Entrepreneurship – Page 66 – artdiamondblog.com

Solitary Swimming Helps Creativity and Problem-Solving

(p. 5) Ms. Nyad has spent a lifetime in the water, chasing an elusive mark in marathon swimming, and she has written about the exhilarating out-of-body experience she has when powering through long distances. The medium makes it necessary to unplug; the blunting of the senses by water encourages internal retreat. Though we don’t all reach nirvana when we swim, swimming may well be that last refuge from connectivity — and, for some, the only way to find the solitary self.
. . .
For better or worse, the mind wanders: We are left alone with our thoughts, wherever they may take us. A lot of creative thinking happens when we’re not actively aware of it. A recent Carnegie Mellon study shows that to make good decisions, our brains need every bit of that room to meander. Other research has found that problem-solving tends to come most easily when our minds are unfocused, and while we’re exercising. The neurologist Oliver Sacks has written books in his head while swimming. “Theories and stories would construct themselves in my mind as I swam to and fro, or round and round Lake Jeff,” he writes in the essay “Water Babies.” Five hundred lengths in a pool were never boring or monotonous; instead, Dr. Sacks writes, “swimming gave me a sort of joy, a sense of well-being so extreme that it became at times a sort of ecstasy.” The body is engaged in full physical movement, but the mind itself floats, untethered. Beyond this, he adds, “there is all the symbolism of swimming — its imaginative resonances, its mythic potentials.”
Dr. Sacks describes a sublime state that is accessible to all, from his father, with his “great whalelike bulk,” who swam daily and elegantly until 94 years of age, to the very young. . . .
. . .
I asked Dara Torres, who has logged countless training hours for her five Olympics, what she thinks about when she’s swimming. “I’m always doing five things at once,” she told me by phone (at the time, she was driving a car). “So when I get in the water, I think about all the things that I have to do. But sometimes I go into a state — I don’t really think about anything.” The important thing, she says, is that the time is yours. “You can use it for anything. It depends where your head is at — it’s a reflection of where you are.”
The reflection of where you are: in essence, a status update to you, and only you. The experience is egalitarian. You don’t have to be a great swimmer to appreciate the benefits of sensory solitude and the equilibrium the water can bring.

For the full commentary, see:
Justin Gillis. “BY DEGREES; Freezing Out the Bigger Picture.” The New York Times (Tues., FEB. 11, 2014): D3.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date FEB. 10, 2014.)

Gary Becker’s Grandson Ponders Opportunity Cost of College

“Louis Harboe with his parents, Frederik Harboe and Catherine Becker. Louis, now 18, got his first freelance tech job at age 12. Last year, he attended the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 1) Ryan was headed to South by Southwest Interactive, the technology conference in Austin. There, he planned to talk up an app that he and a friend had built. Called Finish, it aimed to help people stop procrastinating, and was just off its high in the No. 1 spot in the productivity category in the Apple App store.
. . .
Ryan is now 17, a senior at Boulder High. He is among the many entrepreneurially minded, technologically skilled teenagers who are striving to do serious business. Their work is enabled by low-cost or free tools to make apps or to design games, and they are encouraged by tech companies and grown-ups in the field who urge them, sometimes with financial support, to accelerate their transition into “the real world.” This surge in youthful innovation and entrepreneurship looks “unprecedented,” said Gary Becker, a University of Chicago economist and a Nobel laureate.
Dr. Becker is assessing this subject from a particularly intimate vantage point. His grandson, Louis Harboe, 18, is a friend of (p. 6) Ryan’s, a technological teenager who makes Ryan look like a late bloomer. Louis, pronounced Louie, got his first freelance gig at the age of 12, designing the interface for an iPhone game. At 16, Louis, who lives with his parents in Chicago, took a summer design internship at Square, an online and mobile payment company in San Francisco, earning $1,000 a week plus a $1,000 housing stipend.
Ryan and Louis, who met online in the informal network of young developers, are hanging out this weekend in Austin at South by Southwest. They are also waiting to hear from the colleges to which they applied last fall — part of the parallel universe they also live in, the traditional one with grades and SATs and teenage responsibilities. But unlike their peers for whom college is the singular focus, they have pondered whether to go at all. It’s a good kind of problem, the kind faced by great high-school athletes or child actors who can try going pro, along with all the risk that entails.
Dr. Becker, who studies microeconomics and education, has been telling his grandson: “Go to college. Go to college.” College, he says, is the clear step to economic success. “The evidence is overwhelming.”
But the “do it now” idea, evangelized on a digital pulpit, can feel more immediate than academic empiricism. “College is not a prerequisite,” said Jess Teutonico, who runs TEDxTeen, a version of the TED talks and conferences for youth, where Ryan spoke a few weeks ago. “These kids are motivated to take over the world,” she said. “They need it fast. They need it now.”

