Where does the future of American innovation lie?

Our department chair send out a personal email telling us to attend a special event.  A prominent former head of a major government agency was visiting and the chair, being a personal friend, persuaded him to come talk to grad students and postdocs about careers.

As expected, he was opinionated but sincere and charismatic.  He thought that American innovation will come from startups, not government or academia.  In his opinion, government is paralyzed by interpersonal politics and it is so difficult to get grants in academia (average age of first NIH grant is 43).  Scientists, especially postdocs, are encouraged to do incremental work, rather than something revolutionary.

I asked a question about why it seemed like all the startups were internet software companies.  He said it has to do with scale.  It is much easier to be an internet startup than a startup that has to build something (e.g. clean energy).  The internet startup only has to pay for office space, computers, and salaries.  Since their product is available on internet, there is a huge multiplication factor, as everyone has a computer and a smartphone.  A clean energy startup could take ten years to become profitable.  The key to building a successful startup is that you need to beat a well-established company by an order-of-magnitude, whether that is price or efficiency.

He talked a little about his experience working in government.  He was rather frustrated with how much money is wasted in space science and exploration.  The problem is that the American public doesn't believe anyone should die in exploration or war.  They have to spend money to ensure the safety of astronauts to an extreme degree.  That's why he eventually quit.  Because the stress of being responsible for space shuttle launches was overwhelming.

Yet, he though highly of people who worked in government.  He told us rather emphatically, "If the president asks you to work for him, you should say yes!"  As the discussion wound down, he said "Let me end by telling this story... " (Such a polished, prepared guy that he had a heart-warming story for the end.)  He went to USSR in 1991 to talk with the Soviet space agency.  While he was there, the coup d'état started.  There was shooting and tanks everywhere.  He became alarmed and tried to contact the American embassy.  They said they couldn't help because people were shooting into the windows of the building.  He tried to contact the White House and ask the president what to do.  Meanwhile, he found the pilot and asked him if he could fly them out.  The pilot said that if he took everyone, including all the staff, they wouldn't have enough fuel to get to Helsinki.  He asked the pilot to take out the seats and they found that this reduction of weight would be sufficient.  Eventually, he was told that the president would appreciate it if he stayed as a show of support for democracy.  He apprised his staff of the situation and told them it was their personal choice whether to go or stay.  Everyone stayed.  Then he asked the Soviet space agency director if they were still going to hold their discussion.  The director acted like it was any other day and they got the deal done.  If you're not a complete cynic, I would call that a beautiful patriotic moment.

Short term mission statement

Those of us who are intellectual, who work in the academy, naturally have a prejudice against the crass world of business. But we can learn a lot from business.

Many companies have a mission statement. The idea of the mission statement is to put into words the main objectives and core values of the organization. It is the company's vision.

There is no reason why people can't have a mission statement. About two and a half years ago, my sister wrote a very lengthy, thorough mission statement for herself. I don't have that kind of clarity at the moment. But I can put forth some short-term values.

My short-mission statement is modeled after the short, declarative mottos you see in sports teams locker rooms.

1. Have faith.
   
2. Be committed.
   
3. Be focused.

Link of the day: High speed rail link planned in California

I've always loved traveling by train. If only the rest of America knew the joys of train travel. I was excited to read the following New York Times magazine article about a high speed rail link between San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Link of the day: Manic-depressive rollercoaster

Tim Ferriss wrote a nice post called "Harnessing Entrepreneurial Manic-Depression: Making the Rollercoaster Work for You" on his personal blog.

I especially like the plot.


Tim explains each of these different stages: 1. Uninformed optimism, 2. Informed pessimism, 3. Crisis of Meaning, 4. Crash and Burn, and 5. Informed optimism.

Tim's discussion is aimed at business owners, but the plot applies to anyone doing creative work, including academics. Try and avoid the "crash and burn" stage!

Link of the day: "Why I never hire brilliant men"

There is a tendency in the business world not to hire overqualified job applicants and this very old 1924 article "Why I never hire brilliant men" summarizes the gist of it.

Of course, part of it is that businesses don't want someone to disrupt the cog-and-wheel atmosphere of the workplace, but there is some truth to the article. People don't really talk about the downsides of being "too smart." When you know too much, you can either be overly ambitious and try to do too much (thus being a bad finisher as the article states) or you can be overly depressed and do nothing because you project far into the future. Of course, I think these things can be overcome, but it takes some work. The more brain power you have, the more you have to use to control it.

