What's with the change?
Like a new suit, hair cut or fresh coat of paint, a new blog theme and location is just the kind of mix-up that can reinvigorate and bring clarity to why I blog in the first place: to give you a small peeks into the world as I see it.
What's with the new name?
"Theory & Arbitrage" seems to capture a lot of my affect here on the interwebs: I theorize (passionately, analytically and sometimes critically) about how think the world works and my 2 cents about others ways I think it could work. Arbitrage lends itself (roughly) from the early 20th century economic theory about the role of the entrepreneur in the economy, largely someone who spots price differences in the market and acts on them to make a profit. This notion is the foundation for a major pillar in modern entrepreneurship theory: Entrepreneurial Alertness. It's academic speak for spotting opportunities to make money (aka "hustle"). Arbitrage nowadays is associated with the economically destructive nature of options trading on Wall Street. Nonetheless, the ironic and somewhat two-sided nature arbitrage both harks to Joseph Schumpeter's notion of Creative Destruction has applicability in other areas outside of entrepreneurship and economics and it's that dynamic I hope to capture on the new blog.
I hope you accept my invitation to share in the discovery and conversation at my new blogging home:
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
AOM 2011: Parting Shots
Did you know that San Antonio loves God, Country and Free Enterprise?
Neither did I until a massive billboard with this message on the side of the freeway at 3:58 AM this morning on my taxi ride to the airport caught my attention.
Here's some more things I learned on the trip:
But I learned a lot about academics that I didn't know was there. Once you go into academics, there's no "going-and-coming-as-you-please" with the professional world. You often have to make a choice between scholarship and teaching and that affects school choice since brand equity and reputation is all you have in academics. On the flip side, I might be better off putting all my eggs into my professional career and then going after a PhD later in life. There are a number of things that I need to consider about what I really want to do to make a contribution to the world. As my friend Gary put it: "If I wanted to make a contribution to the social entrepreneurship realm, I wouldn't write a paper that adds to the literature, I would just fly to Africa and start a social enterprise that changes lives."
I'm very lucky. Truth be told, I shouldn't be where I'm at given what I deserve. At 24, I have a slew of opportunities to choose from. For me the quagmire is trying to decide which opportunity would best accomplish my commitment to making a dent in the trash can that is the world. This week in San Antonio helped me realized that I am lucky to have the choices that I do but attempting to live an intentional life doesn't make finding the road less taken any easier. Especially when it's a 51-49 kind of choice.
Neither did I until a massive billboard with this message on the side of the freeway at 3:58 AM this morning on my taxi ride to the airport caught my attention.
Here's some more things I learned on the trip:
- The temperature difference when you go in/outside a building is about 30 degrees. The experience is like a punch to the gut.
- Gary spends almost as much time playing Angry Birds on his iPad as he does fixing his hair to make it look like he didn't fix it.
- Rob compulsively hides things behind the TV... like the iron.
- He's also got the best presentation skills of anyone in the Academy. Seriously, it's like Shaq dunking on midgets... like Gary.
- When it comes to partying, academics beat fraternities hands down. They are PRO and have a system when it comes to effective (and long-lasting) partying. They are happy to share this information at will.
- We have a list of great inside jokes and stories. My favorite is from the first day when I gave someone a Dash & Cooper business card and they thought it was a dog-walking business. Classic.
- I'm convinced Howard Haines is a retired ninja. There wasn't a morning, regardless of hour, that I heard him get ready or leave the room for the day.
- I'm addicted to the hot sandwiches from The Filling Station. So much so that I'm talking to the owner about franchising with another location in Salt Lake. So if anyone wants to help me start that company, let me know.
- I sat next to a senior researcher from Harvard in one of my neuroscience workshops. Nothing really interesting came out of that but I thought it was cool.
But I learned a lot about academics that I didn't know was there. Once you go into academics, there's no "going-and-coming-as-you-please" with the professional world. You often have to make a choice between scholarship and teaching and that affects school choice since brand equity and reputation is all you have in academics. On the flip side, I might be better off putting all my eggs into my professional career and then going after a PhD later in life. There are a number of things that I need to consider about what I really want to do to make a contribution to the world. As my friend Gary put it: "If I wanted to make a contribution to the social entrepreneurship realm, I wouldn't write a paper that adds to the literature, I would just fly to Africa and start a social enterprise that changes lives."
