“You have to get used to failure,” Edwards Lifesciences CEO Mike Mussallem said last week at OCTANe’s Medical Technology Innovation Forum in Newport Beach, during a keynote address where he extolled the need for medtech executives and others to take chances, and spend the money in R&D to find the next breakthroughs.
Edwards (NYSE: EW), with a market cap that touched $50 billion for the first time last week, has had more than its share of home runs, but it’s struck out often too—a normal result when thinking big, Mussallem told the crowd, bringing up his own baseball analogy.
“Our batting average is low,” he quipped.
What’s the batting average, then, of Jim Jannard? His 44-year career—from motocross handle grips to sunglasses to movie cameras and beyond—only counts one project critics would likely point to as a swing-and-miss; his last, the soon-to-be discontinued Hydrogen smartphone project.
Safe to say Jannard, who recently announced his retirement, never got used to failure during his storied business career.
Jannard made his fortune through Oakley, but our Kari Hamanaka argued last week that it’s his work with Irvine’s Red Digital Cinema that’s had a larger effect on culture, particularly in Hollywood.
For more on Mussallem and Jannard, see their respective front-page features.
Game 7 of the World Series didn’t keep many notables away from our OC 500 reception last Wednesday; some 300 people attended the event at Hotel Irvine.
You know it’s a big crowd when a foodie like myself failed to notice the arrival of Wahoo’s Ed Lee or Sapphire Laguna’s Azmin Ghahreman, let alone other notables profiled in the new edition such as Pat Fuscoe, Paul Musco, Dan Lubeck, Francisco Morales and Augie Nieto.
Our Richard Reisman pointed to the impressive collection of educational elite at the event; it’s the first time he can remember the leaders of the area’s top 3 universities—UCI’s Howard Gillman, CSUF’s Fram Virjee and Chapman’s Daniele Struppa—in the same room.
The OC 500 went to the printer on Oct. 9 and will arrive at subscriber’s desks this week—of course there’s already been a few executive swaps, company sales, name changes and other events dating a few of those 500 entries.
One update worth highlighting: the Hilbert Museum of California Art’s exhibit “The Magic and Flair of Mary Blair,” of which several pieces are highlighted in the book, has been extended.
The exhibit now runs through Dec. 28 and is well worth the visit to Orange.
Jeff Stack, founding principal of real estate developer and investor Sares Regis Group, is receiving the Semper Fidelis Award at a Nov. 11 event—the 244th birthday of the Marine Corps—at Pelican Hill.
“Jeff is most deserving of the award for his lifetime of faithful service to Corps and Country,” Francis Quinlan, retired brigadier general, wrote in a recent letter. He noted Stack, a Vietnam War veteran, was decorated numerous times for valor in his combat actions and earned the Purple Heart.
More recently, Stack and his wife, Nancy, formed the Cystinosis Research Foundation; he’s also a director of the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.
