Earle Jones brought to SRI all the talents that could be hoped for in a researcher, a manager, and a promoter of SRI’s expertise. He was well respected for his technical innovation, for his vigor as a division leader, for his excellent rapport with top-level commercial clients, and for his ability to create a new stream of commercial revenue from international clients, especially in Asia. In all these roles, Earle Jones displayed a quality that can only be described as charm.
Earle Jones joined SRI in 1956. In the 1960s, he came up with a valuable invention for Monsanto. His idea was to build a frequency synthesizer, which Monsanto patented, made, and sold successfully. He and his group developed early copier and fax systems as an R&D arm of Savin Business Machines. Earle Jones also recognized early the benefits of spinning off SRI’s innovations. He was active in spin-off and subsidiary committees, and from 1983 to 1986, he took a leave of absence to work for Communication Intelligence Corporation (CIC), an early SRI spin-off that focused on linking handwriting and Chinese characters to the computer.
Earle Jones’s leadership skills led to his rapid rise into management. He had an impressive ability to work closely with his project managers and with top-level commercial clients who wanted new ideas and products explored, developed, and exploited as marketable capabilities. By 1977, he was Executive Director of the Information Science and Engineering Division, which evolved to become the Advance Development Division. This division, known for its excellent work and many patents for commercial clients, frequently formed interdisciplinary teams that worked with the business consulting parts of SRI.
Earle Jones was especially effective in international markets. In 1979, he started the Micro Electronics Technology Program in Europe and later represented SRI in the London Office. As Executive Director of SRI Asia in 1986-1987, he helped to expand project revenues from Japanese clients. In 1988, as Regional Marketing Director of Korea, Earle Jones opened an SRI office in Seoul. Here, he promoted SRI and started a new project revenue stream for both SRI and Sarnoff.
The talents of Earle Jones gave SRI a strong foundation in commercial projects that have gained the respect of both domestic and international clients for SRI’s ability to take an idea from concept, through exploration and development, to the marketplace