Hi, my name is Kareem Streete-Thompson, I am the associate head coach here at University of Texas at San Antonio.

I grew up in the Cayman Islands, and I was actually born in the US, but I moved to the Cayman Islands before I was even one year old. But I’ve spent my first 17 years in the Cayman Islands. Unbelievable upbringing, and I guess you could say, kind of a happy-go-lucky kid, always out playing in the street or in our neighborhood. But at 11 years old, I was bitten by the track bug, if you will. I watched the 1984 Olympics, and saw Carl Lewis achieve the incredible four gold medal tally. And at that point, I made up my mind that I was going to be an Olympian one day. I was going to be on that stage. And that’s really where my journey started. 

There’s no doubt that you have athletes that are born to do it. There are athletes that are physically more capable than others. But the ones that can combine that workman, blue-collar mentality, that ability to stay level headed, with all the ups and downs that come with training just on a normal, you know, you talk about the typical athlete, there are peaks and valleys. There are days you show up where things are great. There are days you show up, and you feel like garbage. And, on the days you feel like garbage, if you’re not mentally strong, and able to say, “Okay, let me just take what I can out of this,” and keep the train moving on down the track. The ones that can’t handle it, those are the ones that struggle because you have to have a quick short term memory, in terms of the failures, because you are going to fail, there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. I mean, we’re not dealing with robots here. We’re dealing with human beings here. So whether it’s stuff that’s going on off the track, stuff that’s going on from a diet standpoint or from a rest standpoint, or from extenuating circumstances, you really have to be able to keep your level-headedness throughout the peaks and valleys.

My mentality was that I was on a mission to be the greatest long jumper in history. And that was my singular goal.

Track and field is a singular sport, and it’s a sport where what you put into it is what you get out. I’d say specifically to the jumping events, you have to be a bit of an exhibitionist. You know, you have six attempts if you make finals, and so on six different occasions, you have to be able to soak up what’s going on, the energy, at the track, in the arena, wherever it is, and you’re basically trying to pull all of that into you in order to produce a result. And so it’s not for the squeamish, it’s definitely not for those that are intimidated by large crowds or anything like that. You have to find a way to use that energy to your advantage. And so at a young age, I loved it. I absolutely loved it. There’s a willingness to fail, there’s a willingness to put yourself out there again, and again, and again. And for me, it gave me much joy to go out there and compete with my peers.

Quint Smits, Longitude fellow, Tilburg University:

A massive thank you to Kareem Streete-Thompson for sharing those really inspiring words.

Everywhere, there are peaks and valleys, whether you are a college student studying artificial intelligence like me, or cognitive science, biology, or philosophy, or whether you are enrolled to be an athlete. I say take it to heart like Kareem shared, and push through those harder days, keep your level-headedness, and train as hard as you can. Who knows, you might just become an Olympian in your field.

When a lot of coaches asked me what it is that you should have studied as a swim coach, I would say, behavioral psychology. So you can understand when somebody looks at you, or walks into the door, the shoulders are down, they are sad, or they don’t speak the same way, you know that there’s something that’s going to affect them physiologically. Because if somebody hasn’t been able to sleep well their stress level is up, their cortisol levels are up, there’s so many things that they’re not in the right place, that you might not want to have a very hard practice, you might want to have a nice conversation, where you can put that person down, bring a person down, and maybe have to give them a recovery practice. So you have to play with different things. The physiology, the biomechanics, the psychology. So it’s the same thing as a coach.

Before I correct anything from anybody, I would watch that person, and then understand how that person moves and talks, and does something, and then try to adapt whatever knowledge I have in whatever I’ve learned from the talent of that person and have them mold to it. It’s like you’re a chef and you can have a recipe. It’s not about the recipe. It’s how you mix the ingredients. That’s it, you know, I think that’s a very important thing.

If you watch Joseph Schooling when he was 12, or 13, and he would get into the water, he would swim in freestyle, and his fingers would find the water and then catch it. Not many people have that awareness when they are in the water. That was, “Wow,” you know, it’s like, you watch him like a fish. What is he doing? And then you can see that he’s looking for the water, and then he catches it. And now he holds the water with everything, and you can push so much.

