Earlier this year an intriguing coincidence took place in the world of innovation: at almost the same time, Bob Metcalfe and Walter Gilbert decided to become venture capitalists in the Boston area. Both Metcalfe and Gilbert are distinguished innovators who have played many different roles in the process of bringing research to market. Metcalfe invented the Ethernet and founded 3Com to commercialize it. After leaving 3Com, he went on to a career in publishing and punditry. Gilbert has had a brilliant research career in molecular biology, sharing the 1980 Nobel Prize in chemistry for discovering a fundamental method for sequencing DNA. He cofounded one of the very first biotech companies, Biogen, in 1978 and has also had a hand in starting several other biology-based companies, including Myriad Genetics.

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