For the full story, see:
MATT RICHTEL. “The Youngest Technorati.” The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Fri., MARCH 9, 2014): 1 & 6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 8, 2014.)

In Hard Times Entrepreneurs Need Advice on How to Fire

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A13) Every entrepreneur has experienced what Ben Horowitz terms “the struggle.” That’s when things are going really, really badly. It’s when, as he puts it in “The Hard Thing About Hard Things,” “people ask you why you don’t quit and you don’t know the answer.” But there always is a way, Mr. Horowitz believes, and it’s the ability to spot the next move during the struggle that separates winners and losers.

Mr. Horowitz has authority on this subject. He was a successful tech CEO, having co-founded the pioneering cloud-computing company LoudCloud and subsequently overseen its evolution into a software firm, Opsware. He’s also one half of the venture-capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Among the firm’s winning bets: Facebook, Skype and Twitter.
. . .
The book, the author says, is written primarily for “wartime CEOs”–those like the late Steve Jobs, who returned to Apple in 1997 at a time when the company was verging on bankruptcy. Jobs recognized that to survive, Apple had to ditch most of its products and focus singularly on just four computer models.
Wartime CEOs don’t need classic management books that “focus on how to do things correctly, so you don’t screw up,” Mr. Horowitz argues. What the author offers instead is “insight into what you must do after you have screwed up. The good news is, I have plenty of experience at that and so does every other CEO.”
. . .
Parts of the book are dedicated to providing practical leadership advice: how to hire, fire and scale and when to sell and when to spurn offers. Some of the advice is counterintuitive. He dismisses the “don’t bring me a problem without bringing me a solution” management maxim by asking: If an employee can’t solve the problem he encounters, do you really want him to hide it?

For the full review, see:
DANIEL FREEDMAN. “BOOKSHELF; Business Tips From Karl Marx; Born to a family of Marxists, Ben Horowitz now invests in tech startups. Among his winning bets: Twitter and Facebook.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., March 7, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 6, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Book Review: ‘The Hard Thing About Hard Things,’ by Ben Horowitz; Born to a family of Marxists, Ben Horowitz now invests in tech startups. Among his winning bets: Twitter and Facebook.”)

The book under review is:
Horowitz, Ben. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2014.

Better Policies Explain Why Poland Prospers More than Ukraine

“Yaroslav Rushchyshyn, a garment manufacturer, wants to end penalties when his company reports a financial loss.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B1) LVIV, Ukraine — Every kind of business in this restless pro-European stronghold near the border with Poland has an idea about how to make Ukraine like its more prosperous neighbor.

For Yaroslav Rushchyshyn, founder of a garment manufacturer, it is abolishing bizarre regulations that have had inspectors threatening fines for his handling of fabric remnants and for reporting financial losses.
For Andrew Pavliv, who runs a technology company, it is modernizing a rigid education system to help nurture entrepreneurs.
For Natalia Smutok, an executive at a company that makes color charts for paint and cosmetics, it meant starting an antibribery campaign, even though she is 36 weeks pregnant.
. . .
(p. B10) Victor Halchynsky, a former journalist who is now a spokesman for the Ukrainian unit of a Polish bank, said the divergence of the two countries was a source of frustration.
“It’s painful because we know it’s only happened because of policy,” he said, adding that while both countries had started the reform process, Poland “finished it.”
Ukraine has been held back by a number of policies. Steep energy subsidies have kept consumption high and left the country dependent on Russian gas, draining state coffers. Mr. Pavliv said the state university system, which he called “pure, pure Soviet,” was too inflexible to set up a training program for project managers, or to allow executives without specific certifications to teach courses. An agriculture industry once a Soviet breadbasket has been hurt by antiquated rules, including restrictions on land sales. Aggressive tax police have been used to shake down businesses.

