of time and bandwidth to download. Adams figured out a clever way to reduce the size of a patch from 1 megabyte down to about 79 kilobytes (better than a factor of 10). Adams said he’s been going to Mountain View headquarters to work with the Chrome team on building the product, code-named “Courgette.”

—Peeyush Ranjan, engineering director for search, gave an overview of how his team is improving Google’s core search engine technology. One area they’ve been pushing is the freshness of search results—how to find and rapidly rank the importance of new Web pages as they come online. Another area is improving Google’s Hot Trends feature, which tells you the top rising queries in the search stream (terms like Hurricane Katrina or Apple iPhone). He also mentioned some future work in real-time search and push-based Web, but didn’t elaborate. Ranjan did say Google has a special team in Kirkland dedicated to pushing the state of the art in Web search.

—Chee Chew, engineering director for client and applications tools, talked about advances in desktop software and Web apps. He touched on Gmail tools—viewing attachments without having to download PowerPoint or PDF reader, and uploading groups of photos with one drag and click. Chew also showed a demo for a project on how to make it so adding video to the Web is as simple as adding an image.

Afterward, there were questions from the audience on how Google can make money on some of these products, and why it chose to go open-source for Chrome. “Let’s agree that Google is an Internet focused company” Chew said. “Our Internet apps are richer, faster, more robust. That helps our business model.” Bershad added that there are millions of paying Google Apps customers. Kirkland site director Scott Silver added that not every Google product has to make money.

As for the open source question, Bershad said, “Much of what we do, we want to see other companies pick up.” The best way to drive engineers to build valuable applications on top of existing platforms like Google’s, he said, is to “show them what you’re doing.”

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[Updated Aug 27, 11pm PT, with clarification about the list marketing and lead-gen process (see below)]

A stealthy Seattle startup in online marketing is starting to generate some buzz around town. Marketfish, which recently moved into new offices in Pioneer Square, has raised an undisclosed sum from private investors, led by Seattle-based Alliance of Angels and including Bellevue, WA-based Atlas Accelerator. Now it is aggressively putting the money to work, scoring a lot of new customers and hiring staff as it gears up for a beta launch of its Web service early next month.

Marketfish is led by founder and CEO Dave Scott, who was previously chief marketing officer at Seattle-based Entellium, the company that imploded last year in an accounting scandal (which was blamed on executives who were above Scott’s pay grade). Before that, Scott was head of marketing at Intermec and PeopleSoft. In his first media interview about Marketfish, he declined to say how much funding the startup has received, but said, “We think we’ve raised enough to get to break-even.”

Scott founded the company in July of last year. He initially tried to raise money in October, but was unsuccessful. “I liquidated my 401(k), sold my car, and buckled down for six to nine months,” he says.

Here’s the problem Marketfish is solving. Say you’re a big company like Dell, and you want to market yourself to small business owners. Today, as the head of marketing, you’d go out and rent a list of potential customers from Forbes, Fortune, or Inc., say, and get a list broker to represent you. They call all the list managers, at firms like Worldata or InfoUSA, and negotiate a deal. It’s all part of list marketing—using a third-party permission-based list to launch lead-generation campaigns. “The process today is extremely painful,” Scott says. “It’s really hard to measure, and it’s all manual.” He adds that the whole process can take something like 24 days, and is done over the phone. [See Scott's clarification of the process in comments section below---Eds.]

Marketfish is trying to automate all that by creating a Web platform, similar to Google AdWords, that could potentially cut the time down from 24 days to 30 minutes—and make it much easier to measure the performance of an ad campaign. It does this by providing a patent-pending Web interface where marketing agencies can work directly with list owners. “We’re trying to create a marketplace,” Scott says. “We want to create trust between the two.”

Using the Marketfish site, a marketer can directly find the lists he or she wants online, add them to a shopping cart, and be done with it. Marketfish takes a percentage cut of the revenue from each transaction (which Scott didn’t disclose). Scott says the company already has 30 customers—with 20 more on the waiting list—including 19 of the top 20 marketing agencies in the Seattle area.

Previous companies like NextMark and min (Marketing Information Network) tried various approaches in the pre-Google days, Scott says, but they largely failed to solve the list marketing problem. “They wanted to play nice with all the middlemen. We’re going to cut them out,” he says. “It’s a bold strategy.”

