Eric Schmidt, the ICT Business Leader

Eric Schmidtis an American software engineer, businessman and the current executive chairman of Google. From 2001 to 2011, he served as the chief executive of Google. Along with Mike Lesk, Schmidt co-authored the software program analysis for the Unix computer operating system. According to Google’s website, Schmidt also focuses on “building the corporate infrastructure needed to maintain Google’s rapid growth as a company and on ensuring that quality remains high while product development cycle times are kept to a minimum.”

Schmidt was elected to Apple’s board of directors on August 28, 2006. On August 3, 2009, it was announced that Schmidt would resign from the board of directors at Apple due to conflict of interests amid the growing competition between Google and Apple.

Schmidt was a campaign advisor and major donor to Barack Obama and Obama even has considered him for Commerce Secretary. Schmidt was an informal advisor to the Obama presidential campaign and began campaigning the week of October 19, 2008, on behalf of the candidate. He had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the chief technology officer position which Obama created in his administration. After Obama won, Schmidt was a member of President Obama’s transition advisory board. He proposed that the easiest way to solve all of the problems of the United States at once, at least in the domestic policy, is by a stimulus program that rewards renewable energy and, over time, attempts to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. He has since become a new member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology PCAST.

Segment 6

Reed Hastings, Netflix Co-Founder

Reed Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997 with then CEO Marc Randolph and launched the subscription service in 1999. He currently serves as Chairman and CEO of the movie-rental company. In 2005, ‘Time’ magazine added Reed to its “Time 100” list of the one hundred most influential global citizens. In March 2007 Reed was appointed to Microsoft’s board of directors.

At present Netflix, Inc. is an American public company, provider of on-demand Internet streaming media and online DVD and Blu-ray Disc rental in the United States, Canada, Latin America, the Caribbean, United Kingdom and Ireland. Reed Hastings is its co-founder and CEO, the company is headquartered in Los Gatos, California.

Earlier in his career, Reed founded Pure Software, which was acquired by Rational Software in 1997 after a successful IPO and numerous acquisitions. He also served as President of the California State Board of Education from 2000 to 2004. After receiving his Bachelors at Bowdoin College in 1983, Reed served in the U.S. Peace Corps as a high school math teacher in Swaziland.

The US President Obama from time to time sits down with a pack of Silicon Valley tech titans in San Francisco. Among the attendees: Apple CEO Steve Jobs, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Eric Schmidt,Twitter CEO Dick Costolo and Netflix CEO Reed Hastings.

As a rule the president and the business leaders discuss the shared goal of promoting American innovation, and talk about the tech titants’ commitment to new investments in research and development, education and clean energy. Another purpose of the discussion is innovation. Innovation, yes, but lowercase “jobs” is what Obama is most concerned about. “The focus of the discussion is innovation and job creation,” Obama’s press secretary Jay Carney said, “and these are representatives of businesses who can – who know a lot about private sector job growth.” Obviously other topics could come up.

Now form temporary expert groups in which one student from each jigsaw group joins the other students assigned to the same segment. You are given 10 minutes to discuss the main points of your segment and rehearse the presentation you are going to make to your jigsaw group.

 

Come back to your jigsaw group and present your segment to the group. The other members of the jigsaw group are encouraged to ask clarifying questions. For this you have 15-20 minutes.