For the full story, see:
DANNY HAKIM. “A Blueprint for Ukraine.” The New York Times (Fri., MARCH 14, 2014): B1 & B10.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 13, 2014.)

“Andrew Pavliv, who runs a technology company, wants to help turn Lviv into a little Ukrainian Silicon Valley.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Edison Helped Us See the Light

Source of book image: http://www.strategy-business.com/article/07408i?pg=all

Several biographies of Thomas Edison have appeared in recent decades. One of the strengths of Randall Stross’ The Wizard of Menlo Park is that it emphasizes how Edison’s story is relevant to current issues in the economics of invention, entrepreneurship and technology.
In the next several weeks, I will quote some of the more thought-provoking stories and observations in the Stross book.

The Stross book is:
Stross, Randall E. The Wizard of Menlo Park: How Thomas Alva Edison Invented the Modern World. New York: Crown Publishers, 2007.

Disabled Workers Are More Likely to Be Free Agent Entrepreneurs

“Kevin Hartford, right, and a colleague at his factory. He started his business after employers failed to hire him.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

HR departments have incentives to avoid hiring risky employees. But a determined high-risk employee can hire themselves by becoming a free agent entrepreneur. If we want to truly help the disabled, we should remove obstacles to entrepreneurship, such as burdensome regulations and high taxation.

(p. B4) Mr. Hartford, the father of two sons, thrived as a business consultant in his 20s and 30s. He was used to flying first class, staying at swank hotels and advising CEOs. Then the consulting firm unraveled in the mid-1990s. When he began looking for a new job, a stuttering problem–something he had always considered manageable–put off potential employers.

“I applied for job after job after job,” says Mr. Hartford, now 58. “I was one of two finalists; I was one of three finalists. But I never got the job.”
In the end, Mr. Hartford concluded that his only shot at a satisfying job was to create a company. He is now president and co-owner of Alle-Kiski Industries, which makes parts, such as exhaust pipes for train locomotives and prototype truck wheels, for larger manufacturers, including Alcoa Inc. and General Electric Co.
Like many before him, Mr. Hartford discovered that one option for people who don’t fit into large organizations is to start a small one. That is particularly true for people with disabilities. About 11% of disabled workers are self-employed, compared with 6.5% of those with no disabilities, according to Labor Department data.
. . .
The business has grown to 38 employees from a dozen when Messrs. Hartford and Newell started in 2005. They own more than $2 million of equipment used to drill, groove and otherwise shape metal, arrayed in a 27,000-square-foot factory with an American flag hanging from one of the beams. Last year’s sales of $6 million were the highest yet, Mr. Hartford says, and the company is building a 4,000-square-foot addition to house more equipment.

For the full story, see:
JAMES R. HAGERTY. “Entrepreneur Let No Impediment Stop Him; Out-of-Work Consultant Started His Own Company After Discovering His Stutter Put Off Employers.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., Jan. 16, 2014): B4.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 15, 2014.)

Carnegie Wanted Institution to Fund “Exceptional” Scientists “Whenever and Where Found”

So was Carnegie suggesting that we should be open to the exceptional appearing in unexpected locations?

(p. 614) In his deed of trust, Carnegie declared that his research institution in Washington should “discover the exceptional man in every department of study whenever and where found… and enable him to make the work for which he seems specially designed his life work.” That notion would remain the driving philosophy behind the institution over the next century. Some of those “exceptional” scientists, supported by Carnegie money were the astronomer Edwin Hubble, who “revolutionized astronomy with his discovery that the universe is expanding,” and Barbara McClintock, whose work on patterns of genetic inheritance in corn won her a Nobel Prize.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Nasaw Claims Carnegie Believed in Importance of Basic Scientific Research

But notice that the two main examples of what Carnegie himself chose to fund (the Wilson Observatory and the yacht to collect geophysical data), were empirically oriented, not theoretically oriented.

(p. 480) Carnegie was, as Harvard President James Bryant Conant would comment in 1935 on the centenary of his birth, “more than a generation ahead of most business men of this country [in understanding] the importance of science to industry.” He recognized far better than his peers how vital basic scientific research was to the applied research that industry fed off. George Ellery Hale, an astronomer and astrophysicist, later to be the chief architect of the National Research Council, was astounded when he learned of Carnegie’s commitment to pure research. “The provision of a large endowment solely for scientific research seemed almost too good to be true…. Knowing as I did the difficulties of obtaining money for this purpose and (p. 481) devoted as I was to research rather than teaching, I could appreciate some of the possibilities of such an endowment.” Hale applied for funds to build an observatory on Mount Wilson in California, and got what he asked for. It would take until 1909 to build and install a 60-inch reflecting telescope in the observatory; in 1917, a second 100-inch telescope, the largest in the world, was added.