As a coach, you have to learn from the athletes, and the athletes need to allow themselves to learn from the coaches. Nowadays, all these young kids have so much information on the internet. They think they know more than you, you know, “I should be doing this type of set instead of this set because, you know, I’m a sprinter, I’m this, I’m that.” Okay. So you have to create that relationship and teach them when you make a mistake, you know, apologize, correct it, move on. Also, in a coach-swimmer relationship, the swimmer needs to feel confident. It’s not just about him, you know, if he swims well, it is not the coach’s success and if he swims bad, it is not the swimmer’s failure, you know. Because a lot of people see that. So it’s a partnership, you know, for the good and for the not so good. So, learning to do that is important.

Molly Turner, Longitude fellow, The Juilliard School:

As a classically trained musician, you might think I have very little in common with Sergio or swimming, when in fact, throughout our entire conversation, we kept finding really nice similarities. In fact, one of Sergio’s favorite movies is “August Rush” and he suggests that many swimmers watch it. He said to me that in “August Rush,” “The kid tries to find his parents through music, you know, it’s a very interesting concept of how he hears something and makes a movement with the instrument. And swimming is the same thing. We have to ask how you generate energy with the way you move your hands and your feet.” Both music and swimming involve movement, breathing, time, discipline, and of course, performance. Sergio talks in his sound byte about noticing psychologically when an athlete might be having a bad day. Musicians also have bad days. Everyone has bad days. Sometimes when a difficult passage in a music or technique is not working in a certain way, it can be really frustrating. Sergio gives us powerful advice to not push through it. Of course, we have to set high expectations for ourselves. But his emphasis on the psychological part of coaching and reading nonverbal cues from his athletes shows that Sergio is not only an incredible swim coach, but a life and person coach in general. He’s not coaching a statistic or a robot. He’s coaching a person. And at the end of the day, coaching swimming isn’t about the perfect workout, or pushing your athlete over the limits. It’s about getting to know them as a human. And we can extend this to anything, we do not only  apply this to swimming or rehearsals and music, but business meetings or anything else. And we can’t forget that it’s really okay to have a bad day.

We are right now in the midst of a pandemic, and the mental health that you need to get through this pandemic is what you need to become an Olympic athlete. You will be distracted. You will enjoy pain; you will enjoy pain, and I say “enjoy it.” Because if you don’t enjoy pain, do not become an athlete. You will be strained. You will have injuries. They’ll come at the worst time. You’re going to have to step back to come forward. All these things are part of business, and a part of life and the mental fortitude that you need to go through the distractions and the setbacks to just keep moving forward. “Forever forward” is something I always say to my past athletes.

No one has a perfect life plan that goes from A to B, whether it be you know, 0, 1, to 100, without there being some distraction for the path to be pushed to be turned. We want life to be a nice straight line to positivity and wonderful happiness, you know, but life is actually a heartbeat. It’s up and down. It’s up and down. It’s up and down. Andin the course of that up and down, you’re going to have a baseline that says, “Whatever happens, I have the mentality to take on what life has to offer.” So athletics, sports in general, teaches you that. It teaches that from an individual perspective, and it teaches you from a team perspective, because yes, athletics is a team sport. I’m a long jumper. I’m a sprinter, pole-vaulter. But it’s still a “team mindset.” Because you represent your country, and you want to do well on behalf of the country. Yes, you have the individual glories. But anybody who’s worth their salt in sport is a team player. Look at Michael Jordan, a great individual player. But you know how he got better? When he became a team player. LeBron, right? Same thing, great individual player. When does he get better? When he becomes a team player. When other people want to play with you because they know that you will help them get better, and together, you will win. That’s why people want to play with LeBron. That’s why people want to play with Michael, because he passed the ball. Right? He took 100 shots, but eventually he passed the ball. When he learned that he became a team player. And sports teaches you that.

Armando Sanchez, Longitude fellow, University of St Thomas:

I agree with Richard Rock’s take on the importance of mental fortitude. Distractions like the pandemic are often impossible to ignore, but it’s necessary to take a step back to see the bigger picture.

A successful stock trader must be able to see past the noise to accurately assess the value of a security. I think the same concept applies to daily life. You have to learn to ignore distractions in order to reach your personal goals.

From my experience with Longitude.site, I found that many professionals are mostly competitive against themselves instead of against their peers. For an Olympian like Richard Rock, he needed to have this mentality of beating his own standards. After all, he was so far ahead of his peers in high school, he could have easily settled and interpreted these wins as success, but instead he pushed through his limits and ultimately achieved his goal of competing in the Olympics.

How do you turn obstacles? How do you turn adversity? How do you turn the perceptions and the cues and the stereotypes that others have against you to work in your favor? So when we think about “edge” and what that actually means, we often think about it as somebody having an advantage, right? That you’re somehow born into some kind of advantage, or you’re in the right circles, or all those sorts of things. And that’s what we naturally tend to think about.

