Orange has spent another $137.5 million on Wildfire, a firm based in Lexington, Massachusetts that specializes in speech recognition and virtual personal-assistant technology, and a further $6 million to secure a 25% stake in NewsTakes, a Silicon Valley - based firm that specializes in reformatting content for cell-phones and other handheld digital devices. Orange has also created a $434 million cyberfund to incubate, and to take further equity stakes in, small technology startups. And it plans to roll out a string of Imaginariums in Silicon Valley, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and throughout Europe and Asia.
Hirschhorn can't guarantee that any particular bet will come up a winner. But he understands the stakes that he's playing for -- and the resources that he needs to stay in the game. "This is the new frontier," he says. "We're doing what's never been done before. What I need is the best possible talent pool. Give me hot-shot wizards who understand the future, people who beat up their alarm clock in the morning because they can't wait to get started. Give me a few hundred of them, and I'll be happy."
Ian Wylie (ian@wylienet.demon.co.uk), a Fast Company contributing editor, is based in London. Contact Kenny Hirschhorn by email (kenny.hirschhorn@orange.co.uk).
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