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On Saturday, August 5th, 2005, Mr. Earl Bakken, the legendary co-founder of Medtronic, was invited by Tsinghua Alumni Association of Minnesota (TAA-MN) to give a speech to Tsinghua alumni and other professionals in the Twin Cities area. The event was held at Medtronic World Headquarters, during which Mr. Bakken centered his speech on Decision Making and Leadership.
Mr. Earl Bakken shared with the attentive audience stories and history about the genesis of the company as well as its corporation mission. He used his own personal experience to encourage listeners to dream on and to strive to make the dream a reality. As an inventor, an industrial pioneer and a great mind, Mr. Bakken has always failed to see the factor of impossibility in his dreams. Mr. Bakken expanded on his unique decision making philosophy of "Ready, Fire, Aim" with wealth of examples from his years at Medtronic. He emphasized that the worst sequence of action is "Ready, aim, aim, aim... and somebody else fire". By looking back the roadmap that he took Medtronic from a two-person firm in a garage to one of the most reputable companies in the world, Mr. Bakken shared with the audience some of his great views on leadership and responsibility.
Mr. Bakken briefly introduced to the audience his post-Medtronic mission: To build a revolutionary health care system in Hawaii that was designed to provide health care through the combined western medical sciences and traditional Asian and other world healing modalities.
The speech was followed by a question and answer session, during which Mr. Bakken expressed his view on biomedical industry and encouraged more engineers from the world to devote into this field. The audience was greatly impressed by Mr.Bakken's sharp mind as well as his lively speech, which was filled with laughs and rounds of applauses.
At the end of the speech, TAA-MN presented a gift to Mr. Bakken and invited Mr. Bakken to visit the Tsinghua campus in the near future. Many people stayed around after the event to chat with Mr. Bakken and as well as taking pictures with him. Mr. Bakken also joined the reception held ahead of the event, during which he had chatted with the attendees.
More than eighty people attended the event. Most were Chinese professionals from companies such as Medtronic, Seagate, 3M, United Healthcare and Cummins PowerGen, as well as some faculties and graduate students from the University of Minnesota.
TAA-MN thanks Mr. Earl Bakken for giving us a wonderful speech. Our thanks also go to all the attendees, especially the volunteers who help organizing the event. TAA-MN welcomes Tsinghua alumni and all the other friends come to future TAA-MN event.
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