Ivan Bercovich Blogs

This is the second time I attempt to write a post about this topic. Initially, I was focusing too much on how different cultures see failure. But realizing my lack of knowledge on the topic, I decided to abstain—I would not like to fall into false stereotypes or offend anybody. However, I am really interested in how different cultures perceive failure—particularly how this perception differs between western and eastern cultures. So if anybody would like to share some personal stories related to the topic, I would be very happy.

Now to the point.

Below, you can see a Gaussian distribution, which you might also know as a bell curve. Since probability and statistics is a field in which I feel very comfortable, I am going to wrap this discussion around it. But first some notes.

The Gaussian:

The Gaussian distribution has been horribly misused by a lot of people for a long time (read: Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street). So please, don’t assume what I am about to describe can actually be characterized using a Gaussian distribution. In practice, probability distributions and mathematical models that try to describe how a socioeconomic process works are incredibly complex (and almost always incorrect). However, this distribution is a good tool to explain how how probability affects our everyday lives.

Risk (finance) or Variance (math):

In practice, it is very hard (rather impossible) to come up with a numerical value to measure the variance of complex processes, such as the ones involved in the financial markets. However, in conjunction with the Gaussian distribution, it allows us to envision the real world with a simple probabilistic model.

Now that the weak points of what follows have been covered, for simplicity’s sake, I am going to continue writing as if the Gaussian was in fact a perfect representation of the world.

So here is how the model works. For every process that we can image (which has a large sample space*), there is a perfectly symmetric Gaussian distribution, with a known mean and variance. The mean is the value that lives at the center of the distribution (x-axis point of symmetry). The variance determines the width of the distribution, and therefore, the likelihood of an extreme event happening. We will call this extreme events “outliers”.

As you can see in the picture above, the larger the variance (represented as sigma squared), the wider the distribution. Note how the width grows equally in both ends of the distribution, meaning the distribution always stays symmetric. We will call the right side of the distribution “the upside” and the left side “the downside”.

It should be clear by now that in order to have a really high upside, we will have to accept the possibility of a really bad downside as well. Given this model, we have two ways of running our lives. One would be to minimize risk (again, I am assuming we know what those risks are), we don’t go climbing, we don’t take too many courses, we don’t eat too much red meat, we don’t travel, etc. In this manner, we are guaranteeing ourselves the mean. We will most likely achieve an average result in everything we do, and it will be very unlikely we will ever fail.

The other option is to take a lot of risks. We would travel the world for a year, take 8 classes a semester, learn how to fly planes, and go to a concert the day before a final exam. This strategy will widen the range of possible results, but we won’t get to pick between upside and downside results. We might meet Richard Branson in our trip and start a profitable relationship with him, or the plane we are learning how to fly might fall on our first attempt.

Of course these situations are extremes, but they do a good job at illustrating the point. But how can we exploit this duality and benefit from it? I will provide my own version of this answer in my next post.

Recommended Books:

• The Black Swan
• Super Crunchers
• Probability and Stochastic Processes

 

* A large sample space means that the range of possibilities is not a small number. For example, in a test I can get a score between 0 and 10 and the material that will go into the exam is also very defined. So the more I study, the better I will perform—this is not the kind of process being discussed here. But if the grading scale was very large or if the material was more than anybody can study, then it would become more of a random process.

Note: For some reason, starting essays or blog posts with sentences such as “this is indeed an interesting topic” is considered amateurish. However, I like doing it because it puts me in a conversational mindset, and I rather communicate to others (regardless of being through voice, video, or text) in a casual manner. In this post, I am just going to start with this long unnecessary paragraph in order to achieve the same result. I accept suggestions on other ways to be explicitly informal.

