Study science with soul

The pendulum has swung.  First there was the hand-wringing that we didn't have enough graduates with 'hard' degrees - science, engineering, technology and math - now, recent news from  a Harvard study is about the 50% drop in the number of students in the humanities.  And the phenomenal rise in online learning shows vastly greater interest in computer science or business courses than in philosophy or anthropology.

Though my own major was in math, I was always attracted to the liberal arts, auditing classes when I could, and strongly believe that not only are the liberal arts fascinating, they are necessary for individuals, as well as society as a whole, to be complete.

Why?  Because:

1. The 'hard' subjects are all about the 'how' - humanities help us with the 'why'.
2. Calculus and compilers don't teach you about different cultures.
3. The past formed our present which informs our future (why history matters).
4. We need a moral compass to guide us through the unprecedented changes caused by medical and technological advances, from clones to drones.  Philosophy helps.
5. Art expands the mind (think different).

The United States holds the innovative edge largely due to its ability (so far) to pay serious attention to the arts and humanities, as well as the sciences - a fact that other countries are recognizing and working hard to emulate.  We're at a time when we can discuss the science of the soul as well as the soul of science.  We should embrace this kind of 'blended learning' and keep it going, don't you think?

Images courtesy of renjith krishnan & Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net 

Shooting for the moon

The Moon Express is being readied for transportation to the moon, for commercial purposes and for 'entrepreneurial exploration'.  This sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it's not really - putting a man on the moon was not just for feeling good (though that sure felt great), it was the first step in checking out the possibilities, including the commercial ones..  The Chinese government is now doing what NASA used to do - pouring oodles of money to fund moon shots and space stations.  But in the US, it is the private sector, successful entrepreneurs like Jeff Bezos of Amazon, who have taken the challenge to keep exploring the last known frontier. 

This is a cool - and aspirational - story for any entrepreneur: big dreams and tough challenges which could deliver a huge payoff not only in business terms but also in the impact for all humanity.  It is exciting and energizing to read about it, especially as we wind down this year and start planning for the next one.  It is the kind of story that makes you think 'if they can do that, maybe I can do this', the 'this' being your own venture.  Check out the article here - it's not just thinking outside the box, it's thinking outside the planet!

Social entrepreneurship at work

In a long ago post, I'd quoted one definition of an entrepreneur as 'one who sees an opportunity and organizes resources to take advantage of it'.  Modifying that slightly, I'd say a social entrepreneur is 'one who sees an opportunity for social good and organizes resources to deliver it'. 

I've recently been working with the Silicon Valley Education Foundation as part of their Step Up to Algebra program, a middle-school math outreach effort.

• The need?  Large numbers of students in Silicon Valley were entering high school with little or no skills in algebra.  And as SVEF CEO Muhammed Chaudhry points out "students who study math at least through Algebra II in high school are more than twice as likely as those who do not to earn a four-year degree, and the level of math a student reaches is the most accurate predictor of whether that student will earn a Bachelor’s degree" (Adelman, 1999 & 2006).  
• The resources?  SVEF started the program a few years ago by providing summer workshops for students in local middle schools, using mentors from the community (usually local corporations) to provide the one-on-one support needed to help these students (typically under-resourced) get comfortable with algebra.  And of course, they do secure the all-important resource of funding to enable the program.

The program has been running for a few years now and they have delivered.  But entrepreneurs stay on top of changing market needs and refine offerings to fit them.  It apparent that there are more students needing help in algebra, and it also like a good idea to provide them that help throughout the year, not just for a few weeks over the summer, so they can gain increased competence in the subject. 

As always, the challenge is matching resources to goals.  Expanding the program makes logistics and volunteer sourcing difficult, so SVEF turned to technology to help make that happen.  In a sort of 'blended learning' approach, with bi-monthly in-person sessions, bolstered by the excellent Khan Academy content, and online mentoring on the Meemli platform, SVEF is able to deliver more help to more students, more often.  (Disclosure: I'm Meemli's founder, and I'm writing this to share my first-hand experience with SVEF's exciting approach.)

