Thought Leaders Series with Brad Feld: Huffington’s 3rd World warning to the U.S. not new but timely

In what is still one of the most popular segments in the history of the PI Window on Business Show, with thousands of downloads in the 48 hours immediately following the live broadcast, Brad Feld’s perspectives on the need for Founders Visa’s for foreign students who, after graduating from prestigious American colleges, are eager to establish U.S.-based enterprises stimulated serious debate.

In this next installment of our Business Thought Leaders Series, Brad joins us to once again talk about a controversial subject based on a March 29th, 2010 article by Arianna Huffington titled “When It Comes to Innovation, Is America Becoming a Third World Country?”

Personally speaking, this is not a topic that is new to me as I posed this very question in my own series of articles dating back to 2007 on the Principles of External Economies, Clustering and the Global Value Chain, to the more recent Buy American coverage in which I introduced the Clark and Fourastie “three-sector hypothesis of industry” (which is now four with the advent of high tech and R&D industries) as it relates to the development of a wealthy nation’s economy.

The question raised by Ms. Huffington is not new nor revolutionary as much as it is now becoming more readily recognized and understood in an increasingly globalized economy.

As a result, I have every reason to believe that our May 25th interview with Brad will be another gem of a discussion that is bound to rival the one we had on the pressing need for the U.S. Government to establish a Founders Visa as a means of ebbing the brain drain from our domestic economy.

Remember to use the following link to access the Live and On-Demand broadcast “Thought Leaders Series with Brad Feld: Huffington’s 3rd World warning to the U.S. not new but timely” on Tuesday, May 25th at 4:00 PM EST.

Our Business Thought Leaders:

High Tech & Venture Capital Investment (Brad Feld)

Link to Brad

Brad has been an early-stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Before co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, before that, founded Intensity Ventures. This company helped launch and operate software companies and later became a venture affiliate of the predecessor to Mobius Venture Capital.

Brad currently serves on the board of directors of Gist, Gnip, Oblong, Standing Cloud, and Zynga for Foundry Group. Previously, Brad served as chief technology officer of AmeriData Technologies. AmeriData acquired Feld Technologies, a firm he founded in 1987 that specialized in custom software applications. Before the acquisition, Brad had grown Feld Technologies into one of Boston’s leading software consulting firms. He also directed the diversification into software consulting at AmeriData, a $1.5 billion publicly-traded company acquired by GE Capital in 1995.

In addition to his investing efforts, Brad has been active with several non-profit organizations. He is the National Center for Women & Information Technology chairman and co-chairman of the Colorado Governor’s Innovation Council. Brad is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship and writes widely read and well-respected blogs at www.feld.com and www.askthevc.com.

Notable companies that Brad has invested in and/or sat on the boards of include Abuzz (acq. NYT), Anyday.com (acq. PALM), Critical Path (CPTH), Cyanea (acq. IBM), Dante Group (acq. WEBM), DataPower (acq. IBM), FeedBurner (acq. by GOOG), Feld Group (acq. by EDS), Harmonix (acq. VIA), NetGenesis (IPO), ServiceMagic (acq. IACI), and ServiceMetrics (acq. EXDS).

Brad holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degree in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brad is also an avid art collector and long-distance runner. He has completed fourteen marathons as part of his mission to run a marathon in each of the fifty states.

First Episode: Tuesday, February 23rd at 4:00 PM EST.

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