At a Business Today International Conference, I had the pleasure to hear many distinguished keynote speakers. I honestly can’t remember any of the speeches, but there was one that I always think about and quote to other people. The speaker was the CEO of a middle-man-fuel-trading type company—I don’t recall his name. He stood up in the podium and said something like the following:

you guys are young, you have a lot of time and your minds have not yet been polluted by society. You guys should spent much of this time figuring out what your world views are: Do you believe in God? Why? Would you get an abortion? Why? Do you feel you owe to your country? Your family? Why? Don’t just follow a belief just because the people around you follow it. Allow yourself the opportunity to explore ideas and find which world views best match you—a unique individual […]

Note 2: As you can tell from my previous posts, I don’t organize my thoughts before writing them, but I think that is my value proposition: I write just like I would talk.

That speech had a big impact on my life. I was in sophomore year of college, trying to figure out what was my next big thing. There are two ways one could deal with a “figuring out” stage in life:

1. You can be random and adventurous and allow yourself to explore everything around you and beyond.
2. You can plan every remaining minute of your life in order to maximize opportunities and make sure you don’t miss any chances.

My strategy, which is common throughout most successful college students, was to carefully plan my next two years in college and my career beyond that. It made sense, there was little time left and too much to do. I kept hearing this cool keynote speakers talking about their origins (sounds like a mythical tale) and wondering how in heavens (hell) were they able to accomplish all that.

The problem is that in order to plan my life I had to have my world views already figured out. Should I focus on money, happiness, health, or expression (these are not necessarily exclusive) ? Of course, I told myself I could do them all. But this goes against the idea of planning. Let’s think about one of the greatest planners in history, Napoleon. When he went to battle he had one single goal: to defeat the opponent. Anything and everything in his plan was purposed to accomplish this goal. Now if he had wanted to be healthy (sleep well, have a balanced diet, and laugh a lot) he could have not accomplish what he did.

So there is a contradiction between planning and doing many things. Planning for success is not very compatible with trying to find oneself. One cannot explore the world and succeed at everything at the same time—I decided to follow this man’s advice. I would spent the next two years in college exploring and adventuring.

If you know me, you could easily say I actually didn’t explore the world. As a matter of fact I worked really hard to get good grades and finished college with a gold standard. My answer is that exploring and adventuring doesn’t imply to be a slacker who has absolutely no obligations in life. Adventuring is more of a mindset. It means you take more risks, you go to Canada and back in one long ride just because, or you go to watch the Star Wars premiere at 1am before a physics final at 7am. You could go to interesting conferences around the country, even if you miss a homework or a test.

You can coordinate the life of an explorer with a successful college experience—but in order to accomplish this, success cannot be the primary goal. You see, I did well in school in part because I am smart, in part because Jeff Little helped me out in group works, in part because of my personality, and in part because of luck. But I could have never allowed myself to explore the world if my primary goal was to get A’s—that would compromise my plan.

As the semesters went by, I kept falling back into this idea of planning for success. Someone would tell me they worked at an investment bank, and I would feel I should plan for it as well—and for a while I did. But with a lot of self-discipline (this will sound moronic to anybody who slacks by nature and needs discipline to try hard) I was able to switch myself back into adventure mode.

Note 3: by this point, the title of the post has become a poor choice, but I will leave it there because this is a conversation and cannot be retracted.

I decided being an investment banker was a bad idea, but I had read a lot about the stock market and found that interesting, so I signed up for a second degree in financial mathematics—Boom adventure mode at it’s best. I didn’t generally participated in community service activities (it’s not common in Argentina), but then I found out 50 girls from Smith College were going to New Orleans to build houses for Katrina victims and I decided to go—Boom adventure. Then someone told me that you could apply for a thing called 21st Century Leaders Award, which would allow you to walk in a stadium with 40’000 people looking at you, and I decided to apply (and got it)—Adventure!

So yeah, one can have an adventurous personality and an open mind, and still achieve things that people who spend their life planning do. The difference? I never over do it. If I will apply for an award or a conference, I sit down, write what I really feel like writing and send it. I don’t check the email for responses everyday. If I am sending an email to a person I would like to meet, I run the spell checker once and send it. If they are interested in me, the sentence structure and the word choice for salutation won’t make a difference. Furthermore, if things like those make a difference and I don’t get a response (I can NEVER get replies from German professors), then that enriches the adventure in my life. I don’t want detail to rule my life, and I don’t want to be so detailed that I will know exactly what I’ll get. Maybe I will do that later, once I have figured out my world views and I have meaningful goal that I absolutely want to achieve.