Working closely with SVEF, I get to see all the challenges non-profits face, especially in public education: working with cash-strapped schools, over-worked teachers and varying environments in each district.  I also see how hard it is to be innovative, take risks, work with outside resources you don't control and do it all with limited staff and funding constraints.  It takes patience and a willingness to go with the flow while still reaching for the goal - things that you don't see much of in tech startups, by the way.  As an entrepreneur myself, I'm impressed that SVEF is, on their own, putting together a delivery system for their program incorporating new technology instead of sticking to the proven, mainstream/late-adopter options.  Not many are willing to take this kind of a leap, even in Silicon Valley - innovative risks are easier dreamed of than embraced.  Kudos to SVEF for being true entrepreneurs for social good!

The Tao of Steve Jobs

Just to get it out of the way, 'The Tao of Steve Jobs' has nothing in common with the movie 'The Tao of Steve' except for the first four words.  That's it.  This is not a book or movie or anything more than one small blog post about one amazing man.

It's almost a month since Steve Jobs died and there have been a zillion people opining about his life and legacy, as well as the inevitable detractors and tut-tutters.  And just when the stories seemed to be slowing down, out came his biography and TV shows - even SNL did its best. There are so many angles to the stories too - Steve the entrepreneur, the dropout/rebel, the wunderkind who was shunned by the tech establishment and then came back to show them, the family man who was felled by cancer.  Here are two widely different perspectives I liked reading: James Altucher's blog post and the eulogy by Mona Simpson (Steve's sister). 

For Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs, Steve was a god.  The one we all wished to be like, the fearless (and smashingly successful) entrepreneur,  the tech visionary who couldn't be caught, the genius worshiped by product designers everywhere.  Would-be entrepreneurs as well as famously successful ones (Zuckerberg, Page and Brin for example) desired to learn how to do it 'Steve's way'. 

The Tao of Steve Jobs, as I like to call it, are all those 'core values' that define the way he did things.  All these items are well known and are excellent advice not just for entrepreneurs, but possibly to anyone wishing to make something meaningful in his/her life:

• Focus.  
• You can't do everything, and certainly can't do everything well.  And yes, sometimes the focus is overwhelming and obsessive, but it may have to be so to get the job done.
• Simplicity.
•  Not only because of the inherent beauty in simplicity, but because it ultimately produces a better product, experience, outcome.
• Excellence.
• 'Perfect' trumps 'good enough' every time.
• 'Stay hungry.'
• If you're not striving and yearning for something, if you're not passionate about it, it's not going to happen.
  
• 'Stay foolish.'
• Do what you believe in.  Take the risk to act on it.

 (The last two are from Steve's speech to the Stanford students.  If you've somehow missed it or want to hear it again, here it is - one of the best commencement speeches of all time.)

A long while ago I wrote about what is important to me - create, care, connect (you can read that post here).  I realize how Steve epitomizes each of those.  He was undeniably creative - I've always appreciated Apple more than any other tech company as they tended to create, not copy/buy, successful ideas.  Steve cared deeply about what he did (even if he did not directly show his 'care' in the traditional way for social causes).  He micro-managed (and threw tantrums) because he cared so much about every aspect of what Apple built.  As for connecting, he connected the dots way, way outside the box and saw possibilities others couldn't even imagine.  Despite his imperfections, I admired him and what he represented - an embodiment of truth in design and the entrepreneurial fire.  He will be missed, and it may be ages before another like him shows up, but, like me, techies and entrepreneurs everywhere will be inspired by the Tao of Steve Jobs for a long time..

Entrepreneurial diplomacy

I believe that one can bring an entrepreneurial approach to just about anything, not just to start a business.  As I've mentioned in an earlier post, my favorite definition of an entrepreneur is 'one who recognizes opportunities and organizes resources to take advantage of the opportunity'.  And here's an exciting example of entrepreneurship in a small social venture with lasting impact - from a diplomat, no less.

