Blog
For Science Ph.D.’s, There Is No One True Path
The decision to go to graduate school can be a daunting one. Many of us that have decided to get our Ph.D. often look back and contemplate what it was that motivated us to go through the very challenging process that doesn’t necessarily result in a very clear career path after graduate school. This article sheds some much needed optimistic light on the many skills, experiences, and growth opportunities graduate school provides individuals that are hugely valuable in any career path one may take after earning their advanced degree. Take a look through this article to find some very insightful opinions about the value graduate school does offer for professional and career development even though it is difficult to see the return while you are grinding through it.
Check out the article here:
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Science-PhDs-There-Is/131307/
SEBA Members Learn Valuable Lessons at Pixar’s Intersection Conference
On January 14th, a special one day conference called The Intersection was held at Pixar’s Animation Studios in Emeryville, California. Luckily, I was able to coordinate an effort to attend at the last minute. With the help of UW’s Science & Engineering Business Association (SEBA) and their support in sponsoring our trip, I flew down to San Francisco for the weekend for a fantastic opportunity.
The event lived up its name, as it drew upon a wide variety of people from all kinds of backgrounds. It was definitely untraditional in that the stage was shared by tech CEO’s, authors, designers, Hollywood actors, filmmakers, a Guru with a guitar, Iraq war veterans, philanthropists, and a men’s acapella choir. The mission for the group was clear, as everyone’s focus drilled down into the new era of social innovation.
Driven by the diversity of the speakers and attendees, I got a chance to hear some interesting ideas and take notes. As a young and hopeful entrepreneur, a lot of what was said resonated with me, and I’d like to share some of the important highlights of what I learned.
1. The best things happen at intersections
Frans Johansson, the author of the book ‘The Medici Effect’, defined what an intersection is by telling us a story of how the CEO of Dice, who at that time was in charge of developing the game Battlefield 3, rearranged everyone’s chairs. Normally, all of the employees’ chairs would be segregated by team, where programmers sat separately from artists, designers, etc. This was pretty much the traditional strategy of game development. Then one day the chairs were rearranged so that each person was interchanged specifically so that each group would have one developer sitting next one artist.
At first, no one could figure out how to work together. Developers and designers would bicker endlessly with one another, where the typical conversation went, “Can you do this?”, followed by “No”. This continued for a whole week, and there was legitimate worry that the entire company would fall apart. But then, just as the CEO was about to give up, something clicked. And the talk between everyone changed to, “Can you do this?”, followed by “No, but I can do this…”. This then pushed everyone to tackle problems in ways no one had ever considered before, because each developer was suddenly aware of the abilities of the artist next to him. The result was some of the best design, artwork, and gameplay ever produced, in one of the most successful videogames.
2. Entrepreneurship is not a linear process
Imagine the curve of a linear function, going from zero and increasing to some finite point. Now imagine a curve that winds around in loops, shoots up and down, and even backtracks before finally reaching the goal. That’s what entrepreneurship looks like.
Most of us as entrepreneurs have no idea how we plan on reaching our goal, we just vaguely know our goal. The key then is to break this down into something simple and reasonable. Frans Johansson calls this the smallest executable step, where you identify the one single action that anyone can feasibly do right away. Once you’ve executed that, you learn from it. And then repeat it, times infinity.
For Yngve Bergqvist, the founder of the famous Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, his process was exactly that. Bergqvist knew early on that he wanted to sell the Swedish winter, a seemingly ambitious goal, and didn’t know how. But first, long before ice hotels became famous, he tried to build an art gallery in Japan made out of ice. Then, he launched a small ice bar in Canada. At each step, he was able to learn and experiment until finally he had worked out the right conditions for his success. Today, he successfully sells cold water to tourists in ice hotels on three continents.
3. Fail quickly, fail gracefully
The most repeated message from everyone was this: successful entrepreneurs aren’t particularly smart, they just have a lot of bruises. The key is to learn from your mistakes, and apply those lessons as quickly as possible.
Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, stated that Pixar’s success comes from the fact that getting the process right is not the ultimate goal. Normally, their filmmaking process involves a detailed routine of storyboarding, wireframing, digital painting, production, and many more steps. But even if you follow the same recipe of steps that led to success in the last movie, you wouldn’t be doing anything unique and it wouldn’t be as successful.
In fact, in the first version of the plot for the movie ‘Up’, they originally had a floating castle that sat on clouds in the sky. The next version involved a house that floated up by balloons and landed on a lost Russian blimp. The version after that had a bird that laid eggs that conferred long life. Even for the movie Ratatouille, they kept only one line from the original script.
Despite all these changes and rewrites and the potential to anger some people by throwing away months of painstaking work, Pixar is never afraid scrap it all and start over. That is because people like Steve Jobs and Ed Catmull have instilled a strong culture of rapid iteration within the company that encourages people to make mistakes.
4. Risk homeostasis
In 1992, before there were iPad’s, a new market was forming around handheld personal digital assistants. Apple decided to enter with the Newton, and invested over $100 million into development. At the same time, a startup called Palm spent only $7 million. Both companies felt justified because they spent all the money they had. But Apple’s larger investment in developing a new device didn’t offset the risk of failure, because the risk of failure for both companies was the same.
Despite the Newton being a miserable failure, Apple still successfully launched the iPad almost twenty years later. But even then, the risk of failure wasn’t any better just because they had previously failed. This is because all of the conditions changed. Whatever caused the Newton to fail thankfully didn’t do the same to the iPad. Likewise, even if you’ve been successful with a startup or idea once before, there is no guarantee you will be again.
5. Ignore the rules, they’ve changed
The average lifespan for a company listed on the S&P has fallen from 25-35 years, to 15-20 years. For some reason, this single stat stuck out in my mind and still does. The archetypal company is no longer the same. This means while there are companies that are becoming vastly successful and rich, it also means there are even more companies today that launch and fail. Failure is now expected.
6. The role of the CEO
Tim Brown, the CEO of the design and technology company IDEO, said that his secret to success is that he doesn’t simply hire the best designers he can find. It’s finding people that fit his way of problem-solving. For him, this means someone who has been creative in the past, but also has first-hand experience with the business end. Likewise, Ed Catmull says it is important to be authentic. If you can’t be, then put someone in your team who can. Give your team the room to fail and the ability to express themselves.
7. The next era of innovation will be defined by social innovation.
The biggest challenges of the next century won’t be in technology, but in applying new technology towards solving problems in healthcare, education, and sustainability. In order to solve these longstanding problems, new innovators will have to draw on an interdisciplinary approach, which will inevitably require new business methods. Smart investors now are looking for smarter people to solve markets that don’t yet exist.
In summary, the Intersection was a great day and I learned just as much in networking and speaking to others as I did hearing from the main speakers. I would definitely recommend anyone who has a chance to attend next year make the trip down to the Bay Area, as it will be at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Thanks again to UW SEBA for making this opportunity happen.
Denny Luan and Cindy Wu are co-founders of Microryza, a crowdfunding platform for academic research. You can read the rest of Denny’s experiences at the Intersection Event and as a startup founder at his blog here at http://pressbuttongoboink.com
STS 2012 a Huge Success!
We just recieved some amazing feedback from a group that attended our annual Science & Technology Showcase:
We had a blast at the UW SEBA event. Got to put up our poster and pitch our idea to a lot of people. There was a lot of good feedback and we even found one person with similar idea started. There were a lot of good ideas from the engineering and science students @ UW and it was great to see the energy from the young kids. We did not make the top 3 prizes and it went to all teams with good ideas; wish them the very best in their ideas.
We got to talk with some of the experienced VC firms, met some young folks who were kicked with our mission @ Nudge. All in all, a great evening and we would do it again with more fervour.
Thanks all of your for your feedback and keep it coming!!
Check out the post at:
http://projectnudge.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/seba-uw-was-a-great-event/