The company has some heavy hitters on its board of advisors, including Clark Kokich, chairman of Seattle-based Razorfish (recently sold to Publicis), startup advisor Janis Machala of UW TechTransfer, and Mike Crill of Atlas Accelerator. Scott says Marketfish is looking to form a partnership with a big company like Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo—none of which has developed a platform to solve this particular online marketing problem (at least not yet).

Scott says Marketfish currently has seven employees, and is looking to hire five more in the next six months or so—everyone from Java software developers to experts in direct marketing and lead-generation marketing. Even while planning to ramp up spending, he notes, “We’re on our path to break-even.”

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Sonus Networks (NASDAQ: SONS), the Westford, MA-based maker of voice-over-IP software and equipment for wireless, cable, and telephone companies, announced today that it has cut 93 workers, or approximately 10 percent of its global workforce. Richard Nottenburg, Sonus’s CEO and president, called the layoffs “the final phase of the restructuring initiative we began at the end of last year with the goal of re-aligning our business to market needs and opportunities.” Sonus laid off 50 workers last December, 40 in January, and 60 in March.

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One of MIT’s leading business professors, Richard Locke, came to Seattle yesterday to talk about the “S” word. Yes, we’ve been hearing a lot about sustainability lately, in the context of technology and business. Big companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Boeing are talking seriously about the issue. Smaller Seattle-area companies like Verdiem, Powerit Solutions, and R.W. Beck have been making progress in important areas like energy efficiency and water management. To Locke, and many others, sustainability is much more than a corporate buzzword.

Locke is deputy dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a professor of entrepreneurship and political science at MIT, based in Cambridge, MA. His research specialties include labor standards and practices, global entrepreneurship, and sustainable businesses. I sat down with him at the Westin Hotel downtown to get his perspective on Northwest companies’ green initiatives, and their possible partnerships with MIT. Locke was coming from meetings with Intel in the Portland area the previous day (the Santa Clara, CA-based chipmaker has manufacturing and development facilities in Hillsboro, OR). His other meetings in Seattle included a stop at Amazon to speak to Sloan School alums about the changing face of MBA education, and about sustainability in the corporate realm.

Locke defines sustainability broadly as “using resources today in a way that permits future generations to use them as well.” By this he means not just natural resources—energy, materials, water—but also social resources like people, jobs, and standards. “Let’s redefine sustainability in such a way that we can show the opportunities available, not just the constraints,” he says. “Once you broaden the definition, you expand the scope for individuals and organizations to try to do something about it.” (As I understand it, this definition of sustainability could include managing employees so they don’t burn out, creating jobs that last, and establishing fair labor standards that endure.)

Take Intel, for instance. Locke says the company is pursuing a series of initiatives to reduce its carbon footprint, improve its supply chain efficiency, and reshape the way it uses energy, water, and people. “Are there ways they can make, for example, new chips that might require less energy? They’re having a very interesting internal discussion about chip speed versus energy consumption. I find it fascinating that a large company in an extremely competitive sector, that still does manufacturing in …Next Page »

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Microsoft and Yahoo officially announced this morning that they had reached a search engine and advertising agreement. Amid intense speculation, and after more than a year of disagreements over minor and not-so-minor details, the two companies have signed a ten-year agreement that puts Redmond, WA-based Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) in control of both companies’ search engine technology, and Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) in charge of the sale and distribution of advertising for both its own search engine and Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

As part of the announcement, Microsoft and Yahoo launched a website dedicated to explaining and promoting the agreement. “It establishes the foundation for a new era of Internet innovation and development,” Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz said in the press release attached to the website. Microsoft now owns an exclusive license to the Sunnyvale, CA-based company’s search technology, including the right to integrate it into its own search platforms, a process that will cost hundreds of millions of dollars, according to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in a conference call with reporters and financial analysts this morning.

Even before that integration, the Bing search algorithm developed by Microsoft will be used on the search engine sites of both companies. According to Ballmer, expanding Bing onto Yahoo will give the fledgling search engine, just a few months old, the room to compete more effectively, both in terms of users and advertising dollars. The press release does not mention Google, the colossus of Internet search, by name, instead referring to it as “one company that dominates more than 70 percent of all search.” But it’s hard to imagine Microsoft and Yahoo would have reached an accord without Google overwhelmingly outcompeting them. At the moment though, Google employees are not allowed to comment on the deal.

On the other end of the deal, advertisers wanting to use either company’s search engine will have to go through Yahoo, although this only applies to so-called premium advertisers. Yahoo will use Microsoft’s AdCenter program to run this business, and AdCenter will still be the program for self-serve advertising. Although Yahoo is in control, both companies will still have their own …Next Page »

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