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:

"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.