But in terms of gaining an edge, decisions are made based on signals. Decisions are made based on conversations, based on interest, based on stereotypes, based on cues. And when we think about all of the uncertainty in the world, it makes sense. Those are the ways that we’re actually picking up on information; when there’s not hard data out there, we rely on the soft data to then help us interpret what’s happening. And so, with this uncertainty, we often think that it leads to these negative outcomes. But with that uncertainty also gives us an opportunity, gives us the opportunity to actually shape things and guide things and help them work in our favor.

And so part of gaining an edge is recognizing, number one, that there is a myth of meritocracy. But number two, because of uncertainty, we can actually turn things to work in our favor and gain that edge.

So in my research, I study disadvantage, and I study inequality. I study it in a number of different contexts. But for the most part, I’ve been studying it in the venture capital and in the tech entrepreneurship realm. I’ve been studying how investors make their decisions based on gut feel because when there is a lot of uncertainty, they rely on their experience and their prototypes, and their attributions and their perceptions.

So for example, I found that when females are presenting to investors, they’re more likely to get to ask different types of questions. They’re more likely to get asked prevention-focused questions, focused around risks, whereas men are more likely to get asked what are called promotion-focus questions, questions around what other industries would be interested in this? What are the product lines? Where else could you extend this? And so what I found is that when entrepreneurs, both males and females, are able to flip the questions around or flip their answers around in a way that is more promotion-focused, they’re able to equalize, and to actually be more successful and more persuasive in their pitches.

Gaining an edge for yourself is composed of a bunch of different factors. The first factor is really thinking about how you enrich. We all know that we provide value. And the two things that we need to do when we provide value are demonstrating that we provide that value, and also having others believe that you provide that value. Hard work and effort are critical. Those are the things that I tell my children on a daily basis, right, “Work hard, make sure you’re putting in the effort.” But you can take two people who put in the same amount of effort, who put in the same amount of hard work, and they’re going to achieve very different outcomes. And so what is that hard work, plus? What is that extra factor that’s going to actually take your hard work, and allow it to work harder for you? And so that’s sort of that first element.

The second element is actually what sequentially comes first, but that we don’t actually understand. And we’re not actually able to do until we know the value we bring, until we know how we can enrich. That second factor is delight. How do you delight your customer? How do you delight others? How do you somehow delight someone who’s worth $20 billion in a way that he laughs and giggles with you, and then invites you into his office and gives you all sorts of information that he never would reveal to somebody else?

And the third element is really about guiding. Because it’s not enough just to delight somebody, you have to continue to guide that interaction. You have to recognize that these signals, and these cues, and these perceptions, continue to be a part of that interpersonal relationship. And when you’re actually seeking those rewards, or you’re seeking that outcome, what you need to be doing is continuing to guide those perceptions, knowing the stereotypes that people have against you, knowing that those are certain things that they’re going to be making attributions about. And as you continue to guide those, you can do things like turning those questions into promotion-focused questions that are looking at a potential rather than risk. Guiding those interactions so that you continue, and so that you can show how you’re able to enrich and provide value and create and gain that edge for yourself.

And so when we think about all of the people we’re interacting with and all the things that we’re trying to do in our lives, again, it’s knowing that this hard work has to be there, that this is not something that is a secret sauce, or something that is inauthentic, where we’re just being persuasive and influential. This is something that is based on, that is grounded in the effort that you’ve put in, the hard work that you have, and it’s by being as authentic, and knowing those things that you provide that you’re then able to delight in a way, enrich in a way, and guide in a way, that allows you to gain that edge.

Jamie Chen, Longitude fellow, Rice University:

Thank you, Laura, for sharing such wonderful and actionable insights.

I think your organized analysis is very much relevant to all of us, not only to move forward in “larger frames” such as career-wise, but also on how to improve our interactions with others in our daily lives to achieve our desired effect. I think it is extremely interesting that you pointed out we often attribute “edge” to innate factors such as birthright and family background, despite the fact we can do a lot for ourselves to create our own edge customized for our own circumstances.

Furthermore, it is interesting to realize the apparent oxymoron of the rationality behind our reliance on “soft data,” or our inexplicable intuition and feeling when making decisions given the high-level of uncertainty surrounding any decision, regardless of the amount of “hard data” available. Nonetheless, these arguably subjective decisions often determine the outcomes for the people involved. Hence, I think learning how to steer these decisions in our favor, to promote positive outcomes, and to transform uncertain circumstances to our advantage, should be a skill we should all work on as part of our self-development in learning to advocate for ourselves.