I'm very lucky. Truth be told, I shouldn't be where I'm at given what I deserve. At 24, I have a slew of opportunities to choose from. For me the quagmire is trying to decide which opportunity would best accomplish my commitment to making a dent in the trash can that is the world. This week in San Antonio helped me realized that I am lucky to have the choices that I do but attempting to live an intentional life doesn't make finding the road less taken any easier. Especially when it's a 51-49 kind of choice.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Requests for Advice (Part II)
Part deux in the "Advice Regurgitation Series".
Creating a startup is a process. It is one filled with ambiguity and uncertainty. You'll be continually making decisions in what seems like a fast-paced, highly-dynamic environment without even a fraction of the information that you wish you had. This is the reality for being in startups and it doesn't change regardless of how "skilled" of an entrepreneur you become. Simply said, no one knows how your startup is going to go down, so be wary of people who claim to be experts.
Your startup is a collection of assumptions and hypothesis. Whether you are in the idea stage or making 50M a year, you are continually making assumptions about your customers (who they are, what they want/need, how much they are willing to pay, etc), your competition, you/your organization's ability to execute and deliver. Some of these assumptions are known, others are hidden and undeclared, resting in your subconscious aka your "blindspots." This is stuff you don't know you don't know. Managing the startup process is setting up cheap, iterative experiments to uncover and incorporate the things you are ignorant about your market and how your product/service fits it.
The mainstream talking heads call the process of creating a startup "business discovery". There are many people out there who talk about the business discovery process (Marc Andreessen's "Product-Market Fit", Steve Blank's "4 Steps to the Epiphany", Eric Ries's "Lean Startup Movement"). I invite you to read their blogs and familiarize yourself with what they talk about as they are useful frameworks to gain access to your blindspots. This is why I have never done a business plan for any of my companies: it changes as soon as you take the first step.
Business discovery is actually a derivative of learning to execute precisely. I touch about this in one of my recent posts, we aren't as good at managing as we think we are when the guard rails are removed (often the biggest difference between Corporate America and StartupLand). As such, we have a lack of integrity (think data integrity, not morality) around simply doing what we say we'll do. It is the main premise of the Foundry that continuously searching for and uncovering all of the known and unknown "unknowns" and simply doing the unseen, unglamorous work of getting on the court, stating the step you think you should take and then just *stepping* will allow a business to fall out. Even if you don't know where to step for the the first few weeks, the act of doing so will reveal much more about the reality of the space and thus whether or not you will be able to accomplish what you have in your head at this point in time.
Creating businesses as a "hard" entrepreneur is no different than a "soft" entrepreneur. It just costs more and you have less degrees of freedom. All businesses (and I mean every single one) have underlying commonalities to them. Kind of like "The Last Samurai" and "Bad Boys II" are both buddy flicks, all businesses share a motif of figuring out what to sell, to whom, for how much more than it cost you to produce and how to do so such that the firm can sustain itself from operations and hopefully grow and expand. There are many ways to navigate this process, all lead to the same destination.
Over time, you begin to develop the mental muscles necessary to spot and evaluate opportunities before exploiting them - I am on my third business in a year. I have probably advised for about 100 different companies solving different problems in different markets at different stages of life (most in the earliest stages). The overall impact of this to my bank account has been $0. However, my ability to parse through convoluted information to learn new underlying relationships in the world, especially those contradicting existent knowledge, has expanded and I am finding that I am getting better at spotting which assumptions matter and which hypotheses make the most sense to test next as well as how to do so in a way that you uncover the most knowledge with expending a lot of time and resources and possibly even make a profit. Though I haven't yet financially benefited from these actions, I view it as "start up practice" to better prepare me when I find a big opportunity to go after. Because the truth of the matter is that I'm not going to wake up on the day that opportunity comes and suddenly be an expert entrepreneur. There is no some day.
Failure is the path from novice to master - You may or may not succeed on your first startup, but your probability of succeeding after *n* tries will be higher. In this regard, early-stage entrepreneurship is largely democratic - it doesn't require that you be "special" or be "good' at anything, but that you simply get on the court and stay there long enough for the distinctions to take hold and the world begins to occur differently for you. This is the difference between a novice and a master.
Creating a startup is a process. It is one filled with ambiguity and uncertainty. You'll be continually making decisions in what seems like a fast-paced, highly-dynamic environment without even a fraction of the information that you wish you had. This is the reality for being in startups and it doesn't change regardless of how "skilled" of an entrepreneur you become. Simply said, no one knows how your startup is going to go down, so be wary of people who claim to be experts.