I heard about this over dinner a little while ago with J. Ravikumar, the High Commissioner of India to Cameroon (full disclosure, he's a 'cousin' in the Indian sense, which defies ordinal numeric categorization).  Cameroon is a small nation, but while it is a typical African country in some ways, in others it has a lot going for it - a literacy rate of 76% for example.  What Ravikumar noticed was that the rural areas in particular were limited in their access to power and that caused a variety of attendant problems, the most critical, from the villagers perspective, was the fact that they had to trek a long way and pay exorbitant amounts to charge up their cell phones.

So Ravikumar worked with others to put together a disarmingly simple but highly sustainable solution.  He arranged for women from the village to go to India and get trained on installing and maintaining solar panels - middle-aged women because they would be more likely to stay in the villages and provide support vs. youngsters who would head for the bright lights in the big city.  They came back and successfully got solar power to the first village - and along with solar power, the inhabitants will get three critical items: a light (so kids could read at night), a stove (so they could stop chopping wood) and a fan to keep the mosquitoes away.  Best of all, they can charge their cell phones right in their village!  With success at this site, the model can be repeated in other areas.

To be sure, there are other goals being met through this project - not least of which is the furthering of Indo-African ties (read about that aspect here).  The fact that Ravikumar has a business background probably had a lot to do with his seeing an opportunity and pulling together various resources (local and Indian governments, United Nations Development Programme etc.) to fill it.  Still, is is extremely encouraging to see how an entrepreneurial mindset can make 'foreign relations' more relevant and productive, and to deliver so much potential for future entrepreneurship for the women who're now trained solar panel installers, as well as all the people in the village who are now em'powered' - couldn't resist the pun ;) 
Kudos to Ravikumar and the multi-national team for their innovative approach!

Who loses?

Flip Video was a poster child for a successful startup a few years ago.  Got started in 2001 as Pure Digital and was selling over a million units per year in 2008.  They were portable, easy to use and low priced, and favored by a lot of consumers.  They could have gone public.

So, Cisco bought one of the fastest growing tech companies in 2009 and is now shutting it down.  The founders and investors in Pure Digital probably made out well in the Cisco buyout of $590 Million, but now 500+ employees are going to be laid off.  A fallout of Cisco's failed consumer strategy.

Who loses?   For sure the employees who're now seeing pink instead of green.  Also the consumers, who're losing out on the availability of a popular little camcorder and in the fact that innovation in this space got stymied (not everyone wants a smartphone camera as the only choice - even smartphone owners).

Just a story of a startup that appeared to have a (somewhat) happy ending and then - didn't. 

Just do it!

I just ran across this blog post about why some action is better than none. Just looking at what happened today makes me believe that it applies in spades to startups.

The four main points in the post are:

• Small wins matter. Today we got glowing feedback from one user, just one, but it feels good!
  
• Accomplishments come in pieces. A demo from a few weeks ago resulted in a request for proposal. Moved on to the next step.
  
• Perfection is unattainable anyway. That's what I told myself when I noticed the user interface on our app needed tweaking in some areas.
  
• Actions produce energy and momentum. The end of the day blahs were banished with a flurry of emails, tweets and yes, this blog.

As I've mentioned in an earlier post, it is important to avoid analysis paralysis, especially in a startup. You can read the entire post here - it's short and sweet and may just move you to action. Nike got their mantra right - just do it!

A true entrepreneur

I was sent this link a little while ago and thought it was one of those too-good-to-be-true stories: poor kid in rural India fails school but ends up building a profitable business and is greeted by Presidents. But the story of Masukhbhai Prajapati is one of a true entrepreneur who showed enormous passion and perseverance. Some other classic entrepreneurial characteristics that he showed are:

• He didn't let himself be defined by the environment he was born into
  
• He could innovate outside the box and outside the 'normal' for the world he lived in
• He continued despite many failures
  

I am also thrilled with his business focus and products - taking 'useful' things that the middle-class and rich take for granted and making them affordable and accessible to the poor millions. And the fact that he's doing them in a sustainable eco-friendly way is absolutely amazing - a clay refrigerator that doesn't need electricity, how cool is that? This from a guy who never finished high school and learned engineering by just doing it.