The Mount Wilson Observatory– and the work of its astronomers and astrophysicists– was only one of the projects funded in the early years of the new institution. Another, of which Carnegie was equally proud, was the outfitting of the Carnegie, an oceangoing yacht with auxiliary engine, built of wood and bronze so that it could collect geophysical data without the errors inflicted on compass readings by iron and steel. The ship was launched in 1909; by 1911, Carnegie could claim that the scientists on board had already been able to correct several significant errors on navigational maps.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis, and italics, in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)

Many Important Medical Articles Cannot Be Replicated

The standard scientific method is more fallible, and less logically rigorous, than is generally admitted. One implication is to strengthen the case for allowing patients considerable freedom in choosing their own treatments.

(p. D1) It has been jarring to learn in recent years that a reproducible result may actually be the rarest of birds. Replication, the ability of another lab to reproduce a finding, is the gold standard of science, reassurance that you have discovered something true. But that is getting harder all the time. With the most accessible truths already discovered, what remains are often subtle effects, some so delicate that they can be conjured up only under ideal circumstances, using highly specialized techniques.
Fears that this is resulting in some questionable findings began to emerge in 2005, when Dr. John P. A. Ioannidis, a kind of meta-scientist who researches research, wrote a paper pointedly titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.”
. . .
. . . he published another blockbuster, examining more than a decade’s worth of highly regarded papers — the effect of a daily aspirin on cardiac disease, for example, or the risks of hormone replacement therapy for older women. He found that a large proportion of the conclusions were undermined or contradicted by later studies.
His work was just the beginning. Concern about the problem has reached the point that the journal Nature has assembled an archive, filled with reports and analyses, called Challenges in Irreproducible Research.
Among them is a paper in which C. Glenn Begley, who is chief scientific officer at TetraLogic Pharmaceuticals, described an experience he had while at Amgen, another drug company. He and his colleagues could not replicate 47 of 53 landmark papers about cancer. Some of the results could not be reproduced even with the help of the original scientists working in their own labs.

For the full commentary, see:
GEORGE JOHNSON. “Raw Data; New Truths That Only One Can See.” The New York Times (Tues., JAN. 21, 2014): D1 & D6.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date JAN. 20, 2014.)

The first Ioannidis article mentioned above is:
Ioannidis, John P. A. “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” PLoS Medicine 2, no. 8 (August 2005): 696-701.

The second Ioannidis article mentioned above is:
Ioannidis, John P. A. “Contradicted and Initially Stronger Effects in Highly Cited Clinical Research.” JAMA 294, no. 2 (July 13, 2005): 218-28.

The Begley article mentioned above is:
Begley, C. Glenn, and Lee M. Ellis. “Drug Development: Raise Standards for Preclinical Cancer Research.” Nature 483, no. 7391 (March 29, 2012): 531-33.

Carnegie Was Depressed by Initial Inactivity of Retirement

(p. 592) IT IS DIFFICULT to picture Andrew Carnegie depressed, but there is no other way to describe his state of being in the months following his retirement. Carnegie confessed as much in an early draft of his Autobiography, but the editor John Van Dyke, chosen by Mrs. Carnegie after her husband’s death, perhaps thinking his melancholic ruminations would displease her, edited them out of the manuscript.
. . .
(p. 593) The vast difference between life in retirement and as chief stockholder of the Carnegie Company was brought home to him as he prepared to leave for Britain in the early spring of 1901. For close to thirty years, he had scurried about for weeks prior to sailing tying up loose ends. There were documents to be signed, instructions to be left with his partners in Pittsburgh and his private secretary in New York. Retirement brought an end to this round of activities and a strange, inescapable melancholy.

Source:
Nasaw, David. Andrew Carnegie. New York: Penguin Press, 2006.
(Note: ellipsis added, italics in original.)
(Note: the pagination of the hardback and paperback editions of Nasaw’s book are the same.)