Your startup is a collection of assumptions and hypothesis. Whether you are in the idea stage or making 50M a year, you are continually making assumptions about your customers (who they are, what they want/need, how much they are willing to pay, etc), your competition, you/your organization's ability to execute and deliver. Some of these assumptions are known, others are hidden and undeclared, resting in your subconscious aka your "blindspots." This is stuff you don't know you don't know. Managing the startup process is setting up cheap, iterative experiments to uncover and incorporate the things you are ignorant about your market and how your product/service fits it.
The mainstream talking heads call the process of creating a startup "business discovery". There are many people out there who talk about the business discovery process (Marc Andreessen's "Product-Market Fit", Steve Blank's "4 Steps to the Epiphany", Eric Ries's "Lean Startup Movement"). I invite you to read their blogs and familiarize yourself with what they talk about as they are useful frameworks to gain access to your blindspots. This is why I have never done a business plan for any of my companies: it changes as soon as you take the first step.
Business discovery is actually a derivative of learning to execute precisely. I touch about this in one of my recent posts, we aren't as good at managing as we think we are when the guard rails are removed (often the biggest difference between Corporate America and StartupLand). As such, we have a lack of integrity (think data integrity, not morality) around simply doing what we say we'll do. It is the main premise of the Foundry that continuously searching for and uncovering all of the known and unknown "unknowns" and simply doing the unseen, unglamorous work of getting on the court, stating the step you think you should take and then just *stepping* will allow a business to fall out. Even if you don't know where to step for the the first few weeks, the act of doing so will reveal much more about the reality of the space and thus whether or not you will be able to accomplish what you have in your head at this point in time.
Creating businesses as a "hard" entrepreneur is no different than a "soft" entrepreneur. It just costs more and you have less degrees of freedom. All businesses (and I mean every single one) have underlying commonalities to them. Kind of like "The Last Samurai" and "Bad Boys II" are both buddy flicks, all businesses share a motif of figuring out what to sell, to whom, for how much more than it cost you to produce and how to do so such that the firm can sustain itself from operations and hopefully grow and expand. There are many ways to navigate this process, all lead to the same destination.
Over time, you begin to develop the mental muscles necessary to spot and evaluate opportunities before exploiting them - I am on my third business in a year. I have probably advised for about 100 different companies solving different problems in different markets at different stages of life (most in the earliest stages). The overall impact of this to my bank account has been $0. However, my ability to parse through convoluted information to learn new underlying relationships in the world, especially those contradicting existent knowledge, has expanded and I am finding that I am getting better at spotting which assumptions matter and which hypotheses make the most sense to test next as well as how to do so in a way that you uncover the most knowledge with expending a lot of time and resources and possibly even make a profit. Though I haven't yet financially benefited from these actions, I view it as "start up practice" to better prepare me when I find a big opportunity to go after. Because the truth of the matter is that I'm not going to wake up on the day that opportunity comes and suddenly be an expert entrepreneur. There is no some day.
Failure is the path from novice to master - You may or may not succeed on your first startup, but your probability of succeeding after *n* tries will be higher. In this regard, early-stage entrepreneurship is largely democratic - it doesn't require that you be "special" or be "good' at anything, but that you simply get on the court and stay there long enough for the distinctions to take hold and the world begins to occur differently for you. This is the difference between a novice and a master.
Requests for Advice (Part I)
Over the last few weeks, I've had a few people stumble over this blog and contact me directly to ask for my thoughts on a few things. For one, I try not to be an "expert" on anything and most of what I say is simply a regurgitation of those who have accomplished far more than I ever will.
Yet, as I was writing my second message I noticed that I was roughly saying the same things and because I have a perpetual mini-Adam Slovik on my shoulder reminding me that I'm not being very productive and doing it very much WRONG, I have decided to post them here. Most advice, I believe, is indefensible, contains a lot of bias, is typically self-serving and no way applies to every situation in the world. There, I think I've covered my bases.
There's no such thing as a silver bullet - There's no right way to do anything. Trust me, I've looked and tried. Success is essentially persevering long enough so that the lessons of your mistakes have time to take root and start paying off. Over time, you gain enough scar tissue to develop more intelligent intuition. I've talked to tons of entrepreneurs, investors and academics. This is true regardless of where you go or what you do, be it arts, science or business.