The 21st century needs more people like Mansukhbhai - not just more college dropouts creating social games online. His advice to entrepreneurs is universal - 'put your heart and soul into what you do' is one of them - and while he may not be a billionaire, his success is unquestionable as is his social impact. In my book, he is the real deal and you can read his fascinating story here.

The frugal entrepreneur

One of the lessons we all have (or should have) learned from the great melt-down of 2008-09 is how to get things done on the cheap. This is especially true for the majority of startups and small businesses that found investors were scarcer than buyers for homes and the seed/startup money had dried up like dew in the desert. For many ventures success in the last 18 or so months has been defined as survival, and that has been possible only by leaps of creative resourcing.

For those who embrace the frugal entrepreneur's path to future wealth and success, 'The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur' by Mike Michalowicz is a good read. It's a light-hearted but spot-on collection of tips and guidelines on building your venture with innovation if not big bucks. (You can also read ReadWriteWeb's post on this book here. I think I've written about the entrepreneurial passion about a zillion times, and was happy to see it features hugely in this book too, as Mike's take is that finding your passion is the first step to launching a successful company. Coming to think of it, have you found any successful entrepreneur who says you don't need passion?

Check out TPE - it could be just the energy shot you need to keep pushing (no pun intended).

Innovation matters

Innovation is must-have for entrepreneurs for sure, and entrepreneurs have been anointed the potential saviors of our sluggish economy so innovation's been rather news-worthy lately. There was a recent Newsweek article on how Americans and the rest of the world (the part that was polled that is) view the state of innovation and the American economy and this stuck with me:
On some issues there is widespread agreement: two thirds of respondents believe innovation will be more important than ever to the U.S. economy over the next 30 years. But the survey shows some striking contrasts as well. Eighty-one percent of Chinese believe the U.S. is staying ahead of China on innovation; only 41 percent of Americans agree. To find the next big breakthrough, Americans are focused on improving math and science education, while Chinese are more concerned about developing creative problem-solving and business skills.
(You can read the article here.)

Good news: we believe that innovation is important. Bad news: many Americans believe we are not staying ahead of China in this. Worse news: more Americans focus on science and math education while more Chinese are thinking about 'creative problem-solving'.

Why is it bad if Americans think they're falling behind? True, you don't want to be smug or delusional, but perceptions should be based on reality and the reality may be not that the US is falling behind, but that the others are catching up faster. The downside of this belief is the rush to change the way we do things, even the ones we do well, particularly the good part of US education (yes, it's there!) that develops non-conformist creative thinkers.

Math and science are important, actually, critical - in fact they are the foundation for problem-solving and there's not only a knowledge deficiency in these subjects among US students, there's a marked lack of interest in these purportedly nerdy areas (something that is not the case in most of Asia). But the US didn't get to be an innovation leader sticking to a "just the facts ma'am" approach. Facts are within the box and need to be known, but it is the ability to look beyond the facts and think outside the box that drives new concepts and quantum jumps in innovation. Innovation is not a bunch of theorems and formulas - it is spotting opportunities and then knowing enough about theorems/formulas to build on them. So the US should not only focus on math/science skills, but also on creative thinking and make sure students have plenty of unstructured time when they can exercise their right brains and dream up new ideas.

But, it's not all bad news. One of the best stories of 2009 is this one about DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and it's forty red balloons challenge to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet (also a DARPA result). The balloons were tethered in 40 locations across the US and the first team (it was just not possible for an individual to do it) to identify all locations won a substantial cash prize. The goal? To learn how the power of crowds can be gathered quickly and productively - and possibly more things that are not even understood yet. You can read more about the red balloons and the MIT team that won it by checking the press release from here. What is amazing is the idea that the Department of Defense, which one would assume would be stodgy and secretive, created this wacky public challenge. It is so cool and I believe this is how the US can stay ahead - being innovative about driving innovation and making it fun.