Hi, everyone, I want to spend a minute talking about managing rock stars or super elite talent. You often hear stories that super talented people don’t want to work with others, or they want to take up all the space in the room. I actually don’t think that talent and an inability to work with other people are correlated at all, if anything, they may be inversely correlated. I find the most talented, the most extraordinary people generally do want to work well in teams, because they recognize teams together, can come up with better solutions and make everyone, including themselves, more effective.

I remember a time at Red Hat when we had a platform as a service Kubernetes offering. All the key people on the team needed to rotate pager duty in case that managed service went down. We even had some of the top contributors to the Kubernetes project doing pager duty. There was a discussion about how they would feel about that. It turned out to be a non-issue because those talented individuals, the largest contributors, wanted to be part of the team. They wanted to see how those technologies were getting used. I often think that we create a culture where someone might decide to say, I don’t need to do this because I’m a star. If we start off with the context that we get the best solutions by working together, then the best people are going to want to work together on those solutions. I think we often artificially construct this issue about working with our best talent that really doesn’t exist. I would encourage you to think about building a set of values that talk about how teams working together always create better outcomes, so your best people are most likely to want to be part of those teams. Thanks. Talk to you again soon.

[To hear more of Jim’s views on culture and open leadership follow him on LinkedIn to see his video series, “An Open Conversation with Jim.”]

Zehra Karakılıç, Longitude fellow, Tilburg University:

 

Thank you, Jim, for sharing these amazing insights from your career path.

I think that working as a team is an excellent way of incorporating different talents and skills while having different perspectives, as well as having the opportunity to work with people from various fields and backgrounds. Not only is working together contributing to creative solutions, but it also encourages team members to be more motivated and create an atmosphere that inspires them to be persistent and ambitious. Especially when coming up with a fairly new idea, it is always important to have the insight of other people. There might be details one is missing when working alone, or is not being able to see the bigger picture of a problem. So, starting off as a team might not be a bad idea, hence it could even be the better option compared to working alone. Having different views on a project helps to think outside of the box, and find the missing piece to the solution. Besides, as Jim mentioned, the values gained from teamwork are definitely great experience especially for young people that want to broaden their perspective and make themselves more effective.

Hello everyone, I am Dr. Sandra Johnson, and I want to share with you my ideas regarding an innovative mindset.

I have over 40 pending and issued patents. And I typically view the world as whatever I interact with, whatever I use, etc. I am constantly thinking, “How can this be done better? How can it perform better, how can it be faster, easier to use, etc.” And I approach that with every aspect of my life. And so from that perspective, it’s just an integral part of who I am, thinking about how to improve, how to make it easier and innovative. And so when I then go to the next step and dig a little deeper about something, particularly with something that I may be frustrated with because I’m running into some obstacles with using it or addressing it, etc., I go to a quiet place. And I think about it very hard and long. And then I just start writing ideas down. And that usually turns into a patent application. For example, a couple of years ago, I had been working on a project, and working hard on it and running into a number of obstacles. And I knew that I was at the cusp of some type of invention. So I actually spent time by myself. I drove to the mountains on Thanksgiving Day, believe it or not, and spent time at a bed and breakfast by myself in the mountains. And then everything started flowing. And out of that came a couple of patent applications. Another idea I had was  interacting with colleagues, just brainstorming back and forth during happy hour. On Fridays, I did this with a group of women actually, every Friday for a few weeks. And out of those happy hour brainstorming conversations came a patent. So again, it’s just an integral part of who I am to just think about, “How do I do this better?” And then for some of those ideas, I just take the time to interact with others, or go to a quiet place, write those starts down, and that is the catalyst for a new innovative invention.

[To see more of Dr. Johnson’s views, explore our Career Conversations feature “Visioneering solutions to multifaceted problems.“]

Karen Martinez Perez, Longitude fellow, Rice University:

When approaching the concept of innovation, it’s easy to get caught up among the insistent thoughts leading to a “keep striving and working” mindset. Sometimes I get a sudden burst of motivation, and I want to continue working on a project I have, but a glance at the clock tells me I should have been asleep hours ago. Often times, the best course of action involves a different approach than we expect or plan.