The world changes - A lot of the established academics are confronting the fact that we are now able to do many of the things that were previously thought impossible. Some are struggling to keep up in raw production output because of technological advances (namely, programming's ability to capture and manipulate large amounts of data). This may be a generational thing but my familiarity and comfort with technology is setting me up to overtake what is par for the course as far as data quality and size which means that I put up high volume output compared to my relative age and lack of experience. The difference between me and them is not raw talent but they have more scar tissue and know how to navigate the nuanced systems of bureaucracy and taste-making (there is no short-cut for that). Conversely, I will need to stay relevant with the changes as I get older because the rate of change is increasing at an increasing rate.
The world doesn't change - no matter what field or industry you go to, there will always be those on the inside and everyone else. People who are in power often construct systems to perpetuate their hold on power and limit insiders. This is not as evident as it seems and you might find yourself from time to time in possession of power. Remember that power, like most anything in life, is not real but a game that we've made up and decided to continue to play. I personally don't have a lot of patience for the system. Call it personality flaws or immaturity but I just have a hard time fitting within it. I'd rather create better systems. Focus more on being the counter example. Everyone will be nipping at your every flaw and weak point but at least you are doing something they aren't: something interesting.
Be up to something big in life (really) - You have one life, might as well as doing something really big with it. Someone once told me "if you aren't crapping yourself with fear and excitement, your ideas aren't big enough. I encourage you to enter a much larger discourse in your life and surround yourself with people who are interested in doing big things and not just eking out a living." It's kind of like a "Matrix moment" but essentially you need to be really trying to make something much much bigger than, you to actually be physically tangible in the world. This will force you to start shedding some of the hold habits and perspectives and start creating a new version of you. This is not a bad thing.
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with - this is very true, in all aspects. I have gone through many sets of friends and are very selective about who I choose to spend time with since my habits and perspectives are continuously shaped by our conversations and my fellowship with them.
Stay relevant - the world moves much faster than it did 3-4 years ago. I recommend reading blogs (via Google Reader) and getting an account on XYDO. I'll also recommend some books.
Blogs:
Yet, as I was writing my second message I noticed that I was roughly saying the same things and because I have a perpetual mini-Adam Slovik on my shoulder reminding me that I'm not being very productive and doing it very much WRONG, I have decided to post them here. Most advice, I believe, is indefensible, contains a lot of bias, is typically self-serving and no way applies to every situation in the world. There, I think I've covered my bases.
There's no such thing as a silver bullet - There's no right way to do anything. Trust me, I've looked and tried. Success is essentially persevering long enough so that the lessons of your mistakes have time to take root and start paying off. Over time, you gain enough scar tissue to develop more intelligent intuition. I've talked to tons of entrepreneurs, investors and academics. This is true regardless of where you go or what you do, be it arts, science or business.
The world changes - A lot of the established academics are confronting the fact that we are now able to do many of the things that were previously thought impossible. Some are struggling to keep up in raw production output because of technological advances (namely, programming's ability to capture and manipulate large amounts of data). This may be a generational thing but my familiarity and comfort with technology is setting me up to overtake what is par for the course as far as data quality and size which means that I put up high volume output compared to my relative age and lack of experience. The difference between me and them is not raw talent but they have more scar tissue and know how to navigate the nuanced systems of bureaucracy and taste-making (there is no short-cut for that). Conversely, I will need to stay relevant with the changes as I get older because the rate of change is increasing at an increasing rate.
The world doesn't change - no matter what field or industry you go to, there will always be those on the inside and everyone else. People who are in power often construct systems to perpetuate their hold on power and limit insiders. This is not as evident as it seems and you might find yourself from time to time in possession of power. Remember that power, like most anything in life, is not real but a game that we've made up and decided to continue to play. I personally don't have a lot of patience for the system. Call it personality flaws or immaturity but I just have a hard time fitting within it. I'd rather create better systems. Focus more on being the counter example. Everyone will be nipping at your every flaw and weak point but at least you are doing something they aren't: something interesting.
Be up to something big in life (really) - You have one life, might as well as doing something really big with it. Someone once told me "if you aren't crapping yourself with fear and excitement, your ideas aren't big enough. I encourage you to enter a much larger discourse in your life and surround yourself with people who are interested in doing big things and not just eking out a living." It's kind of like a "Matrix moment" but essentially you need to be really trying to make something much much bigger than, you to actually be physically tangible in the world. This will force you to start shedding some of the hold habits and perspectives and start creating a new version of you. This is not a bad thing.
