Answers to Student Questions

Innovation and Entrepreneurship Webcast for Students

Lawrence Husick’s responses to questions posed by students participating in the November 18, 2008 webcast on innovation, sponsored by FPRI’s Wachman Center.

What exactly is the definition of innovation?
An innovation is the process of making changes by introducing valuable new methods, ideas, and products or, the methods, ideas, and products themselves.
What is the relationship between education and becoming a successful entrepreneur?
In the past, “Horatio Alger” stories may have been more common, but today, entrepreneurs, particularly in technology fields, need both specialized education in their area, and general business education in finance, law, and management.
In what fields do you foresee the greatest entrepreneurial opportunities?
There will be great opportunities in businesses that deal with the environment, genomics and proteomics, nanotechnologies, and in service industries that serve the needs of the aging population.
Do you see entrepreneurship growing more domestically or internationally?
Both. Entrepreneurship is rapidly expanding in India and China, as well as continuing its central role in the US economy.
Should we be worried about other countries’ innovation growing faster than our own?
Not at all. Entrepreneurial activity breeds more opportunity for all.
Was any of the telegraph chat speak similar to the chat speak we use today? Have we simply reinvented the same code?
In many ways, telegraph chat codes were more complex than what we use today because the telegraph companies charged by the “word” and had a 10-word minimum per message. Thus, the code-makers invented the use of uncommon words to express complex thoughts. The purpose, was, however, the same.
How long did it take for the Pony Express to go out of business because of the telegraph?
The Pony Express operated only from April 1860 to October 1861, and closed two days after the transcontinental telegraph reached Westward to Salt Lake City.
What advice could you give to an aspiring teenage entrepreneur?
If you aspire to become an entrepreneur immediately, then pick a business that is simple enough for you to run while keeping up a full school and activities schedule, and which requires little startup capital. If you wish to become an entrepreneur as your career, then stay in school and learn both specific subjects that interest you, and general business that will help you run your companies (you will have many in your career!) Mostly, learn how to think analytically, write and speak persuasively, and how to work with others effectively.
What do you think is the next step beyond the internet?
For communication technologies, clearly personal devices that are capable of being always online (if we wish them to be) and that present useful and easy to understand interfaces to information are the next wave. The Apple iPhone and other very smart wireless devices are just the first wave of these.
The Dewey Decimal System is an awesome example of historical data organization and retrieval (database). Ironically, current online technologies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, etc. are contemporary examples of electronic data organization tools. What are your thoughts?
I believe that explicit schemes for knowledge organization are useful, but in the long run, the rate at which we are accumulating data requires fully automated indexing, because it will be too expensive to employ humans to encode the information.
Could the entrepreneurial surge in recent years have been successful without the internet?
Yes, certainly, but it would have flourished in other technologies. There were other entrepreneurial booms in the past, and there will be more in the future.
What things are necessary to make an entrepreneurial business successful?
A market and a way to reach it. Seth Godin, who ran marketing for Yahoo!, used to say, “It is not enough to build a better mousetrap… You also need millions of people with a passion for murdering mice!”
What academic and skillsets are common among Messrs. Filo, Brin, Yang, Page, and Zuckerberg that students of today should try to acquire in order better prepare themselves as future entrepreneurs?
These entrepreneurs are broad thinkers in their fields (rather than being narrow and deep) and thus they integrate many different innovations into their systems. This “innovation at the edge” is essential, and is really the opposite of the way that we train Ph.D. candidates.
How will the current economic downturn impact the role and viability of Internet usage?
As the economy gets tighter, more people will turn to the Internet in millions of ways, from getting a better price on what they need to buy, to finding jobs, to actually working on-line.
What implications do you believe 21st-century innovations will have on future generations as they pertain to the decline in face-to-face interactions over that of human-computer interactions?
Computer-mediated communication will actually broaden and deepen interpersonal interactions, and “F2F” communications will become more broadly defined to include multimedia electronic communications.
How have immigrants impacted entrepreneurship in the US?
The impact of immigrants has been extremely positive. Just look at any field, and you find that the US attracts some of the best in the world to come here to work.
Where did they come up with the name Google?
It’s a play on googol, which is a large number: 1 followed by 100 zeros.
How soon do you think nanotechnology will be able to produce outstanding products?
It is already doing so. Just look at underwear with nanosilver that refuses to develop body odor!
What do you see as the innovation that will get us out of the current economic recession?
It may well be a legal innovation: a new form of bankruptcy law that allows firms to restructure while protecting those who most need protection.
What are some specific energy fields that a student should look to?
Look broadly at fields that source energy from the sun or earth, and those that improve efficiency of energy use.
Do you see any specific industry slowing down or becoming obsolete because of digital innovation?
The CD music distribution model is a good example. The music is digital (bits) but their products are plastic discs that must still be shipped on trucks and put on shelves.