Does anyone find it mildly ironic that Silicon Valley's Tech Museum of Innovation has named Frank Quattrone as its new chairman? Me neither. Oh, sure, at first blush it might seem a tad rich for an institution whose stated mission is “to engage people of all ages and backgrounds in exploring and experiencing technologies” to hire an ex-banker once accused (although now exonerated, his backers contend) of spinning shares of hot IPOs to people manifestly not of all ages and backgrounds. And in SV, where financial expertise is regarded as the ugly, if lovable, stepsister to programming smarts, one might have expected the job to go to, say, an innovator in technology.

Fine, the job’s a sinecure, and Quattrone will no doubt eventually move on to something more interesting (private equity, anyone?). And the appointment certainly makes sense in view of the tech blue-bloods on the museum’s board—after all, SVniks never rushed to condemn Quattrone the way Wall Streeters did in dismembering Jack Grubman, just to name one member of their tribe implicated in the dot-com bust. Who knows? It's even possible that Quattrone really was a patsy for federal prosecutors, as the San Francisco Chronicle implies.

But in fact the appointment is perfectly in tune with the happier, shinier Zeitgeist in the Valley these days, what with Web 2.0 and cleantech bubbles to inflate and trade sales to bake. Innovation, after all, is about looking forward, not peeking over one's shoulder. Just a guess here, but perhaps Quattrone's ongoing rehab says something larger, if not necessarily more sinister, about California, a place where "the future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past," as Joan Didion once put it. If so, we can expect Quattrone to re-enter the stage not only for a second act, but to linger in the wings awaiting his curtain call, a final scene in his reinvention. —Alain Sherter

See Tech Museum of Innovation press release
See August 2006 story from USA Today
See story from the San Francisco Chronicle