HHCIB 007 Jim Crowley & Business Model Innovation

How Hard Can It Be?

This week my guest is my longtime friend and co-conspirator Jim Crowley, who most recently served as CEO of Skyhook Wireless. Before that was the CEO and President of BuyWithMe, and before that of Turbine, a massive multi-player gaming company that was acquired by Warner Bros. in 2010. Jim and I worked closely together at m-Qube before that, where he was our Chief Operating Officer and ran our gateway business while I was the GM of mobile advertising and interactive TV. Jim actually started his career as an Attorney at Hale and Dorr, a Boston law firm, from 1992 to 1994. He holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991 and a BA in Economics and Philosophy from Connecticut College in 1986. In today’s second segment Jim and I will talk about the importance and the challenges of business model innovation, something that provides a threadline through his entire career, and a challenge facing more and more entrepreneurial leaders as the rate of change and innovation increases around the world. While this episode is on the long side I think you’ll enjoy hearing it as much as I enjoyed making it. It’s a chance to get to know someone I consider one of the finest people in the startup ecosystem, not only for his individual talents and track record but because of the values of team and family that, as you’ll hear for yourself, originate in a childhood spent right in the middle of a whole mess of Crowley brothers and sisters in a house where everybody was expected to do their part. How Hard Can It Be is sponsored by G20 Ventures, early traction capital for East Coast enterprise tech startups, backed by the power and expertise of 20 ?of the Northeast's most accomplished ?entrepreneurs. G20 Ventures.?..?? ?People first. How Hard Can It Be is ?also ?sponsored by Actifio?. Actifio? virtualizes?? data ?the way a hypervisor virtualizes compute, ?to ?help customers enable the? ?hybrid cloud, build higher quality applications faster, and improve business resiliency and availability.? ?Actifio?... ?Radically Simple.?