Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ron Zwanziger

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus (WP:NPASR). King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 22:35, 3 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Ron Zwanziger

Ron Zwanziger (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Non-notable person. The company, Alere, has an article, and this would be a good target for a redirect. He's mentioned in that one Business Journal, and there's a bunch of mentions on some business-related websites, but in the end his notability depends completely on Alere. Drmies (talk) 03:35, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Zwanziger is a prominent member of the Boston, USA business community. It's not a "mention" in the Boston Business Joural, but a lengthy profile article under the title "Boston's Barbarian". The "Inverness Medical Innovations--Born Global" source is a Harvard Business School case study, which is the traditional gold standard of business case studies, and contains several pages of career profile and biographical information on Zwanziger. The Funding Universe article is actually impeccably researched. These are just the sources you've mentioned, but the article is rather well-sourced, so I could go on. As to whether Zwanziger's notability depends on Alere, the company Medisense which Zwanziger also cofounded is important in the history of glucose meters and was the basis for the diabetes unit of Abbott Laboratories. Medisense is discussed rather extensively in the article RSes. Additionally Zwanziger is the current CEO of LumiraDx, which apparently raised the 9th largest VC investment in the world for April 2020 (see https://pitchbook.com/blog/the-most-funded-vc-companies-in-april-2020).

To anyone else joining the conversation, important context: Drmies targeted this article for a redirect only after they became irate about an edit I made and found the article in my contributions history. They then redirected the article without notification or discussion. They are only now proceeding via a proper channel after I expended considerable effort figuring out how to reverse what they did (which, I think it is fair to say, would meet the definition of page vandalism). Zekelayla (talk) 03:48, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• So, oppose/keep Zekelayla (talk) 04:14, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hmm. You got one article in a secondary source. You have a "business case study" but it has no proper bibliographic citation, and no link to an online version that editors can judge--that this meets some "gold standard" is your own claim. And you have something from "Funding Universe" which you say is "impeccably researched"--but Funding Universe merely reprints material from the International Directory of Company Histories (it doesn't seem like you knew this), and the reliability of that source is hard to judge. It does cite one source that mentions Zwanziger explicitly (Inc. Magazine, Dec. 1990, p. 74), and I looked at what it has to say about Zwanziger himself: "Zwanziger grew up in Cyprus, then was educated in Great Britain. He received an engineering degree from Imperial College at London University before attending Harvard Business School." That's it. Standard stuff, no in-depth discussion, nothing. In other words, nothing proves that this person should be notable independently of the company. 12:39, 4 June 2020 (UTC)Drmies (talk)

Drmies Regarding HBS case studies, HBS is one of the top business schools in the world. Introduction to the importance of their case study method. Unfortunately, to see the publication you will need to shell out $9 or use institutional access. But last time I checked, paywalled academic research is an entirely legitimate source on wikipedia.

The "Funding Universe" source was not added by me, and yes it should be corrected to point to the International Directory of Company Histories directly, which is the source of the impeccable research. That source includes 3 full paragraphs on Zwanziger and his earlier company Medisense. As far as I can tell, every claim in the IDCH article is corroborated by its bibliography.

And of course there are other sources on the article that you are ignoring, the book "Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value", multiple newspaper articles which address Zwanziger directly. Zekelayla (talk) 18:30, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

• Redirect to Alere. The company is notable. Him, not so much, at least not on the quality of the sources that are there at the moment. Black Kite (talk) 19:30, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Black Kite. I added additional content on the importance of Medisense and LumiraDx (Zwanziger's other ventures, which are not covered by articles). See what you think. Also, if you are still worried about the sourcing after that, it would be helpful if you could suggest what more would be needed. As a brief inventory, we currently have 2 full length profile/biographical pieces in the Harvard case study and the Boston Business Journal article, 2 shorter ones in the Isenberg book and the IDCH article, as well as citations to various newspaper articles which foreground Zwanziger (eg sources 12, 10, 11), etc.Zekelayla (talk) 21:03, 4 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Businesspeople-related deletion discussions. Coolabahapple (talk) 10:01, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of United States of America-related deletion discussions. 1234qwer1234qwer4 (talk) 16:49, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Spinningspark There is a partial inventory of sources in my comment to Black Kite, which I reproduce here:

we currently have 2 full length profile/biographical pieces in the Harvard case study and the Boston Business Journal article, 2 shorter ones in the Isenberg book [Worthless, Impossible and Stupid: How Contrarian Entrepreneurs Create and Capture Extraordinary Value] and the IDCH [International Directory of Company Histories] article, as well as citations to various newspaper articles which foreground Zwanziger (eg sources 12, 10, 11), etc.

I think those already should establish notability. The main additional sources I've put in are an electrochemistry textbook (Bond 2002), an article in the journal Chemical Reviews, and a recent Long Island Press article. Zekelayla (talk) 07:55, 27 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.