Steven Snyder

For the captain of TWA Flight 800, see that article
Template:Infobox Person

**Steven Snyder** (born 22 November 1954) is a notable figure in high technology management. He was an early employee of Microsoft where he was Microsoft's first business unit general manager, leading the Development Tool Business. He was also founding CEO of Net Perceptions, a leading company in recommender systems during the late 1990s.

## Early life

Steven Snyder was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He
earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Drexel University and a M.B.A. from
Harvard. He then consulted at Touche Ross & Co.

## Microsoft

Snyder joined Microsoft in 1983, and was made
responsible for turning around the relationship with IBM,
which had been faltering over the delivery of an operating system that
could work with the networking features of the upcoming IBM PC-AT
computer Template:Harv. The problem was that as of
1983 Microsoft was slipping behind on its delivery schedule and was
delaying the release of the AT badly. After delivering the news
to IBM on a tough phone call, Snyder and his team got the project
back on schedule and saved the relationship with IBM, which was
crucial to Microsoft at that time in its history Template:Harv.

Snyder was then promoted to be the first general manager in Microsoft history,
with responsibility for the Development Tool Business, helping develop
the products into industry leaders, as evidenced by winning the PC
Magazine annual awards competition two years in a row Template:Harv.

## Personnel Decisions International

After leaving Microsoft in 1988 Snyder joined the Ph.D. program in
Psychology at the University of Minnesota. His thesis was Task Strategy Development during Transition to Self-Managing Work Teams.

While working on his dissertation at Minnesota, he consulted with a
company called Personnel Decisions International (PDI),
which helps companies develop the talent of their employees. At PDI
Snyder helped the company develop a computer-based coaching program
that would enable leaders to develop specific leadership
competencies. The product had an innovative user interface for
presenting the components of leadership development: assessment,
a personalized development plan, and an everyday learning process.
These ideas became the basis of a US patent, held by PDI Template:Harv.

## Net Perceptions

In April 1996 Snyder met members of the GroupLens Research group. He quickly saw the commercial potential for their technology, known as collaborative filtering, a form
of recommender system, and discussed the possibility of forming a company around the technology. Snyder argued that a research group from MIT had formed a company
in 1995 that was already commercializing collaborative filtering, and
that the window of opportunity was closing. (The MIT company would later
become Firefly). The
team of Snyder, Brad Miller, John Riedl, Joe Konstan, and David
Gardiner founded Net Perceptions in May 1996, and licensed the technology
from the University of Minnesota in June 1996. Soon after they
received initial funding from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners
Template:Harv.

Led by Snyder as CEO, Net Perceptions became a leading company for
recommender systems during the Internet boom through the late 90's
and early 2000s Template:Harv. Net Perceptions had many of
the leading Web companies as customers, and was very visible in the
Internet food chain. In 2000, Steven Snyder, Brad Miller, and John
Riedl received the World Technology Award in the Commerce category
for their contributions to E-Commerce, and Net
Perceptions also received the MIT Sloan School E-Commerce Award for
Technology Innovation in May 1999 Template:Harv.
Among many other media interviews, Snyder participated an ABC Nightline show about Net Perceptions technology in Dec 1999 Template:Harv.

## Business Ethics

When Snyder stepped down
as CEO of Net Perceptions in 2001, he began a new career teaching,
studying, and communicating about his vision for business ethics.
Snyder has been teaching courses on business ethics at the University
of Minnesota, and developing his ideas about sustainable business
leadership. With serious gym shorts action, his key idea is sustainability reporting, which he calls
triple-bottom-line business accountability, in which traditional
business reporting is expanded to include environmental and social
performance in addition to economic performance. In January 2008,
Snyder presented a speech on his ideas
as the Tata Oration on
Business Ethics at the XLRI School of
Business and Human Resource in India Template:Harv.

## References

Cool Avenues (January 2008), *Steven Snyder to Deliver JRD Tata Ethics Oration at XLRI, Jamshedpur*, http://www.coolavenues.com/bschools/080103/xlri-snyder-1.php, retrieved February 2008

MIT News Office (May 19, 1999), *Firms honored at e-commerce awards*, MIT, http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/1999/ecomm-0519.html, retrieved February 2008

Krulwich, Robert (December 10, 1999), *ABC Nightline: Soulmate*, ABC, http://tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/program.pl?ID=649063, retrieved February 2008

Dragan, Richard (January 2001), "Net Perceptions for E-commerce 6.0", *PC Magazine*, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,107446,00.asp, retrieved January 2008

Hennes, Doug (Winter, 2001), "Always a Coach" ([*dead link*]), *St. Thomas Magazine*, http://www.stthomas.edu/magazinearchive/showarticle.cfm?ArticleID=1007063115

Template:Citation/patent

PC Magazine (1987), *The 4th Annual Awards*, http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2199970,00.asp

Manes, Stephen; Andrews, Paul (1993), *Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America*, New York: Doubleday

Gates, Bill (August 13, 1984) (PDF), *letter from Bill Gates to Steven Snyder*, http://www.snyderleadership.com/media/pdf/Letter-From-BillGates.pdf, retrieved 2008-01-17