You are the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with - this is very true, in all aspects. I have gone through many sets of friends and are very selective about who I choose to spend time with since my habits and perspectives are continuously shaped by our conversations and my fellowship with them.
Stay relevant - the world moves much faster than it did 3-4 years ago. I recommend reading blogs (via Google Reader) and getting an account on XYDO. I'll also recommend some books.
Blogs:
- Ben Horowitz
- Chris Guillebeau
- Seth Godin
- HumbledMBA
- "Change This" Manifesto
- Both Sides of the Table
- A VC
- VentureBeat
- VentureHacks
- Orgtheory.net
- Organizations and Markets
- Steve Blank
- Eric Ries
- TED Talks
- How The Way We Talk Can Change The Way We Work - Kegan & Lahey
- High Output Management - Andy Grove
- The Goal - Eli Goldratt
- Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done - Bossidy & Charam
- How We Decide - Jonah Lehrer
- Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki
Sunday, August 14, 2011
AOM 2011: My Birthday and Making a Contribution.
For those of you following along I am still in San Antonio, enjoying the crash course in academia. For those of you on Facebook, it told you that today was my birthday. This happens to be, objectively, true. While I reflect on what I've done in the last 24 years, I care more about what I'll do in the next 24.
In my last post, I talked about the difficulty in distinguishing what is really a contribution to canon and what is not. This post provides some insight about what's an important contribution in the entrepreneurship literature, an area that I'm interested in.
On Saturday morning, I sat in a workshop that discussed using computer simulations and models to develop entrepreneurship theory. A big reason for creating and using the models is that the real world is dynamic and it is very hard to get enough solid, real world data (the academic phrase is legitimate construct) to analyze and make meaningful inferences.
This is true of academia in general: finding data that accurately captures the chaos of the real world yet provides enough structure that patterns can be distinguished.
In the session, there was a panel discussion about what was a really big contribution and an editor from one of the distinguished journals responded about the lack of knowledge about how the entrepreneurial process works. There are many theories that describe the importance of the process and even attempt to parse the process into stages. But there's nothing solid about it.
Enter the Foundry, along with the recent emergence of startup incubators provides a test site to begin peaking into the block box that is the business discovery process.
What's interesting is that this not a new statement, a quick search on Google Scholar shows a number of publications from the mid-1980's about the use of incubator and accelerator programs for further entrepreneurship research.
So why was this forgotten? Well it's likely because most of the publications that were the impetus for the (re)emergence of entrepreneurship theory weren't written for another 10-15 years. Futhermore, we didn't have a lot of business discovery frameworks presented by Silicon Valley that we have today (since entrepreneurship is so hot right now).
It's my opinion that it's time to begin looking at incubators as data-producing power houses to begin documenting the process as it is happening in real time and start understanding what the difference between success and failure is once someone makes the leap.
For a long time, we viewed the inner workings of the brain as a "black box". Psychology simple observed behavior and tried to infer broad theories about how the brain worked. Still, the brain remained a black box until the fMRI was invented and more commonly used. We can now document what is happening in the brain in real time and start shedding more light on its "black box-ness". The same is true for entrepreneurship. We now have incubators as tools to look into the black box. For the sake of the economy and literature, I say it is time we started making better use of them.
In my last post, I talked about the difficulty in distinguishing what is really a contribution to canon and what is not. This post provides some insight about what's an important contribution in the entrepreneurship literature, an area that I'm interested in.
On Saturday morning, I sat in a workshop that discussed using computer simulations and models to develop entrepreneurship theory. A big reason for creating and using the models is that the real world is dynamic and it is very hard to get enough solid, real world data (the academic phrase is legitimate construct) to analyze and make meaningful inferences.
This is true of academia in general: finding data that accurately captures the chaos of the real world yet provides enough structure that patterns can be distinguished.
In the session, there was a panel discussion about what was a really big contribution and an editor from one of the distinguished journals responded about the lack of knowledge about how the entrepreneurial process works. There are many theories that describe the importance of the process and even attempt to parse the process into stages. But there's nothing solid about it.
Enter the Foundry, along with the recent emergence of startup incubators provides a test site to begin peaking into the block box that is the business discovery process.
What's interesting is that this not a new statement, a quick search on Google Scholar shows a number of publications from the mid-1980's about the use of incubator and accelerator programs for further entrepreneurship research.
