Vision, Humility, Perseverance

Perhaps the most daunting aspect of being a Research Entrepreneur is the solitude. Inherent to being an innovator is a willingness to go out on a limb, to test the waters, to traverse the uncharted. To find oneself in the middle of a field, without guidance, and to choose to continue is a humbling act.

You may notice the words "solitude" and "oneself" in the paragraph above. There's a conventional wisdom that says single founder firms have an up-hill battle to success. Paul Graham, the well known and respected co-founder of Y-Combinator has gone so far as to list it as mistake #1 on his list of The 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups:

What's wrong with having one founder? To start with, it's a vote of no confidence. It probably means the founder couldn't talk any of his friends into starting the company with him. ...

[OUCH!]

But even if the founder's friends were all wrong and the company is a good bet, he's still at a disadvantage. Starting a startup is too hard for one person. Even if you could do all the work yourself, you need colleagues to brainstorm with, to talk you out of stupid decisions, and to cheer you up when things go wrong. 

The last one might be the most important. The low points in a startup are so low that few could bear them alone.

Well, the point that you can't do it all yourself, that you need to brainstorm, that you need someone to cheer you up rings true. Yet the lows of being an entrepreneur are Everests to the valley I endured for four years post-PhD applying unsuccessfully for 150 faculty posts.

What exactly do we mean by "single founder". I've come to realize that even if there is just one person at the start of a company, the entrepreneur who takes the burden upon oneself, there is little reason to suspect that person is alone. There are any number of ways to form a team. There is of course the community of advisors you bring around you, and your spouse (if your lucky enough to have one who is supportive), and your family.

For a Research Entrepreneur, frankly any innovator, it's important to take to heart Tachi Yamada's quote, which serves as tagline to this blog "Innovation has no peers -- by definition!" Just as important as having friends to talk you out of stupid decisions, is the willingness and fortitude to stick to good ideas even when others dismiss them.

For my part, I would not be too quick to dismiss the importance of a life-partner, supportive and critical in equal measure, who is willing to talk you out of stupid decisions, argue with you when you obstinately stick to your ideas until you come to an understanding, cheer you when things go well, and sustain you when they go wrong.

More than five years after resigning from adjunct servitude, setting out on my own path, founding a business that supports and extends my research, creating jobs for others along the way, I'm still here, single founder and all. [And still happily married, I might add!]

We are the Entrepreneurs

My thoughts these days go to the core of being a Research Entrepreneur. With the Small Business Innovation Research program (SBIR) finally secure--knock wood--for another six years, there's a little time to reflect on where I came from and where I'm going. You see, four years ago, I was just an unemployed, disillusioned, interdisciplinary PhD. My terminal degree is ostensibly in Musicology with an Emphasis in Cognitive Science, followed by a two-year post-doc in Linguistics. I had never heard of SBIR.

I was unemployed because I had shirked my underemployed status as janitor Adjunct Professor of Music at Chapman University teaching 80 students a term for a gross salary just shy of $15,000/year, with no job security beyond one term at a time, no office, and no health or retirement benefits. Frankly, I may have been better treated as a janitor. That part's the disillusionment.

Despite the common view that professors are a well-paid, secure, and sheltered bunch, that's the reality. Far more end up in adjunct servitude than land tenure-track posts. There's the satisfaction for you of society's promise to those who go through college, to expect their hard work will be rewarded with a decent job, like an apprentice paying their dues to train for a lifelong vocation. This promise is fantasy.

I laugh sadly therefore at Mitt Romney's recent response to a college student at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire that "what I can promise you is this. When you get out of college if I'm president, you'll have a job. If President Obama is reelected, you will not be able to get a job." [Story embedded: skip to 1:40]

The promise is hollow whatever end of the political spectrum it comes from, unless of course someone is proposing a nationalized workforce, and guaranteeing employment. But I haven't heard that, nor would I necessarily endorse it. Indeed, politicians these days seem to be stepping back from bold and specific promises. Our own governor here in Wisconsin once spoke of creating 250,000 new jobs in four years.

Governor Walker gave a talk at last spring's National SBIR Conference in Madison, in which I was pleased to hear a specific pledge not only of new jobs but of 10,000 new businesses in the state. A worthy goal. My proposal has been that one fourth of those new jobs should come from new businesses. According to the Kauffman Foundation, new firms these days create 4.9 jobs on average (my firm's current count is 4.3 FTE). Do the math: 1/4 x 250,000 = 62,500 / 4.9 = 12,755 new firms in the state.

But the promise of jobs as a reward for schooling and hard work is not only hollow; it's misguided. Jobs are not out there like commodities for us to choose among and purchase. Rather, each of us chooses a path to follow. The path ought be defined in part by our talents and skills, and by that which drives us beyond our limitations to make a lasting contribution, regardless of schooling or credentials. Sure, some of us will get jobs that align with our interests. But others of us will follow our passion, define our life's work, and become the job givers. We are the entrepreneurs.

In my view, the greatest value of SBIR is its ability to seed those passions and facilitate entrepreneurial risk-taking, which leads to transformative innovations and technologies, and the creation of myriad jobs along the way. The statistics bear this out. If political leaders are serious about creating new jobs, it is entrepreneurs and innovators who should be getting their attentions.

SBIR reauthorization (six years!)