High-tech Japan running out of engineers

This morning walking to work, I remembered reading an interesting New York Times article entitled "High-tech Japan running out of engineers." Japan running out of engineers? That seems impossible! Here are some reasons given in the article:

But according to educators, executives and young Japanese themselves, the young here are behaving more like Americans: choosing better-paying fields like finance and medicine, or more purely creative careers, like the arts, rather than following their salaryman fathers into the unglamorous world of manufacturing.

Later in the article:

Japan’s biggest problem may be the attitudes of affluence. Some young Japanese, products of a rich society, unfamiliar with the postwar hardships many of their parents and grandparents knew, do not see the value in slaving over plans and numbers when they could make money, have more contact with other people or have more fun.

And a little later in the article:

“Students today are more demanding and individualistic, like Westerners,” said Hitoshi Kawaguchi, senior vice president in charge of human resources at Nissan.

I would like to write a rejoinder that engineering is not worse than finance, medicine, and art as a career, but it's hard for me to say, since I know nothing about Japanese culture.

I must be really old-fashioned. I don't consider myself "demanding and individualistic." Still, if engineering is becoming as respected as plumbing, that doesn't bode well for scientific literacy in first world countries. It disturbs me how Asian culture is shifting towards Western values. I hope traditional Asian values like family, discipline, and respect for elders don't disappear.

Current blog reading: hard news only

I've known for a while that I waste far too much time on reading RSS feeds. The worst time-sink was the New York Times, in particular, the popular articles and the headlines. As one of my friends noted, the New York Times has been leaning more and more towards soft news because unfortunately, that is what sells. People don't really care what's happening in Iraq. They'd rather read about autism or college admissions. Anyone who actually cares about world news will flip to the relevant section anyways.

So now my news feeds consist of the New York Times national news, New York Times international news, Wall Street Journal US business news, Wall Street Journal economy news, and Wall Street Journal market news sections.

In addition, my daily blog reading includes the headlines of physics articles, a physics blog or two, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Lifehacker, the Writer's Almanac, and a photo or two. I think this gives me the most efficient and representative mix of work, news, and culture.

Elevator pitches

I've been thinking that I should develop an "elevator pitch" for my research. Even though elevator pitches are traditionally associated with business, science is also an exercise in selling (getting grants) and public relations. Recently, I was interviewed for a tutoring position where I was asked to describe my research. I ended up rambling and including too many complications. One of these days, I'll write an elevator pitch. This article seems like a good guide.

Would you like to work in a treehouse?

Via Ramit Sethi, I found out about Inventionland. Here are some interesting pictures of their "corporate" headquarters. Yes, apparently it's a real company.

Link of the day: Paul Graham essay collection

Paul Graham has written a collection of 50+ essays on wide-ranging intellectual topics. He's made his living programming and doing seed funding, but he apparently dabbles in many other areas like art and philosophy.

I haven't had time to read all the essays, but here are a few I like: "Copy What You Like", "How To Do What You Love", and "Good and Bad Procrastination".

I find it interesting to hear what computer scientists and programmers think of difficult, creative, intellectual work.

Link of the day: Kiva.org

Ramit Sethi mentions an interesting company run by his friend. It's called Kiva.org and the idea is to make small loans to people in third world countries (where there are no banks or no incentive to loan money in small amounts.) You can make a little investment and help a few people. I haven't tried it, but the idea is intriguing.

Notable blogs: personal finance and life aspirations

The first notable blog is "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" by Ramit Sethi. As crass as that title may seem, the blog is filled with concise entries teaching the lay person how to be practical with money. After reading Ramit's blog, I have started paying more attention to my spending (currently I save about 50% of my disposable income, but I hope to do better). I will also probably get a money-management software program (like Quicken or Microsoft Money) to track my spending.

Ramit's blog pointed me to another cool blog by Ian Ybarra. Like Ramit, Ian is also interested in long-term aspirations. His entire blog is about figuring out what your career goals are and chasing your dreams. I like how he tries to inspire people to do what makes them happy and fulfilled rather than following social expectations or trends. As I noted in a previous entry, I could have used more of that perspective when I was a young undergraduate.

Life beyond theoretical physics

What can you do with a degree in theoretical physics besides teaching, research, or Wall Street?

Here's an interesting answer. Martin Fisher is spending his life developing technology for Third World countries. His story is described in this Physics Today article.

If you're a condensed matter theorist, you might know that Martin is a member of the famous Fisher family, which has produced three top-notch theorists: Michael (the father) and Matthew and Daniel (both brothers of Martin).