Balance? You don’t need a balance. That is just a keyword for people who are unhappy and pretend to be mature by ‘balancing’ the elements in their life. Success (whatever that is for you) takes actions, adventure is a mindset. Planning is for projects. Are you a project or are you a unique human being? Measurable results help you keep track of your progress and can be a motivating factor to continue working hard, but again, I think this is just a self imposed gimmick that allows us to be unhappy while trying to achieve our goals. Achieving goals should not make us unhappy! Our ultimate goal should be happiness, and all other goals should be a subset of that.

My final thoughts: In college I came across the modern concept of a hippie. The stereotype depicted people who like to smoke marijuana, have “deep” conversations, skateboard, have long hair, are pro-choice, and pro-Palestinians. What struck me, was that hippie culture affiliates tried really hard to fit this mold. I have always disagreed with society judging a group based on a stereotype, but until that time I never realized how social groups will judge themselves based on such stereotypes. What I am trying to say here is that just because you are pro-choice, doesn’t mean you can’t like George W. Bush, or just because you are Jewish doesn’t mean you have to be pro-Israel. This means that just because you feel identified with part of someone’s life (ie: you’d like to be a rapper), doesn’t mean you should agree with all aspects of this person’s life. So don’t limit yourself based on social stereotypes of success. After all, the biographies and wikipedia articles about your heroes are just a recount of events made look like it was all planned. But the truth is that they didn’t plan it. Historians have a good hypothesis of what triggered the World War II, but any intelligent person would realize that the amount of events involved in this final result is so large that one could only theorize after the fact. In other words, nobody believed World Ward II was about to happen a couple years in advance, even though historians can link events that span decades before the fact. So again, don’t feel compelled to imitate the life of someone you admire. Let yourself find your own path and make your own mistakes. If you had never felt a burn, because your mom always kept you away from fire, wouldn’t you be jealous when someone else talks about their painful burn?—so go ahead and get burn before you heal.

Do it for me.

Cheers

Let’s first start by defining the concept of ‘idea’. Yes, I know this is an amateur way of starting a blog post. But today I am not going to quote Wikipedia or a dictionary definition. Today, I am going to make the definition up (feel free to refute it in the comments). To me, an idea is a type of epiphany that occurs while one is struck with a problem. This epiphany presents a solution to such problem and from the beholder’s perspective, it is very clear that this is the perfect solution.

Powerful ideas have an intuitive name and can be explained to most people in 60 seconds. But contrary to popular belief, I think that a good idea will only be fully appreciated by the epiphaneer. As a matter of fact, I don’t think ideas are worth anything without people with the knowledge, the commitment, and the perseverance to make them happen—this is my assumption. From this, we can derive the following question: If ideas are worthless, then why should anybody see any value in them?

You see, an idea ‘feels’ like the perfect solution to a problem, but the truth is 180° away. An epiphany will be presented in a highly utopian manner (hence, it can be explained in 60 seconds to most people). But in order to develop an implementation, the creators will have to solve a series of complex issues. As a matter of fact, the final result will probably look’n’feel (and function) very different from the original mental blueprint.

This is not just my opinion. Think about the word idealistic. This is the term that we, as a society, use to refer to a person who has a vision of the world (generally positive) that cannot be achieved as a series of practical and realistic steps. An idealistic person will expect too many changes to happen too quickly and to have too many resources to fund this change. An idealistic person is not a doer, but more of a talker (and, of course, a thinker).

Most people who claim to want to be entrepreneurs are actually idealistic. They are always waiting “to have a great idea” before they move on to conquer the world of start-ups. They think and talk big, and they do little. Most people confuse being an entrepreneur with daydreaming. In fact, most people let ideas get in the way of them becoming successful entrepreneurs—this, again, is my assumption. But bear with me.

So if ideas aren’t worth a penny, and if ideas keep getting in the way of success; what is the whole fuzz with them?

