The Center for New Technology Enterprise (the “Center”) was founded on a set of core values which we strive to inculcate into our students and which inform all of our activities and relationships.

Setting Standards for Future Generations

In providing experiential education to our students and services to our clients, and in collaborating with our partners, being merely excellent or even superlative is insufficient. The Center strives relentlessly not only to generate and constantly improve upon the highest quality work product possible but also to set standards of achievement that others will attempt to emulate far into the future. Examples from the world of sports come to mind: Secretariat’s sweeping victory in the Belmont Stakes to capture the Triple Crown in 1973, Lance Armstrong’s seven consecutive first-place finishes in the Tour de France, and the eight gold medals that Michael Phelps won at the 2008 Olympic Games. For us, however, inspiration comes from those entrepreneurs who started with great ideas and had the insight and acumen to transform them into record-breaking businesses: Larry Page and Sergey Brin (Google), Bill Gates and Paul Allen (Microsoft), Dr. Andrew Grove (Intel), Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com), Steve Jobs (Apple), Fred Smith (FedEx), Prof. Herbert Boyer and the late Robert Swanson (Genentech), Dr. George Rathmann (Amgen), Dr. Wayne Hockmeyer (MedImmune) and Dr. Muhammad Yunus (Grameen Bank, both awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize) are contemporary examples, just as Thomas Edison, William Hewlett and David Packard, George Eastman, Henry Ford, Robert Wood Johnson and Benjamin Franklin are role models from the past. It is not just the magnitude of their achievements that inspire awe but also the ways they accomplished them. These pioneering role models acted boldly, took risks, exhibited iron discipline, and summoned inner reserves of strength and determination, often overcoming serious adversity and emerging triumphant when success appeared impossible. These are among the traits will enable the Center not only to fulfill and enhance its mission but always to set the pace in creating the best practices in its fields.

Ethical Conduct and Integrity

Technical proficiency is meaningless without an inner core of rock-solid integrity. By this, we mean not only honesty but also fairness and trustworthiness in our internal relationships and our dealings with others. It means keeping our commitments, understanding and seeking to fulfill the needs of those with whom we interact, and working tirelessly with our stakeholders to achieve common goals, even if doing so requires us at times to subordinate our interests to those of others. It also means that codes of professional responsibility must represent only minimum standards of ethical conduct. We want the Center to be an enduring institution of which our students, staff, directors and officers will always be justly proud and with which others will always feel privileged to collaborate.

Transparency

In educating students, clients and others, it is critical that the Center serve as an example of the highest modern standards of corporate governance. Thus it is important for all of our processes and activities to be open, transparent and devoid of conflicts of interest. Relationships among the Center and its directors, officers and staff shall be conducted at all times in accordance with this standard. The same applies to dealings between the Center and its external collaborators. This standard does not detract in any way from the obligation of confidentiality that the Center owes its clients but rather is intended to enhance the Center’s credibility by subjecting its programs and activities to outside scrutiny.

Diversity

A trans-disciplinary educational program by its very nature is diverse. A zest for different perspectives and ways of looking at issues is essential. However, equally important is melding the ways that individuals from different cultures and backgrounds look at the world. Diversity creates a higher quality educational experience and improved work product. Moreover, diversity not only makes the Center a better partner to its global stakeholders but also enables our students to succeed in an increasingly trans-national, multicultural and interconnected environment. Thus fostering diversity is not only the right thing to do, it also offers only upside potential. The Center strives to include women and minorities in its programs and supports the efforts of other organizations that promote their advancement in the technology sector. The Center operates in an equal-opportunity, non-discriminatory manner. This policy extends to citizenship: the Center welcomes students, clients, professionals and others who are outside the United States and citizens of other countries who are located here.

Innovation

Aversion to risk, complacency, and reluctance to attempt new initiatives can lead to stagnation, paralysis, and even regression. In a world characterized by rapid and often unexpected change, standing still is not an option. To quote Dr. Andrew Grove’s graphic observation, “Only the paranoid survive.” The Center will always be open to new ideas to improve its programs and services, increase its productivity, try new approaches and technologies, and embrace change and the future. If at times an initiative falls short, we will learn from our experience and adopt other approaches. It is important that our students and other stakeholders be free to experiment and learn from any shortcomings along the way.

It is unrealistic to expect that in any human endeavor, success is an upward linear progression, achieved the first time every time. Getting up and Learning from failures often becomes the foundation for future successes. As Senator Robert F. Kennedy declared in his Day of Affirmation address, “[O]nly those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” Freedom to fail is part of a mentality that sets world-class technology centers such as Silicon Valley apart from those that try to imitate but cannot duplicate their accomplishments. Adopting this mentality will spur creativity and continual improvements in the quality, delivery, variety, and relevance of the Center’s educational programs, services, and work product.

Adaptability, Curiosity and Open-Mindedness

The Center encourages its students to use their imagination and curiosity to broaden the ways in which they look at the world. Although each will analyze a situation through the prism of his or her own discipline and the tools he or she has acquired by working with students and professionals in other fields, it is imperative that they think creatively and expansively. Moreover, they must develop receptivity to new ideas and ways of thinking, and approach matters without pre-conceived suppositions. The Center and its students must also be able to adapt immediately to rapid change and unexpected circumstances and turn challenges into opportunities. The Center incorporates all of these attributes into its internal processes and its interactions with clients and other third parties.

Thinking Big and Moving Forward

President John and Senators Robert and Edward Kennedy have inspired millions of people around the world for more than 50 years. The following quotations express values and sentiments that are at the core of the Center’s identity. These quotations resonate as powerfully today as when the words were first spoken.

The first set of quotations comes from President Kennedy’s address at Rice University on September 12, 1962, in which he explained why the United States will go to the moon before the end of the 1960’s: