Sixteen-year Xerox veteran Steve Hoover was introduced Jan. 11 as
the new chief executive officer of the company's Palo Alto Research
Center.
Hoover's appointment follows previous CEO Mark Bernstein's retirement
from PARC. Bernstein had held the position for 31 years, guiding the
think tank through its formative years and to its incorporation as a
wholly owned, yet independent, subsidiary of Xerox in 2002.
Hoover
joins PARC from its parent company, where he was most recently vice
president of the software and electronics development group in
Rochester, N.Y. In that role, Hoover directed more than $175 million of
research and development investments that support multiple software and
electronics platforms for some 30 Xerox products.
Hoover's new position is going to entail as much sales and marketing
responsibility as research, due to PARC's longtime entrepreneurial
approach. PARC has served as an IT incubator of sorts for a number of
different startups in the green IT, Web development, IT infrastructure
and network communications businesses.
"I've spent my career at Xerox in innovation, in one way or the other,"
Hoover told eWEEK. "The toughest thing to do is to take an existing big
business and get it to invest in new technologies and create new
business opportunities. I've done that over my time at Xerox on the
innovation and engineering sides.
"PARC is in the business of innovation. That is their business model:
How do we invest and innovate for our clients, for other companies, for
the government? How do we do it with startups, and how do we do it with
Xerox?"
With Xerox since 1994
Hoover joined Xerox in 1994 and has held a variety of research,
development, and engineering positions, including vice president of the
Xerox Research Center of Webster, N.Y. There, Hoover, was responsible
for research and development in services, imaging, cross-media, and
hardware technologies that advance Xerox's document technology,
solutions, and services portfolio.
"Steve is not only a respected researcher but also an effective
leader," said Sophie Vandebroek, Xerox chief technology officer and
president of the Xerox Innovation Group.
Hoover received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University and
master's and Ph.D. degrees from Carnegie Mellon University. He will
take over the CEO position on Feb. 1.
PARC celebrated its 40th birthday on Sept. 23, 2010 with a half-day event at its San Francisco Bay area foothills campus.
In 2002, PARC was incorporated as a wholly owned yet independent
subsidiary company of Xerox. Currently, PARC has a long list of
customers, with about 40 percent of its business from Xerox and 30
percent from government contracts. Its 2009 revenue was about $60
million.
Many familiar inventions were dreamed up at PARC, including the
graphical user interface for computers, laser printing, computer
programming languages, Ethernet networking and VLSI (very large-scale
integration) circuit design.
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