They like to work
WALTHAM -- Mick Jagger is still touring at 62. And at 78, George Hatsopoulos is still thinking big as he attempts to build another billion-dollar technology company on Route 128. Alex d'Arbeloff, at 77, is right there with him.
Hatsopoulos and d'Arbeloff are the kind of tech legends we don't have anymore. A visionary engineer, Hatsopoulos built Thermo Electron Corp. as a hotbed of innovation and ran it well for most of his 43 years there, until his famous strategy of spinning out one public company after another spun out of control in the late 1990s. D'Arbeloff and a classmate started Teradyne Inc. over Joe and Nemo's hot dog stand in downtown Boston so they could walk to work and spent 40 years building it into the country's largest maker of semiconductor-testing equipment. Hatsopoulos was chairman of the Boston Federal Reserve; d'Arbeloff was chairman of the school that helped make them both, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But at a time in life when most of their contemporaries have long since moved off stage, d'Arbeloff and Hatsopoulos continue to look for the next new turn in technology. The reason: They love their work.
''I just like to work. That is what I enjoy doing," says d'Arbeloff, who teaches innovation and entrepreneurship at MIT and is on the board and an investor in a half-dozen start-up companies, including Hatsopoulos's company, Pharos. (''I love my start-ups," says d'Arbeloff.) Says Hatsopoulos, Pharos's chief executive: ''I don't like golf."
The two think Pharos can be a billion-dollar company. Hatsopoulos started the company five years ago, and is building it in the image of Thermo Electron as a business based on technologies generated by its own engineers. So far, Pharos has one operating business, Levitronix, which has two divisions, one developing blood pumps for heart patients and the other focused on the semiconductor market. The company is based in a former Thermo building and has about 40 employees here and in Switzerland. Pharos has a long way to go: Hatsopoulos expects sales to reach $11 million this year, but he is already taking about a public offering in two or three years.
Ambition is not Hatsopoulos's problem. ''I am probably going to do it again," he says of his billion-dollar goal, ''depending on how long I live."
This is the second time around for these two old friends. D'Arbeloff was on the Thermo board, but quit when he thought Hatsopoulos's spin-out strategy -- which peaked at 23 separate companies -- had gotten out of control. Time proved him right, and even Hatsopoulos acknowledges that today. ''I should have stopped -- not at the 23d, but at the number six. It was impossible to manage."
How long do they plan to work? ''Who knows?" says Hatsopoulos, who works about 30 hours a week, down from the 65 hours of the past. ''Not until I am bedridden. People don't understand. I enjoy this." Said d'Arbeloff, before running off to teach a class: ''I am excited people still want me to do things."
Sixty-five isn't the magic number it used to be. We're living longer, and many of us are working longer -- some by choice, some not. Hatsopoulos and d'Arbeloff have spent a lifetime inventing the future of technology. In a real way, they are our future, too.
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Neighborhood news. Jacob Wirth, a Boston institution whose ambiance is better than its food, is being sold. But this is about the real estate, not the food. The restaurant, which has been on the same spot since 1878, and the adjoining parking lot are being sold by parking lot operator Kevin Fitzgerald to Weston Associates, a Boston residential developer. ''Jake Wirth will stay Jake Wirth," says Mark Donahue, a Weston principal. He won't discuss what he paid for the property or his plans, other than to say ''we are in the housing business." Watch this block: It is among downtown's next big development sites.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902. 