Rather than racing to get all of the ideas out into the world, remember also to take a moment and step back. While I don’t go as far as the mountains as Dr. Sandra did, even just walking away for a bit is enough. I’ve had instances where I’m trying to power through an assessment when suddenly, I get stuck. Instead of focusing on this one problem, the best solution would be to take note of it and come back to it later. In doing so, sometimes seeing it with a fresh set of eyes helps me realize something I hadn’t seen before. Although it seems counterintuitive, taking breaks won’t necessarily slow you down; in fact, you may be provided with new, and possibly even better, insight than before.

Dr. Sandra’s idea of hosting a happy hour brainstorming conversation also stood out to me. Collaboration and innovation go well in hand, especially when members of a team coming from a variety of backgrounds offer their unique perspectives. Knowing how to work in teams is such a valuable skill across many fields. Overall, being open-minded is essential to an innovative mindset.

Hello, my name is Pedro Silva, co-founder of Milkify.me, a startup whose mission is to break down barriers to breastfeeding. Today, I’m going to talk to you about creating space for creativity.

I graduated from Rice University, Martel, 2012, with a degree in economics, and worked in investment banking and energy private equity until I found something I was more passionate about. Now, as far as a career change goes, this is about as close as you can get to making a 90 degree turn into a new and unrelated field. So, it was quite scary at first. To deal with that fear, I reminded myself that in my finance career, I learned to deploy many analytical tools and ways of thinking really well in order to be successful. So I thought, “Surely, if I just apply those same old tools in a slightly different way, I can help lead Milkify to success.”  How wrong I was! After months of what seemed like no progress, I realized I had fallen victim to the hammer problem.That is, if you’re a hammer, then every problem is going to look like a nail. And it turned out that many of the ways of thinking I had come to depend on in the world of structured finance, were not only not effective in the messy world of startups, they were actually holding me back from solving the actual problems that were in front of me. This realization really discouraged me at first; maybe I wasn’t the right person to work on our mission after all, unless that is, I could somehow stop treating every problem like I was a hammer banging on a loose screw. In other words, I decided I needed to look inwards and identify which specific parts of my thinking were getting in my own way. But how does one go about doing that? I found that the antidote to the hammer problem, at least for me, was creating space in the mind. The antidote started with building a mindfulness habit. That is, I became intentionally hyper-aware of my existing ways of thinking, and of my approaches to solving problems, the ones that defaulted to, and I started placing labels on them. Once I became hyper-aware of the thought patterns that my mind defaults to when pursuing goals or solving problems, it became possible for me to ask myself, “What if this is the wrong way to think about this problem, or what if, this is actually the exact opposite of the right way to think about this problem?” Now, I’m not saying that we should simply all throw away the skills and thinking tools that have served us so well in the past. The real lesson here is that the process of introspection itself, of noticing your thought patterns and questioning them, of inverting them, of temporarily letting them go, which is a habit that is absolutely worth building.

Well, what does any of this have to do with creativity? When you notice the thought patterns simply for what it is, and you allow it to just pass through you without judging it or believing in it right away, there’s empty space that opens in the mind. And here’s the kicker. In my experience, it’s in this intentionally created empty space, that my most creative ideas began to take form. It’s common wisdom that there are many things we can do to stimulate our own creativity. Go for a walk in nature, practice yoga or meditation, take a long shower or bath. I think what these approaches all have in common is that they facilitate a clearing of the mind. In other words, a clear mind unburdened by its own habitual thought patterns, is full of empty space in which creativity flourishes. So this process of intentional introspection is a really powerful way to unlock a lot of creative brainpower. By making this into a daily habit, those rare shower breakthroughs and other bursts of creative ideas became more frequent and more easily attainable for me. And I started solving problems, and we started doing better and better at Milkify. So when I look back on the biggest contributions I’ve made, I credit this process of intentionally creating space for creativity as one of the most important new habits I built.

So whether you’re trying to solve big problems or create something entirely new, whether it’s a work of art, a piece of writing, or an innovative company, remember that there will come a point when your default ways of thinking that served you so well in the past might start becoming the very things that hold you back from further progress. Building a habit of becoming aware of your thoughts, labeling them, and practicing letting go of them will create empty space in your mind. And in this empty mind space, unburdened by old ways of thinking, you might just be surprised by the creative new solutions that your mind dreams up. I hope you’ve enjoyed this sound byte. Thank you.

Jesse Annan van der Meulen, Longitude fellow, Rice University:

Thank you Pedro, for sharing your thoughts and experiences with us. The saying that “when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” is something that I can relate to in my life, and I think that a lot of people do. I would think that the biggest challenge with this phenomenon is recognizing that we are that hammer. We often get so stuck in our daily habits that we don’t even realize that there are other ways to look at a problem and tackle it.

