Our standards-setting process risks being corrupted by having people filing for, and getting, any patents they want. That poses a real danger to the effectiveness of innovation.

They're really applying the principles of entrepreneurial management even if they're not making a profit.

They still have to have vision, the ability to undertake an ambitious project, to leverage resources, to manage financing. We thought it would be very useful for the students to look at a situation that was very different from the normal one.

Silver Lake has been unquestionably the most successful of the current wave of tech buyout groups. They have shown that despite the apparent risks of these deals, considerable money can me made.

These are not anarchistic things when you look at successful open-source projects—there is real structure, real checks and balances, and real leadership taking place.

The patent system is a trade-off. We get the 'good' of an invention in exchange for the 'bad' of a temporary monopoly on that invention.

The probability of VCs investing in a start-up is far less likely than it was in 1999. And that's bad news for entrepreneurs.

The basic pattern is the more money that comes in, the lower the returns.