Title:
President and CEO, Wingcast Inc.
Education:
Bachelor of science in computer engineering and master of science in electrical engineering, Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa; MBA, Tel Aviv University
Age:
42
Residence:
Moving from Redmond, Wash., to San Diego
Birthplace:
Tel Aviv, Israel
Family:
Wife, Iris; four children
Hobbies:
Reading, cooking
Growing Up in Israel, Wingcast CEO
Harel Kodesh Learned the Art of Making Do With What You Have
If you want to simplify it, even oversimplify it, Harel Kodesh’s life these days is a gigantic triangle connecting Seattle, San Diego and Detroit.
“I always take the red-eye flight,” says the former Microsoft exec and engineer, sitting in his new Sorrento Mesa office.
“I wake up in the morning after the three-hour flight to Detroit saying, ‘Why did I take that?'” Kodesh says with a laugh, his voice rising with the question.
The simple answer is that day flights are a waste of time. “I don’t get to see the kids (in Redmond, Wash.) or spend time here,” Kodesh says.
There is a more complex answer. And it’s the same answer to other questions: Why is he moving his family from Redmond? Why is he working at all, after a 10-year management stint at Microsoft?
“Because I think there’s a way to change people’s lives,” says Kodesh, “to make them happier, to make them more productive, make them more effective.
“And I think we’re going to do it.”
Kodesh, 42, is president and CEO of San Diego-based Wingcast Inc. He shuttles back and forth among Sea-Tac, Detroit and San Diego, largely in the name of putting sophisticated telecommunications devices in American vehicles by the middle of next year.
Wingcast is a joint venture of Dearborn, Mich.-based Ford Motor Co. and San Diego’s Qualcomm Inc. The two companies announced the fledgling company on July 31, 2000 , the same day they introduced Kodesh as its leader.
Integrating Cars, Phones, Computers
Wingcast’s purpose is to integrate cars, computers and cell phones in a technology called telematics.
The devices will operate by voice control or with one-touch buttons. They will deliver a variety of entertainment and information to drivers and their passengers.
A Wingcast-equipped car might provide everything from navigation help (with audio directions) to engine diagnostics. If something goes awry in the car, the system may even schedule an evening appointment with a neighborhood mechanic , unless the car owner overrides that feature.
It’s likely people have not yet realized all the uses for telematics, Kodesh says. The Internet was the same way, he adds: in 1995 no one could have predicted it would be used for price matching.
“We see this thing as an evolving platform,” Kodesh says.
The automobile-based telecommunications unit will also serve little, portable clients like handheld computers and cell phones.
Wingcast already offers some service in Europe. Company officials want to start U.S. service in the middle of 2002.
So work at Wingcast is hectic these days.
“The business model and the technology are solid, so now we need to execute,” Kodesh says. “There is a lot riding on it. And our customers need to ship cars with our telematic products in them, so the execution has to be perfect.”
Culture Clash
The Ford and Qualcomm cultures are very different, notes Kodesh, whose many tasks include setting the tone for the new company.
He brings Wingcast an attitude shaped by work at Microsoft and youth in Israel.
Born and raised in Tel Aviv, Kodesh studied computer engineering as an undergraduate at Technion Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. He studied electrical engineering there as a graduate, and received a master of business administration degree from Tel Aviv University. He spent time in the Israeli army prior to finishing all his degrees.
Kodesh is partial to people who have had their higher education in Israel.
Not that Harvard, Stanford or MIT haven’t turned out bright people. It’s just that various things about coming of age in Israel , army service, university studies at a more mature age, the need to get by with the resources at hand, plus other aspects of the culture , create something Kodesh considers special.
Can-Do Attitude
There is a level of persistence, a can-do attitude, he says. “It seems like people are hell-bent on setting goals and achieving them.”
” I think the ability to go around the issues, and not get stuck just because a certain stage is missing, is one of the biggest things that Israel can teach its engineers and scientists,” Kodesh says. “You know, you improvise.
“One of the most common phrases you hear in Israel is, ‘So what?’ And usually it’s in response to: ‘But you’re not supposed to use it this way.’
“So what? So you use it a different way. And you look at that. Yeah, it makes sense.”
Kodesh eventually ended up at Motorola Inc., though he did not set out to join Motorola. He interviewed for a job at a company called Mobile Data International, which Motorola acquired before he started work. He ended up in the company’s mobile data division.
Kodesh jumped to Microsoft in 1991. He eventually led the effort to develop and market the Windows CE operating system for handheld computers, along with embedded development products.
Kodesh founded Microsoft’s information appliance division, breaking from the company’s core work with the desktop personal computer. He last worked in Redmond as vice president of Microsoft’s consumer appliances division.
No Special Perks
One thing he would like to bring to Wingcast is a Microsoft attitude toward the office hierarchy.
As CEO, he says, “you try to occupy the smallest room in the building and you try to make sure that people understand there are no perks that come with the job with the exception of personal things like salary and the number of stock options you get. You don’t try to claim certain things that you’re entitled to just because you are a certain rank.
“I used to fly with Bill Gates and he would fly coach. And when the CEO flies coach, nobody has the moral support to go up and ask to be upgraded to business on the company’s expense.”
It was at Microsoft that Kodesh started working with Qualcomm executives on their 1998 joint venture, San Diego-based Wireless Knowledge, Inc. And it was around then, the mid- to late-’90s, that Qualcomm Executive Vice President Paul Jacobs first crossed paths with Kodesh. Jacobs, by his own account, later recruited Kodesh for the top job at Wingcast.
“Harel has very high energy, and is probably as hard a worker as anyone I know,” Jacobs said by e-mail. “He is very smart and passionate about the things he believes in. He is also a nice guy.”
In his off-hours, Kodesh likes to read. “Cooking is another pressure reliever,” says the Wingcast CEO, “but there is no point cooking at 3 a.m.”
Actually there are few off-hours, he says. Wingcast has products and services to perfect. And people to hire.
“We are hiring like crazy,” Kodesh says.
He is taking his cue from Microsoft in getting the smartest people he can.
“You try to make them smarter than you are,” Kodesh says, “and you don’t take any offense at that. And if you do it right, I think, you just see the results unfold
“You sit in meetings and you hear the ideas that people have, and say, “Gee, you know, I’m not sure I would have been so smart to think about that. This is really neat.”
“There’s nothing that makes me happier than leaving a meeting and saying, ‘You know, everybody in the meeting was smarter than I was about the topics that were discussed. And much smarter than I was, period.'”