As Pedro pointed out, a telltale sign of this “hammer problem” could be that we’re feeling stuck. Whether that is related to our career, school, relationships, or anything else. But maybe this sensation of feeling stuck is an opportunity to let go, and to stop trying too hard for a second. Instead, we can slow down and create some space in the mind. While it can feel counterintuitive to slow down while all we want to do is go faster, as we slow down, there is an opportunity to mindfully investigate the thought patterns that have been running on autopilot. If we take a good look, we will most likely find a few things that are holding us back. Furthermore, the calmness and space that can emerge in the mind will only invite more creative ideas. And that might be just what we need.

I’ve been asked to just speak to you briefly about entrepreneurship. My name is Bill Aulet. I’m the author of Disciplined Entrepreneurship, and a professor at MIT, and the managing director of the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship. 

Let me just give you my little sound byte. And that is, entrepreneurship has never been more important than it is right now. And it will never get less important. It’s only going to get more and more important. That is because the rate of change is just increasing. The world will never be as slow as it is today. You find that hard to believe because it seems crazy, but it’s just going to get faster and faster. History has shown us that. So disruptions will happen, crises will happen, uncertainty will happen, adversity will happen. It’s the entrepreneurs who are the ones who are not only going to survive, but they’re going to thrive, and they’re going to solve these problems.

I think it’s very important to understand how to be a successful entrepreneur. You have to have the heart. That means you have to have the spirit, the willingness to be different. If all the fish are swimming this way, you have to not only be willing to swim another way, but enjoy swimming that way. And then once you want to do that, you want to change the world for the better because no matter what it is, success has an expiration date.  You have to have the heart to be able to do it. But then the heart is not enough, you have to have the head, you have to have the hands, and you have to have the community.  By that I mean, it all starts with the heart.  The bird sings from within, but then you have to know what to do. And that’s the knowledge. That’s what you get from, you know, what we teach at MIT with first principles like disciplined entrepreneurship, but then you have to be able to put it into practice. That’s the hands. That’s why entrepreneurship is a craft. It’s not taught theoretically. It’s taught through theory and practice, going back and forth, spotted an apprenticeship mode.  And the last “h,” so you’ve got to have the heart for the spirit, the head for the knowledge, the hands for the capability, because that’s how you implement this. But when you implement it, you have to implement it with others. And that’s the last “h,” home. Entrepreneurship is about community. Howard Stevenson once defined entrepreneurship as “a pursuit of opportunities with resources beyond your control.”  Where do you get those resources? From the community that you build. And that doesn’t mean everybody is your friend. This is not a communist activity. It’s your need to build a strong community of people who are givers. And of course, they’re going to be takers at time as you are going to be. But that’s the nature of a community.

So that’s my advice for you at Sound Bytes. It starts with the heart, the bird sings from within. But once you have that mindset, your willingness, excitement, to be different to change the world to make it better, you know, the success will be redefined in the future and you’re the one to do that. You have to know how to do it with the head. You have to be able to do it with the hands, and do not forget nothing gets done alone. You need the home, the community. So good luck, and hopefully this was helpful to you.

Berk Alp Yakici, Longitude fellow, Rice University:

Thank you Mr. Aulet – this was truly informative and helpful. To me, one important takeaway from this sound byte is realizing how fast the world is changing and how the rate of change is increasing. This is becoming abundantly clear as disruptions, like the pandemic, are changing our daily habits. For once, we rely on technology and innovation more than ever: to order takeout, groceries, to communicate. To do our work and take online classes, or to find the most effective algorithms for allocation and distribution of vaccines. It is very important to be aware of this momentum.

Another takeaway for me is the value of having a passion and enjoying swimming in different directions. In my freshman year at Rice University, I attended numerous events at the LILIE Lab. After hearing experiences of successful founders, I noted that they spend an immeasurable amount of time on building their startups, and those who pitch their businesses well, oftentimes, are the ones that are really passionate about what the work stands for.

I also truly enjoyed how Mr. Aulet emphasized the importance of having a community. This is something that I, personally, sometimes overlook as well. A successful entrepreneur needs strong resources, and that comes with a strong community.

As Mr. Aulet emphasizes, the rate of change is only going to increase. To solve problems emerging from a rapidly changing world, I will for sure keep the 4 “h”s in my mind: heart for the spirit, head for the knowledge, hands for the capability, andhome for the community.