So why was this forgotten? Well it's likely because most of the publications that were the impetus for the (re)emergence of entrepreneurship theory weren't written for another 10-15 years. Futhermore, we didn't have a lot of business discovery frameworks presented by Silicon Valley that we have today (since entrepreneurship is so hot right now).
It's my opinion that it's time to begin looking at incubators as data-producing power houses to begin documenting the process as it is happening in real time and start understanding what the difference between success and failure is once someone makes the leap.
For a long time, we viewed the inner workings of the brain as a "black box". Psychology simple observed behavior and tried to infer broad theories about how the brain worked. Still, the brain remained a black box until the fMRI was invented and more commonly used. We can now document what is happening in the brain in real time and start shedding more light on its "black box-ness". The same is true for entrepreneurship. We now have incubators as tools to look into the black box. For the sake of the economy and literature, I say it is time we started making better use of them.
Friday, August 12, 2011
AOM 2011: A Different Kind of Book Smart.
It's Sunday and I am enjoying a brief slowdown in midst of the busy session schedule I picked out for myself. There are many emerging customs here at AOM, one of which is that the two undergrads go down to the lobby to respond to email, wrap up projects that we are working on and get prepped for the next day. During this time, Gary and I often decompress from the day's bustle and just do what's easy: normal work.
It's also a time for us to talk about our experiences and the generalizable take-aways. This is a subtle, yet valuable habit the two of us honed through our Foundry experience: group learning. Though we have different interests (Gary's into social entrepreneurship and I tend to be drawn to theory and methodologies), we often share the evolution of what we are up to and discuss insights. One particular insight Gary mentioned was how hard it is to succeed in this space.
After being heavily immersed in the sheer complexity of ideas, problems and the equal complexity of the possible combination of methods to solve them, we were remarking how tough it is to be a successful scholar.
For one, it's extremely difficult to find a question that makes a real contribution to the literature. Everyone that you are competing with is as smart as you are, thinking as hard as you are and bringing as much to bear as you are. Sure you might be able to find that some things are linked together but it's likelihood of making a significant difference is little - that's exactly how high the level of work is being produced. Furthermore, even if you do find something that WILL make a meaningful contribution, the likelihood of actually accomplishing it is another thing entirely.
Writing A-class papers is a lot like starting companies. They require as much commitment and cognitive effort and takes just as long to get into publication (~36 months, 18 of it in the review process alone). Even then, you have to write and present your ideas in such a way that someone who doesn't know the intricacies of your space can easily make the connection.
The other complaint (one that I held for a while) is that it seems so little of academic production translates into practical implications for the real world. At first glance, this seems obvious. But the more that I discover about the nature of the work, the more Emerson comes to mind:
It's also a time for us to talk about our experiences and the generalizable take-aways. This is a subtle, yet valuable habit the two of us honed through our Foundry experience: group learning. Though we have different interests (Gary's into social entrepreneurship and I tend to be drawn to theory and methodologies), we often share the evolution of what we are up to and discuss insights. One particular insight Gary mentioned was how hard it is to succeed in this space.
After being heavily immersed in the sheer complexity of ideas, problems and the equal complexity of the possible combination of methods to solve them, we were remarking how tough it is to be a successful scholar.
For one, it's extremely difficult to find a question that makes a real contribution to the literature. Everyone that you are competing with is as smart as you are, thinking as hard as you are and bringing as much to bear as you are. Sure you might be able to find that some things are linked together but it's likelihood of making a significant difference is little - that's exactly how high the level of work is being produced. Furthermore, even if you do find something that WILL make a meaningful contribution, the likelihood of actually accomplishing it is another thing entirely.
Writing A-class papers is a lot like starting companies. They require as much commitment and cognitive effort and takes just as long to get into publication (~36 months, 18 of it in the review process alone). Even then, you have to write and present your ideas in such a way that someone who doesn't know the intricacies of your space can easily make the connection.
The other complaint (one that I held for a while) is that it seems so little of academic production translates into practical implications for the real world. At first glance, this seems obvious. But the more that I discover about the nature of the work, the more Emerson comes to mind:
"Tis the good reader that makes the book."
Just reading academic work requires a higher level of cognitive effort. Not to say that academics are elitist but, to reference Sir Isaac Newton, not a lot people are in the practice of thinking really hard about big problems. Furthermore, we take a lot of what we think about the world (our personal truths) for granted. If we tried to actually go prove most of what we say about how the world works, we'd be saying a lot less with even less certainty.
