Mission: To make a difference in the companies and charities he’s involved in
Assets: An upbringing and involvement in scouts that provided him with strong fundamental values that include the importance of contributing to one’s community
Yield: Founding one of B.C.’s most profitable companies, spearheading a turnaround at Science World and supporting numerous charities
By Nelson Bennett
In 1996, when Ken Spencer decided to leave the high-tech company he co-founded, it was the beginning of a second career of sorts: angel investor and high-tech godfather.
Spencer was only 51 when he left Creo Products Inc. – a decision that was prompted, in part, by a reminder of how brief life can be.
“A friend of mine who had worked all his life and was just about to start having fun died of cancer,” said Spencer, 67. “I had been there [at Creo] 10 years, had an opportunity to retire and more or less get the same money as I was making there, guaranteed.
“At that point I figured out I had more money than I needed, more money than I wanted to leave my kids [he doesn’t believe in large inheritances] and I wanted to give back to the community that I made my money in.”
Since retiring, Spencer has helped breathe new life into Science World, which he has chaired, and has helped midwife a number of high-tech startups – all of which helped earn him a place in the Business Laureates of British Columbia (BLBC) Hall of Fame.Spencer quit working full time at the top of his game.
He had helped build Creo – which specialized in imaging and digital printing – into B.C.’s first high-tech company to have $1 billion in sales.
In 1999, the company, which then had more than 4,000 employees, went public; in 2005 it was bought by Eastman Kodak Co.
Born and raised in Burnaby (his mother, 92, still lives there), Spencer joined MacDonald Dettwiler (MDA) after graduating from university with a PhD in computer engineering in 1971. He was one of just seven employees at the time. While at MDA, he completed an MBA, but he was eager to put a different management style into practice, so he left MDA to co-found Creo in 1983 with business partner Dan Gelbart.
“I had different ideas about how to manage people,” Spencer said. “I just believed in total empowerment.”
As an example of the approach, any employee at Creo could write a purchase order for any amount of money without checking with anyone.
“He likes to hold people accountable, and I think that makes people work harder,” said Barbara Brink, BLBC Hall of Fame co-chair and founder of Science World. “He basically delegates and says, ‘Go and do it.’”
After retiring from Creo in 1996, Spencer spent a year travelling around the world with his second wife and their son, and then returned to B.C. in 1997.
“Retirement, as you discover, isn’t about doing nothing,” Spencer said. “It’s about doing what you want to do with people you want to do it with.”
And what Spencer discovered he enjoyed most was mentoring students and entrepreneurs and nurturing B.C.’s high-tech sector.
He and several other high-tech CEOs created ACETECH [Academy of Chief Executives for Technology] to help support other high-tech CEOs.
Spencer is also responsible for fostering several promising high-tech startups, like Redlen Tchnologies Inc., which makes cadmium zinc telluride semiconducors.
“Ken, in our case, was a key validator for the proposition of the company,” said Glenn Bindley, founder of Redlen and co-founder of PMC-Sierra.
Spencer was one of Redlen’s first and biggest angel investors. He also sits on the company’s board of directors.
“There’s a bit of a herd mentality,” Bindley said. “It’s a huge asset to have someone with a very strong established reputation who’s done due diligence on the company and given it a vote of confidence. In the absence of him coming on board, it’s highly probable we wouldn’t have been able to convince other angel investors to come in, and we wouldn’t have survived infant mortality.”
Spencer also brought some of his peers in the high-tech sector to the board of Science World and has donated $1 million to the organization.
“To build an industry you’ve got to keep turning kids onto science,” Spencer said.
One of his latest projects has been sponsoring a program that pairs business and engineering students in an entrepreneurial project. Teams of six are tasked with developing a patentable product and writing a business plan. Spencer has donated more than $200,000 to the project.
“He really was one of the first to believe in high tech and particularly believe in high tech for British Columbia, and started a very major company and did a lot to encourage a whole high-tech industry,” Brink said.
Of the honour, Spencer said, “It’s hard to overwhelm me, but I was overwhelmed.”
When he’s not mentoring students or executives, Spencer spends his time cycling, something he has done pretty much all of his life.
Asked why he feels the need to put so much of his time into fostering B.C.’s high-tech sector, Spencer puts it down to his upbringing.
“On the selfish side, there’s intellectual engagement. I’ve done the sailing thing [he sailed around the world over a period of a year]. Secondly, I guess I was raised – and I was a longtime boy scout – to believe you should help other people.
“I’m not going to change on the macro scale. But you change the world one person at a time.”