The old news by now is that the House has finally accepted most of the Senate's long-fought compromise language for SBIR reauthorization. Behind the scenes it was some great staffers on the Senate side, Kevin Wheeler (Sen. Landrieu) and Chris Averill (Sen. Snowe), as well as the herculean efforts especially of Sens. Landrieu and Snowe that made the difference. That along with over 1000 small business representatives who signed a letter urging the House to accept the Senate's compromise.

Multiple attempts have been made over the past several years (long-term authorization ran out in 2008), that failed to make it. SBIR has been kept alive by a series of (what is it? 14) short-term Continuing Resolutions, ranging from one-year to a mere few months at a time. Late 2009, the House & Senate Armed Services committees gave up waiting and inserted a one-year reauthorization for DoD SBIR in the Fiscal Yearl 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

This time round, Sens. Landrieu and Snowe were able to insert reauthorization language of SBIR for all agencies in the Senate version of the current NDAA (S.1867). The Senate passed this bill at the end of November. The House had already passed their version (H.R.1540) without any such SBIR language. As per rules, a Conference Committee was established to reconcile the bills.

With much grumbling, and a few not-so-beneficial tweaks on the House side, and the impetus driven by those 1000+ small businesses, SBIR language for a six year renewal was included, and accepted by both houses. Now, we still wait for the President's signature. But the previous veto threat from the White House (because of terrorism suspect detention language) has been recanted due to changes in that language.

The most counter-productive tweak from my viewpoint is Sec. 5106, which allows for bypass of Phase I at the discretion of "the head of the applicable agency", whoever that means, essentially permitting the government to leapfrog feasibility studies, and award a ~$1m Phase II on a project right from the start, possibly reducing the number of Phase I awards and thus consolidating the governments money in fewer bets, in effect steering SBIR more towards later stage development and away from early stage Research and R&D.

The issue is principally that SBIR remains one of the few significant sources for seed capital to support the high-risk/high-reward endeavors by America's small businesses that potentially lead to transformative technological advances. Without such seed capital, most small businesses will not be able to pursue novel and yet-unproven avenues of R/R&D. Large corporations are increasingly inclined to buy up innovative startups rather than funding high-risk R&D internally.

Without small businesses, and without significant investment in R&D by large corporations, universities remain the sole potential source for such research. But evidence suggests that small businesses are far more productive and cost-effective than large corporations (5x) or universities (20x) in transforming ideas from the lab into products in the marketplace. Why then would we shift the focus of the SBIR program, which has proven itself time and again for a quarter century, away from its role as a driver of innovation toward funding primarily later stage development of already proven ideas?

The only consolation I take from this, at the moment, is the word of Jere Glover, intrepid Executive Director of the Small Business Technology Council (SBTC) of the National Small Business Association (NSBA). SBTC serves in effect as the principal industry association for SBIR firms. Jere recently commented that the indications he's received are that despite Rep. Sam Graves insistence on including Sec. 5106 in the SBIR reauthorization language, agency program managers have no interest in bypassing Phase I.

Innovation holds inherent risks. Not every idea will make it. But if Thomas Edison had given up after his first hundred failures, or worse had avoided attempting something so risky as electric lighting, we'd all be in the dark. The metrics we should use are longer-term ones that show a notable success rate and return on investment from SBIR. But the pressure to reduce risks and focus on short-term commercialization metrics has already begun to take its toll. I don't speak merely of the inclusion of Sec. 5165 in H.R. 1540, which addresses the establishment of "minimum performance standards for small business concerns with respect to the receipt of Phase II SBIR or STTR awards". The fear I have is not that the high-standards and expectations of the SBIR program will be maintained. It is already (and appropriately) a highly competitive program in which proposals and projects are subject to a great deal of oversight and review of technical and scientific merit.

It is rather that there is a drive away from high-risk, early stage innovation, toward short-term later-stage development. At the DoD-sponsored Beyond Phase II conference that took place in September 2011, the closing keynote by Christopher Rinaldi, DoD SBIR Program Administrator, indicated that in response to such pressures from Congress, he was urging DoD topic authors to preference topics closer to commercialization over promising earlier stage efforts. In private conversation following his keynote, he said that he understood my concern, and that others share it. Although there would be guidance to focus on time to commercialization and commercialization success, a portion of topics would still be reserved for early-stage efforts.

What remains to be seen is how these incipient changes will affect the overall program, and whether they might impact its proven ability to identify intractable problems, and unleash innovative small businesses and entrepreneurs on the path to resolution. Let's hope only for the best!

Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish

The video of Steve Jobs' commencement address at Stanford that is making the rounds on the internet includes a reference to the back cover of the final Whole Earth Catalog, encouraging its readers to "stay hungry, stay foolish." Jobs repeated the line to his audience of graduating seniors: "Stay hungry, stay foolish."

I've had two sayings for years that come close: "A hungry entrepreneur is a good entrepreneur," and often contend the best way to address uncertainty is with "cultivated naivety." In a March 2010 staff training tutorial, I described the idea this way:

Cultivated Naivety: The principle that it is better to be ignorant than to make hasty assumptions. It is the presumption that novel evidence provides the luxury of learning through experience.

As for hungry entrepreneurs, something happens when people get too comfortable. All too often, we get lazy, complacent, and risk-averse, leading us to protect more than innovate. Very few large companies can overcome this trend. And those that do, normally expend far more in resources than a lithe entrepreneurial startup competitor would, if the barriers to entry are not unnecessarily high.