Here is what I think: ideas are the light at the end of the tunnel. When undertaking an arduous endeavor, we need to have a clear goal. We need to make this projection and we need it to be simple, beautiful, and utopian. Otherwise, we would not be able to invest months or even years of our lives pursuing this goal. A successful startup requires precise execution, and at no point we are allowed to slow down or have doubts. This is where ideas are great. The idea-maker is committed to his idea, like a sports fan is committed to the Red Sox—commitment will encourage them to stick with a team, even after a bad season (or 70).

I suggest that when you have an epiphany, you let it grow big and beautiful. Don’t be scared of the technical or strategic challenges that this realization might present. Fly with it, share it with people, and use it to get excited enough to go ‘All In’. After this point, grab your idea (a sketch or a paragraph written on a napkin) and put it in the wall—this will be your inspiration. From then on, forget about the bells and whistles and get on to the hard work. Don’t be stubborn, let your idea morph into a complete different being. Look for advice, explore technical challenges, and find a business model. And when you are feeling the battle is being lost, look up to the wall and remember how great you felt the moment it sparked your mind.

Cheers.

Corporate America prides itself in being a cut throat meritocracy. In this system, subordinates are to be rewarded based on the quantity and quality of their work. Any capitalist at heart would agree that this compensation model is indeed the most effective way to maximize output, push efficiency, and persuade innovation.

However, in practice Corporations are rarely able to achieve this modus operandi. The problem: it is very hard to track the amount and worth of work produced by an employee. The end result is that most companies end up following a more conservative reward system influenced by factors such as the amount of time an employee has been with the company, rapport with manager, or other forms of visibility such as the completion of an online MBA.

In fact, there is such a lack of meritocracy, that employees need to dedicate some of their working time to advertise the work they have created. This kind of broadcasting could be done using Web 2.0 technologies, such as blogs, Tweeter, and Wiki entries; by walking around the office and personally sharing what one has been working on; or by Spamming people with emails at late hours of the night.

Furthermore, it seems to be that many of the employees perceived as “rising stars” actually spend more time promoting their work than doing it. I am not saying this is an unethical behavior. It might very well be that the success of a corporation is more dependent on the ability to share information than on the creation itself. Maybe this is a virtuous circle, where short periods of innovation are interrupted by extensive periods of public exposure and resource gathering (venture capital, talent recruiting, etc).

The bizarre part, is that our family values, our academic institutions, and our work ethics, dictate that “hard work” should be the legitimate pursuit, while games and politics should be left to phonies. Maybe there is a social equilibrium, where most dedicate their lives to output-producing work, while a few are able to cross the chasm and live a more dynamic lifestyle.

Clearly, there exists a contradiction between theory and practice, and there is a trade off between the production and the advertisement of one’s work. But at the end of the day, the choice is yours. So what will you do?

Most engineering schools require students to design and construct some sort of prototype before graduating. At my school, this prototyping requirement is called "Senior Design Project". Although most students have the ability to create a great project, when the Demo comes they end up selling themselves too short.

Here is some advice on how to make a great impression:

1- Make sure your project is always "Demoable"

• At any stage in the development, you should be able to make a demonstration to someone walking by. If you feel you have nothing to show, then you are probably not heading in the right direction.
• Instead of working one feature at a time, work on all features progressively.
• Always keep in mind the vision of the finished project and make sure everything you work on builds up towards that vision.
• Think about the Demo itself. The project probably makes sense to you, but someone who has never seen it might need a didactic interaction in order to "get it".

2- Find a way to make it interesting to a broad range of people

• You might be working on a very complicated problem from a computationally point of view, but this might not be very interesting to people outside the field.
• Find a way to relate your work to a broad range of disciplines. For example, if you are working on a portable Head-Up display, you can explain people how it could be used by an architect or a doctor.
• Try practicing ways to make your project sound cool. How would you describe it to a 10 year old kid. By the way, my team won the people's choice award by only a couple votes which were cast by a group of middle school children. (The runner up project was iLights, check it out)

3- Take pictures and make videos !

• Keep a record of all you have accomplished-- you never know when things are going to blow up.