"The world is a complicated place" is a common saying we have here and finding the balance between realism and rigor is not as simple as conducting an experiment and writing about it. I have a newfound respect for academics and the pursuit of meaningful scholarship. Some time it just takes walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
On another notes, everyone has been largely accepting (if not surprised) of my presence and gracious enough to lend their time and attention to converse and in doing so advise on how to avoid their pitfalls and offer other pieces of "scar tissue advice".
I am certainly a better man for having been here.
"The world is a complicated place" is a common saying we have here and finding the balance between realism and rigor is not as simple as conducting an experiment and writing about it. I have a newfound respect for academics and the pursuit of meaningful scholarship. Some time it just takes walking a mile in someone else's shoes.
On another notes, everyone has been largely accepting (if not surprised) of my presence and gracious enough to lend their time and attention to converse and in doing so advise on how to avoid their pitfalls and offer other pieces of "scar tissue advice".
I am certainly a better man for having been here.
AOM 2011: Day 1
Greetings again from San An-muggy-o.
Day one is almost in the bag and there is so much to talk about that I have a hard time even knowing where to start. So I’ll just summarize the main highlights (and lessons learned) of the day.
Academics are really smart – to get published, you must satisfy a number of ambiguous, yet rigorous objectives during the review process. The reason for this is that each paper is simply a brick in the narrative of human history and it needs to be able to be built upon by other bricks of the scholars-to-be. The point is to not be “the guy” but rather produce something that can be a strong platform for others to stand on. Your contribution is making a breakthrough for other research to happen, not being the one with the right answer. On that note...
I am a diaper baby – it’s important to note that academics have been speaking at a wavelength I couldn’t hear for the majority of my undergrad career. Even worse, because I thought that my education was about equipping me for getting a job, I made them wrong for not providing me information easily found on Google. While places like Google and Udemy can teach me how to code or apply the accounting equation, my teachers have been trying their best to goad me into thinking about who I am going to be in the next 10 years. I’m not saying that’s always happened, but then again I haven’t been listening very hard for it. Someone left a comment on my previous post about how easy it is to buy a “Dr.” title. I guess that I didn’t effectively communicate my sarcasm for being someone who is in my head all the time. Even so, 8 months ago I would have agreed but after spending a lot of time on a research team, seeing them interact and produce research, the sheer complexity of the space is requires more than just brute intelligence and improvising ability. This coming from a guy who scored high in both of these areas on a personality test used for one of my neuroscience workshops. As such, I am humbled and extremely grateful for the patience many of my professors had when I was making them wrong in the classroom and trying prove to everyone I was the smartest person in the room.
The nature of research is shifting, fast – while academics are incredibly intelligent in their knowledge and use of theory and methods, technology is changing the game. As is evidenced by my observation of their (in)ability to use presentation software and computers in general, a scholar’s ability to wield the power of technology (particularly programming) in addition to staying current in theory, methodologies and taste-making is going to be the defining difference in the next generation of scholars. While that stuff is the future, anyone who can get up to speed now (in the next 3 years), will be a very strong candidate for making massive contributions. For example, I know enough about neuroscience and decision-making to contribute (generatively) to a conversation when everyone tries to settle on the mind’s “black box”.
That’s it for day one. Much to process, much to be thankful for. But it’s a highly stimulative place to be and I’m looking forward to my sessions tomorrow:
*Using Simulation Experiments to Build and Test Entrepreneurship Theories
*Austrian Economics and Entrepreneurship Studies
*Rethinking the Role of Neuroscience in Strategic Management
*Entrepreneurship Social Event
Also, Howard Haines (fellow Foundry F1 OG and newly minted U of Oklahoma PhD student is here) so it Foundry F2 guy Gary Jense. Needless to say, we are getting (some of) the band back together. Thanks for all your individual correspondence and support since I got here, I am a lucky guy. Also, if you've sent me something and I haven't responded in my normal time frame, I apologize. The schedule here is like a Fast and Furious sequel and I'll be doing my best to get back to you in between sessions and social receptions.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
AOM 2011 and Trending to a PhD
"If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.'' - Sir Isaac Newton
I have just arrived into hot and muggy San Antonio for the 2011 Academy of Management annual meeting. For "manglement" scholars, it's a big deal where most of the big names in management research come together and nerd out on fantsy pants jargon and various statistical methods.
How exactly I got here has been an unexpected path, but the gist of it goes like this:
I know a guy.
