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> You may find yourself as I saw Brattain when he got a Nobel Prize. ...[he never did great work again] It is a shame that Hamming didn't focus on Bardeen, who

> You may find yourself as I saw Brattain when he got a Nobel Prize. ...[he never did great work again] It is a shame that Hamming didn't focus on Bardeen, who shared that Prize (it was for the transistor). Bardeen then went on to win a second prize (for superconductivity.) Great article though. BTW: It is worth pointing out that there is a great deal of his wisdom that was very much Bell-Labs culture. A fair amount of that simply does not translate to the startup world.

vitovito 14y ago
I don't think that's true. I think doing great work in the major problems in your field of choice are the exact heights that entrepreneurialism should strive for. (Disclaimer: I recently wrote an essay arguing this same thing, for designers, for the upcoming issue 03 of Distance, which you can subscribe to at http://distance.cc/ http://distance.cc/) This essay was a turning point for me as a professional, when I found it, years ago. Entrepreneurs have the benefit of being able to look for and solve important problems in any field. And what makes a problem important? Here's how you adapt Hamming's essay on important pure science into important design work: What makes a problem important? It’s not the end result: responsive web design provides a new way to build sites, but it’s not the only way. Rather, importance is a factor of solubility: important problems are answerable, if only you could connect the right dots. Important problems advance understanding. Marcotte figured out how to unify design rhetoric across many devices, but he probably didn’t know he was going to get there when he started in 2009: the iPad didn’t exist yet, and neither his articles nor his book mention “iPhone” or “mobile” or even just “phone” in a relevant context. You can't know exactly what field to work in, but you can stay active in places where something might happen. Maybe these places are where the work is diligent rather than sexy – like documenting the history of interaction design, saving rare hardware, or preserving old books. Maybe they are social and cultural, like educating designers on the value of professional practices, designing supportive professional societies, and building tools for study. Or maybe the future will be built on defining best practices for future tools and their interactions. Wherever you see important problems, you’ll do great work by sharing your explorations with others. I go on to give examples of important problems facing designers today. They're everything from how we design, to big data, to the internet of things, to natural user interfaces. You can solve major problems in online payments, and then solve major problems in electric vehicles, and then solve major problems in space travel. You don't have to be limited by your field of academic research, and your lunch tables of chemists and mathematicians can be those of any industry in the world. Working on important problems means your work will have long-term meaning.
- jpdoctor 14y ago
  > I don't think that's true. Then I'm gonna bet that you never worked at Bell Labs. > I think doing great work in the major problems in your field of choice are the exact heights that entrepreneurialism should strive for. The time scale is vastly different. Entrepreneurs are not interested in starting programs that will yield results only after 10-20 years, and VCs have an even shorter attention span. Hell, funding events (which require showing progress) every two years are considered successful in the startup culture.
  - jboy 14y ago
    > Entrepreneurs are not interested in starting programs that will yield results only after 10-20 years What about the SpaceX's of the world? Founded in 2002; docked with the ISS in 2012.
    - jpdoctor 14y ago
      > What about the SpaceX's of the world? The folks Hamming mentioned did things and discovered things that had never been done before. SpaceX docking with the ISS? You know that has already been proven out; so not exactly fertile new ground to win a Nobel Prize with.
      - jboy 14y ago
        I doubt that docking with the ISS is the end-goal of SpaceX. Musk talks about missions to Mars, and even helping to establish a human presence there. The latter certainly hasn't been done before. My point was that, even at the 10-year mark, SpaceX is still working towards its goal -- a goal that may very well not yield its results until after the 20-year mark. While I appreciate that Musk stands out partly as an exception to the rule, I think it's nevertheless reasonable to concede that not all entrepreneurs are focussed on 2-year goals.
  - shardling 14y ago
    You're conflating all entrepeneurs with a very specific subset you're probably more familiar with.

vitovito 14y ago

I don't think that's true. I think doing great work in the major problems in your field of choice are the exact heights that entrepreneurialism should strive for. (Disclaimer: I recently wrote an essay arguing this same thing, for designers, for the upcoming issue 03 of Distance, which you can subscribe to at http://distance.cc/ http://distance.cc/) This essay was a turning point for me as a professional, when I found it, years ago. Entrepreneurs have the benefit of being able to look for and solve important problems in any field. And what makes a problem important? Here's how you adapt Hamming's essay on important pure science into important design work: What makes a problem important? It’s not the end result: responsive web design provides a new way to build sites, but it’s not the only way. Rather, importance is a factor of solubility: important problems are answerable, if only you could connect the right dots. Important problems advance understanding. Marcotte figured out how to unify design rhetoric across many devices, but he probably didn’t know he was going to get there when he started in 2009: the iPad didn’t exist yet, and neither his articles nor his book mention “iPhone” or “mobile” or even just “phone” in a relevant context. You can't know exactly what field to work in, but you can stay active in places where something might happen. Maybe these places are where the work is diligent rather than sexy – like documenting the history of interaction design, saving rare hardware, or preserving old books. Maybe they are social and cultural, like educating designers on the value of professional practices, designing supportive professional societies, and building tools for study. Or maybe the future will be built on defining best practices for future tools and their interactions. Wherever you see important problems, you’ll do great work by sharing your explorations with others. I go on to give examples of important problems facing designers today. They're everything from how we design, to big data, to the internet of things, to natural user interfaces. You can solve major problems in online payments, and then solve major problems in electric vehicles, and then solve major problems in space travel. You don't have to be limited by your field of academic research, and your lunch tables of chemists and mathematicians can be those of any industry in the world. Working on important problems means your work will have long-term meaning.

jpdoctor 14y ago
> I don't think that's true. Then I'm gonna bet that you never worked at Bell Labs. > I think doing great work in the major problems in your field of choice are the exact heights that entrepreneurialism should strive for. The time scale is vastly different. Entrepreneurs are not interested in starting programs that will yield results only after 10-20 years, and VCs have an even shorter attention span. Hell, funding events (which require showing progress) every two years are considered successful in the startup culture.
- jboy 14y ago
  > Entrepreneurs are not interested in starting programs that will yield results only after 10-20 years What about the SpaceX's of the world? Founded in 2002; docked with the ISS in 2012.
  - jpdoctor 14y ago
    > What about the SpaceX's of the world? The folks Hamming mentioned did things and discovered things that had never been done before. SpaceX docking with the ISS? You know that has already been proven out; so not exactly fertile new ground to win a Nobel Prize with.
    - jboy 14y ago
      I doubt that docking with the ISS is the end-goal of SpaceX. Musk talks about missions to Mars, and even helping to establish a human presence there. The latter certainly hasn't been done before. My point was that, even at the 10-year mark, SpaceX is still working towards its goal -- a goal that may very well not yield its results until after the 20-year mark. While I appreciate that Musk stands out partly as an exception to the rule, I think it's nevertheless reasonable to concede that not all entrepreneurs are focussed on 2-year goals.
- shardling 14y ago
  You're conflating all entrepeneurs with a very specific subset you're probably more familiar with.