4- Advertise your key differentiators

• Think about every aspect of your prototype that could be a competitive advantage.
• Is your project a revealing innovation?
• Is your project 10x cheaper than similar products in the market today?
• Is your product faster, smaller, cooler ?
• Is your product fool proof ?
• Is your product RoHS compliant ?
• Is your product children safe?

5- Sharpen up your Marketing and Public Relations skills

• Spend a good amount of time making an appealing (but also functional) poster.
• Make video demos that people can watch online.
• Call a local newspaper or magazine and tell them about your work.
• Talk to the department's editor so you can get on the school's website.
• Go to national and international competitions.

I hope this helps. If you have any more questions, write a comment or drop me an email at ivan@ivanbercovich.com

What do I want to be when I grow up? For most of us, this is an existential question that will follow us wherever we go. We are dropped in this world by a mysterious stork, which does not leave with us any hints of why are we here, what are we supposed to do, and how are we going to do it. So we begin our quest for the discovery of this existential conundrum.

We first want to be a doctor, then a veterinarian, and maybe later an engineer. But at some point along the way we lose the childish concept of a profession and we suddenly plummet into the so called “real world”. We have seen so much TV, read so much sensationalist media, and heard so many stories posed by a “friend of a friend”, that we are unable to pursue our true passions anymore. Not only have we divorced that idealistic representation of our future self, we have made a conscious effort to convince ourselves otherwise.

That’s right… the goals and dreams that we think we have as adults are just ideas imprinted by society and reinforced by our own desire to be important, to belong to something greater. Further personal conflicts arise from the fact that these choices we make as adults are in fact praised and rewarded by society. Why wouldn’t I want to be an actor, if the outcome of such a career involves wealth, women, and a lot of fans? Why wouldn’t I want to be Michael Phelps if then I would be able to get away from marijuana charges and be on the cover of a cereal box? We can make the same case for most “hot careers” of our time: Investment Banking, NBA player, Rock star, etc.

But my question for you is the following: how can you really know that is what you want? If the potential outcome of your decision of pursuing such career is so materially rewarding, how can you know you are not tricking yourself into it? You see, the problem is not that you or I chose to pursue material gains, is that you and I truly believe that this pursuit is our calling. Furthermore, we disguise this pursuit and we instead call it a passion. Noble, isn’t it? I have a passion for making a lot of money, sleeping with many women, flying on my own private jet, and being on the cover of time magazine. Right…

Now this is not to say that some people are not truly passionate about careers that happen to have really good perks. But remember, I am not here to judge your career choices and your motives behind them. I am here to ask you one, simple, question. If you are pursuing one of these high profile careers, how can you know what you are chasing today is what you REALLY want to do?

The Pareto principle, more commonly known as the 80/20 rule, establishes that 80% of a process' output comes from 20% of the inputs. If we consider our job or school such a process, this would mean that it would take us 20% of our time to achieve 80% of the results we would achieve if we spent all of our time focused on such endeavor.

I had a professor in college, Weibo Gong, who was a big fan of this rule and would quote it on every lecture. His argument was that in order to succeed, we need to achieve a 100% results, and that the 80/20 rule acts as a deceiver, making us believe that excellence can be achieved with little work.

I found Gong's ideology to be common across most hard sciences, where there is one right answer and the only way to obtain it is to have a complete understanding of the material. Being an 'A' student, I accepted the fact that studying 5x (20% vs 100%) times more than other people was the only way to guarantee A's.

But the truth is, that I never studied that much. As a matter of fact, I probably did as much work as anybody else in our class. The key is to spend that 20% of your time the right way, so as to get all of that available 80%, and then add an extra 10% in order to make it to a 90% cumulative result which is generally equivalent to an A.

Now, if that worked in electrical engineering, where we need to be all-knowing in order to ace an exam, what would be the case with more abstract subjects? What about our job? One could say that making the best possible power point presentation for a meeting might be the underlying force behind a promotion. On the other hand, you could do 5 presentations of 'B' quality, and that way be more omnipresent and cover more ground.

Which one do you think is better and why?