Curtis Carlson


Curtis Raymond Carlson was president and CEO of SRI International from 1998 to 2014 and is a prominent technologist and pioneer in developing and using innovation best practices. While CEO of SRI International, revenue tripled to $550 million per year and tens of billions of dollars of new marketplace value was created, such as through Siri, an SRI spin-off company that was bought by Steve Jobs at Apple. While Carlson was CEO Mayfield Ventures partner, David Ladd, said, “SRI is now the best enterprise at turning its technology into economic value.”
Carlson has advised CEOs, ministers, and prime ministers on innovation and economic policy, including in the U.S., Denmark, Japan, Lithuania, Finland, Brazil, Taiwan, and Singapore. He served on President Obama’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Singapore National Research Foundation.
Carlson is the Founder and CEO of Practice of Innovation, LLC, a company working with start-ups, established companies, and government agencies on improving innovative performance. The innovation methodology he created at SRI is now used by companies and governments around the world, including the U.S., Singapore, Taiwan, Sweden, Finland, Chile, and Japan. His methodology is based on the use of NABC value propositions. NABC stands for the important customer and market Need, the unique and defensible Approach for the product and business model, and the Benefits per costs of the product when compared to the Competition or alternatives. The utility of this definition is that it is the minimal complete formulation for a value proposition. NABC value propositions can be understood and used across the entire enterprise, regardless of size or type.
A physics graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Ph.D. student in geophysical fluid dynamics from Rutgers University, he joined Sarnoff Corporation after graduation and performed research on computer vision, human perception, and digital video. While at Sarnoff, Carlson led teams that developed the HDTV standard and designed a system to assess broadcast image quality, both of which were awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award. In 1998, Carlson was named CEO of SRI International.

Education

Carlson earned his B.S. in physics from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 1967 and a Ph.D. in geophysical fluid dynamics from Rutgers University in 1973.

Career

Sarnoff Corporation

Starting in 1973, Carlson participated in research and development in the field of imaging systems, working with the RCA Sarnoff Laboratory. In 1981, Carlson was named the Director of the Image Quality and Perception Research Group and Vice President of the laboratory in 1990. In 1995, Carlson became Executive Vice President of Sarnoff's Interactive Systems Division. He started the 1997 team that developed the HDTV program that became the US standard. He also started the 2000 team that designed a system to assess broadcast image quality. Both of these teams were awarded a Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for their accomplishments.

SRI International

He served as the president of SRI International from 1998 to 2014, and oversaw Sarnoff Corporation's full integration into SRI in January 2011. During that period he was Chairman of the Sarnoff Corporation.
Carlson is known for a term known as "Carlson's Law", coined by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to describe Carlson's balance between autocracy and democracy in an organization: "In a world where so many people now have access to education and cheap tools of innovation, innovation that happens from the bottom up tends to be chaotic but smart. Innovation that happens from the top down tends to be orderly but dumb."

Memberships and awards

In 2017 Carlson was selected to be a member of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute's "Hall of Luminaries." This award has been given to only eleven previous individuals in the over 150 year history of the university. He is a WPI trustee emeritus.
In December 2012, Carlson was named a Charter Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. For his contributions to science, technology, and business, He also received the Suffolk University’s first Global Leadership in Innovation and Collaboration Award. He is an honorary Kobe Ambassador for SRI’s contributions to Kobe, Japan.
In 2010, he was named to the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship under President Obama. Carlson has served on several government task forces including the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board, the Army Science Board and the Defense Science Board task force on bio-chemical defense. He also serves on the National Academy of Engineering Committee on Manufacturing, Design, and Innovation, and is a council member on the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, a joint body of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. He is a member of the Highlands Group, which makes recommendations to government officials regarding technological developments of interest to the government.
In 2002, Carlson was awarded Worcester Polytechnic Institute's Robert H. Goddard Alumni Award for Outstanding Professional Achievement due to his contributions to science, technology, and business. Carlson has been involved in establishing WPI's Silicon Valley Project Center. He has given several commencement speeches, including at WPI on May 20, 2006; at Stevens Institute of Technology on May 22, 2008; at the Malaysian Technical University, at Shantou University in China, at Menlo College in California, and at the University of Richmond on May 8, 2011.
For his role in advancing the functional performance and image quality of information displays, Carlson received the Otto H. Schade Award from the Society for Information Display in June 2006.
Carlson has received honorary degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Stevens Institute of Technology and Kettering University. Carlson is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Sigma Xi, Tau Beta Pi, and the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers.
He is a member of the US National Science Foundation's Directorate for Engineering Advisory Committee. He was a member of the National Academy of Engineering team that made recommendations to the National Science Foundation on the use of global value creation best practices. With Len Polizzotto he has worked with the NSF to help implement the NAE recommendations and has provided NSF a Value-Creation Guidebook on their application.

Selected publications