• Executive Resumes
• History, Philosophy, Commitment

ABL's research services are available by subscription. The base subscription price is $54k per year. This pricing structure highlights that research is a commitment: research is not done "by the hour". It also underscores that research is "sunk cost": the Customer's payment is not for financial return but for access to our knowledge -- knowledge that can effect change and create new opportunities for the Customer. Thus, we also customize, in each Customer's own terms, additional charges for demonstrated transformations of the Customer.

Dr. Paul Tod Rieger, founder of ABL, has served as President of the company from its inception. In 1995 he received the degree Doctor of Philosophy for his "Computational and Ultrafast Studies of Electronic Energy Transport in Spatially Disordered Systems" under the direction of Professor R. J. Dwayne Miller at the University of Rochester. He also holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry with a minor in physics from the University of Virginia, where he studied the fluorescence of Ruthenium complexes in micelles with Professor James N. Demas. His background in disordered systems brings a different perspective to biotechnology and networks. "I like to break and rebuild things," he adds.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
-- Goethe

ABL Research began to take shape at Supercomputing '90 in the heart of Manhattan. After talking with a consultant at the IBM student reception, Dr. Rieger decided to set out on his own and found a company. He had wanted to do this since 1986, after reading Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The effective date of incorporation was September 20, 1995 in the state of Georgia.

The logo of ABL is the Henon attractor, the tracery of which is an abstraction of a butterfly: light, elegant, exquisite, delicate. Discussions of attractors in chaos theory often include butterflies since, to accurately forecast the weather, everything has to be considered, even a butterfly fluttering above the Amazon basin. John Lam suggested an attractor, and, coincidentally, Dr. Rieger had recently looked through an article on strange attractors in the November 1981 Scientific American. The Henon attractor immediately came to mind: a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, creating itself out of chaos.

Talent develops in quiet places,
character in the full current of human life.
-- Goethe

Patience. Perseverance. Perspective.

The driving force behind our History was discontent: "there has to be a better way" -- to make an environment that encourages research from a different yet still focused perspective; and, because fresh perspectives are often personal perspectives, to make the entrepreneurial process (the functions, activities, and actions associated with perceiving opportunities) satisfying on both professional and personal levels. We take our work seriously -- ourselves, not so seriously.

ABL's primary resource is its researchers: people with long years of schooling and an ability to continue learning and who take their craft seriously. As craftsmen, their work is a satisfying and integral part of life. ABL is a place to achieve not only the company's goals but also personal goals. It's an environment that encourages creativity and individual initiative; responsibility rather than authority; and learning to be the best in a marketable area of knowledge. "To demand much from oneself and little from others is the way to banish discontent." (Confucius, Analects XV, 14)

ABL is our answer to the question, If you could do anything, what would that be?

Ohne Hast, aber ohne Rast
Without haste, but without rest
-- Goethe

At ABL, we are scientists. We want to re-invent the research institute and be in business a long time. We recognize our seminal moments because we are aware of what goes on outside of ABL. We are discontents and have the attitude of insurgents. We promise acceleration through simulation.

To ABL, this is the Ice Age, and our competitors are mammoths. Our objective is to make coats from their skins: our ethics are blood ethics. We are ready.

There is nothing complicated about it. Just brace yourself and proceed -- and see what happens. Shoot for the top; try something that has never been done before. If you must fail, fail splendidly: "if you're going to book passage on the Titanic, go first class."

Last modified: 12/9/2000