WAKEFIELD, MA – Over 700 professionals and entrepreneurs attended the northeast premiere entrepreneurship conference,TIECON 2004. Themed “Creating The Entrepreneurial Renaissance” the conference featured Robert Kraft CEO of the Kraft Group and owner of the Patriots as the keynote speaker. Other keynote speakers included Edward J. Zander, Chairman & CEO, Motorola Inc., Dr. Noubar Afeyan, Senior Managing Director and CEO, Flagship Ventures, Dr. Kevin Davies, Editor-in-Chief, Bio-IT World, Dr. Michael Gilman, Senior Vice President, Research, Biogen Idec Inc. and Dr. Ronald M. Green, Director Ethics Institute, Dartmouth College.

Why Renaissance? “The Renaissance was a time of uncertainty in which leaders had to embrace change and were driven by extreme passion. We believe there are meaningful lessons from this era that apply to today’s entrepreneurs,” said Doss Karan and Akshay Patel who were co-chairs for TIE-CON 2004.

The conference began with a networking event on Thursday, June 3, 2004. Vinit Nijhawan, President-Elect, of TIE-Boston gave a warm and enthusiastic welcome address. The formal sessions began on Friday morning with a keynote address by Robert Kraft. He started his address with Vince Lombardi’s famous quote “Winning isn't everything, it is the only thing”. Kraft described the process of taking the Patriots to the Super Bowl. “When I bought the team, it had the worst record in NFL playing in the worst stadium. It took a great deal of perseverance, stubbornness and business instinct to turn the team around and take them to the Super Bowl – not once but twice”. He emphasized the value of hiring employees who have good character, good work ethics and intelligence. “Hire managers with the same core values as yourself” said Kraft.

The conference continued the trend of the past year by broadening its scope beyond IT. There were sessions on a wide variety of topics including BioTech, Social Entrepreneurship and one by Sushil Bhatia, President and CEO of JMD Manufacturing titled “Leadership, Innovation and the Art of laughter”. The TIE-WIN initiative, a special interest group focused on women entrepreneurs, also held a session on mentoring.

Keith Ferazzi gave a very insightful talk on networking and converting connections and business relationships into revenues. Ken Sharma from Merril Lynch, the Platinum Sponsor for TiECON 2004, moderated a session titled “A Road for Financial Independence”.

Sanjay Sharma, Chairman of Research MIT Auto-ID center, Shabbir Dahod, President and CEO, SupplyScape and Gerald Darsch, Director of the DOD Combat Feeding Program were part of a panel that presented the various issues associated with RFID. Sessions on outsourcing, open source and web services were informative.

Over 80 + professionals and students volunteered their time to make it a very special event. The session ended with a fabulous recital by the very creative local musician, Prasanna who has succeeded in creating a new genre of music by blending different music styles of the world.

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