Would you to become an inventor and own patents worth millions ? Yoshiro Nakamatsu, who bills himself as the Thomas Edison of Japan, hopes to open a school that will teach people how to create new products. Yoshiro Nakamatsu is the president of Tokyo’s Hi-Tech Innovation Institute and claims to have 3,042 patents over his inventing career. Nakamatsu’s net worth from royalties from his inventions is estimated at $75 million.

At the age of 5, with encouragement from his grandfather, Nakamatsu invented a stabilizer to make planes fly better. He was granted his first patent at age 14. Since then, he has licensed 16 patents to IBM, including one for his 1952 invention of the floppy disk for personal computers. Some of Nakamatsu’s other inventions and what he claims they do include the following:

Read more…

After long journey to interview some people, for this time our personage is Claire Schulte. She is an audit manager with Deloitte & Touche, currently on a two-year assignment in London. She has been with the firm since 1994, when she graduated from the University of Portland as valedictorian with a double major in accounting and finance.

How did you move from the Portland, Oregon office to the London office of D&T?

By sheer determination. My largest client in Portland was a life insurance company that recently “demutualized,” which means they went from being owned by policyholders to public ownership on the New York Stock Exchange. I let a Deloitte partner in Portland know that I would like an assignment overseas, and at an international conference, he came across a partner in the United Kingdom who was looking for someone with life insurance experience. My purpose here is to work with another insurance company that is undergoing the demutualization process. The office in London is Deloitte’s largest office in the world, and I’m working with clients operating in many different countries.

Read more…

For this interview, our personage is Darien Griffin. Just like the other personage, He works at big company too, at S.C. Johnson & Son in Racine, Wisconsin. S.C. Johnson is a leading maker of chemical specialty products for home, persoanl care, and insect control. Mr. Griffin is a 1991 graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and is in the executive MBA program at Marquette University.

How did you decide on accounting as a career?
Well, I liked numbers and I liked business. Originally, I was majoring in Actuarial sciance, but found it to be too focused on math theory.

Read more…

What are characteristics of entrepreneurs who successfully start and manage a new business ?

It goes without saying that an entrepreneur must have a thorough technical knowledge of the business. For example, a successful computer consultant must have a thorough knowledge of computers. Entrepreneurs must also have basic management skills, such as the ability to organize and interact with others.

Terms that are often used to describe entrepreneurs and examples of some well-known entrepreneurs and their companies are listed below.

Read more…

This is the second interview, after the first interview at this site. This time our personage is David Miniken. He is a senior auditor with Sweeeney Conrad, a Seattle-based CPA firm. Prior to joining Sweeney Conrad, Mr. Miniken held several accounting positions with Boeing, the giant aircraft company. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in accounting from the University of Washington, and an MBA from Seattle University.

How did you decide on accounting as a career?
I think it was my fourth major in college. I started out pre-med, then went to physical education, then forestry, and then business. Once I settled on business, then I chose what I thought would be the best route to employment.

Read more…