This guy asked me to help on a research project with a looming, near impossible deadline.
I say "Maybe".
He says "How about $1000?"
I say "Works for me."
Two weeks of sleepless nights later he presents the stuff (I get an invite, not common for data monkeys).
Everyone loves it, he and his boss give me a personal shout out (also not common).
They ask me to do more projects.
We eventually have a conversation about getting a PhD after my undergrad.
I think it's a neat idea (researching complex ideas is pretty fun).
I somehow convince the University it's a good idea to fly me to AOM.
So that's about it. I thought really hard during a series of punctuated efforts. Did my best to produce good work and now I'm here largely because some people who are in charge of stuff thought that I was good enough to keep around and let me do things not a lot of people my age get to do.
It's transformed my undergraduate experience and I am forever thankful to the University of Utah to have me involved as much as I have been and underwrite some of the opportunities to let me do what I love doing.
But I'm not a PhD student yet. First, I have to finish my undergrad (this December), I also have to apply with a 700 or higher GMAT score.
Other than that, it's possible that I might be entering the 2012-13 school year as a PhD student at the University of Utah. I'll keep everyone updated as the situation progresses.
But here I am in San Antonio. Eating food, sweating a lot and using my best media training (thanks Foundry). So while I'm here, I'll be updating the blog with the sessions that I am attending and my thoughts about what's interesting about them as they relate to the "real world" and the research I'd eventually like to contribute to the conversation.
So far I've split my time between three themes: entrepreneurial theory, neuroscience and strategy, building and incorporating robust empirics into your research.
Needless to say I have plenty of time and people to get all nerdy with. But since I try to make sure that what I am doing in life has some generalized practical application, the point of being here is to think really hard about what problems I could work on so that my work (and Foundry experience) might simultaneously achieve many subtle aims like touching the next generation of entrepreneurs (mine).
So with that, I hope you stay tuned to hear some of the stuff I'll be participating in. And if you happen to be here at AOM, feel free to connect via Facebook or email to collude session schedules... I'll be in the back sitting quietly, NOT making a scene.
I have just arrived into hot and muggy San Antonio for the 2011 Academy of Management annual meeting. For "manglement" scholars, it's a big deal where most of the big names in management research come together and nerd out on fantsy pants jargon and various statistical methods.
How exactly I got here has been an unexpected path, but the gist of it goes like this:
I know a guy.
This guy asked me to help on a research project with a looming, near impossible deadline.
I say "Maybe".
He says "How about $1000?"
I say "Works for me."
Two weeks of sleepless nights later he presents the stuff (I get an invite, not common for data monkeys).
Everyone loves it, he and his boss give me a personal shout out (also not common).
They ask me to do more projects.
We eventually have a conversation about getting a PhD after my undergrad.
I think it's a neat idea (researching complex ideas is pretty fun).
I somehow convince the University it's a good idea to fly me to AOM.
So that's about it. I thought really hard during a series of punctuated efforts. Did my best to produce good work and now I'm here largely because some people who are in charge of stuff thought that I was good enough to keep around and let me do things not a lot of people my age get to do.
It's transformed my undergraduate experience and I am forever thankful to the University of Utah to have me involved as much as I have been and underwrite some of the opportunities to let me do what I love doing.
But I'm not a PhD student yet. First, I have to finish my undergrad (this December), I also have to apply with a 700 or higher GMAT score.
Other than that, it's possible that I might be entering the 2012-13 school year as a PhD student at the University of Utah. I'll keep everyone updated as the situation progresses.
But here I am in San Antonio. Eating food, sweating a lot and using my best media training (thanks Foundry). So while I'm here, I'll be updating the blog with the sessions that I am attending and my thoughts about what's interesting about them as they relate to the "real world" and the research I'd eventually like to contribute to the conversation.
So far I've split my time between three themes: entrepreneurial theory, neuroscience and strategy, building and incorporating robust empirics into your research.
Needless to say I have plenty of time and people to get all nerdy with. But since I try to make sure that what I am doing in life has some generalized practical application, the point of being here is to think really hard about what problems I could work on so that my work (and Foundry experience) might simultaneously achieve many subtle aims like touching the next generation of entrepreneurs (mine).
So with that, I hope you stay tuned to hear some of the stuff I'll be participating in. And if you happen to be here at AOM, feel free to connect via Facebook or email to collude session schedules... I'll be in the back sitting quietly, NOT making a scene.
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