jls@world.std.com
Can you define the difference between applied research performed by, say, a corporate R&D department and purer (speculative) research like what's done at the Media Lab?
nicholas@hq.media.mit.edu
The difference is a combination of time and risk. If either the risk or the time is too high or too long, a company cannot afford it. By contrast, since a place like the Media Lab is considered "precompetitive research," we are a place in which to pool risk and time. That meshes perfectly with our academic mission and the requirement that Ph.D. students do novel work in uncharted territories.
In addition, in the case of the Media Lab we do work on both technology and new content. So about 50% of our admissions are people with backgrounds in film, photography, anthropology, journalism -- namely, fields that are not necessarily embraced by the traditional computer-science lab in industry.
jls@world.std.com
If you had to start one business today that was in a totally different field from the one you are in, what would it be and why?
nicholas@hq.media.mit.edu
If it is really outside technology, then it would be a restaurant, as I love to cook and would be happy to do that for the rest of my life.
jls@world.std.com
Finally we have a beautiful day here in Boston. The temperature dropped to about 55 or 60 last night, and today is just glorious. I hope that it's similar there, wherever "there" is.
As a general partner in a venture-capital firm, what do you look for in companies when you're deciding whether to invest?
nicholas@hq.media.mit.edu
I bring "technological intuition" to the table. But what I have learned, which may be dreadfully obvious to others, is that a great idea and a good business plan are necessary but not sufficient. The people -- their character, mind-set, drive, and resilience -- determine more of the outcome than anything. A great idea "and they will come" is what we might think in graduate school, but it rarely works that way.
It is stinky hot here and not at all the weather it is supposed to be or what we have seen for the three years we have had this home in France. Even the dog does not like it.
Subject: Managing Creative People
jls@world.std.com
Can you talk about the whole issue of managing creative people? At some point in the whole process, you or someone at the Media Lab has to face the task of determining whose work is worth pursuing and whose isn't. What are the criteria for that selection process?
nicholas@hq.media.mit.edu
Managing creative people is an oxymoron. You don't manage them at all. Instead you provide an environment in which they can be simultaneously stimulated and protected, challenged and encouraged, exposed and private. In truth, there is far more external natural selection than some kind of internal artificial review process. People are expected to achieve world status and global recognition for their work. The only time that is truly tested is in the tenure-review process, which can be wrenching. But day-to-day, month-to-month "management" can be measured in its quality by its perceived absence.
jls@world.std.com
It sounds as if knowing which projects to fund and how to review the creative people are left to a self-selection process. Can the Media Lab really operate that way? Does the future of each project get determined then by the researchers' ability to find funding?
nicholas@hq.media.mit.edu
Having been to Tokyo, Singapore, and Paris in the space of 48 hours, I am a bit behind. Also, my book due date of 9/1 is coming fast, and the book seems to require total rewriting in places. I thought it was going to be a cut-and-paste job of Wired stories, but it is a very different affair. So excuse me for being late and brief.
Let me see if I can explain. No research is determined by the researchers' ability to raise funds. In fact, I am criticized for protecting Media Lab faculty from fund-raising, as I do most of it myself. But as I tell the researchers, they are real easy to fund. (They really are good, and why should they spend weeks doing something I can usually do in hours?) Some faculty, however, find peer review important and thus submit to the National Science Foundation (against my advice). Others find it important to go on the road to test their ideas against the so-called real world. To each his own.
What is important to remember is, there is much more money in this world than there are good ideas.
jls@world.std.com
I am about to sit down over the next couple of weeks and edit the E-mail correspondence for the piece in Inc. So I'll be silent for a bit and leave you to the creation of your book. If you don't mind, I may come back to you with a question or two once I've edited the material, should there be any gaps.
nicholas@hq.media.mit.edu
Come back with questions when you wish. I may even miss your nagging (not really) questions, as a respite from the rest of my keyboard-intensive days. Good luck. Hope you will have an easier time than I am having.
