Business, Innovation, and Managing Life (March 1, 2023)

Nov 17, 2023

Stephen Wolfram answers questions about business, innovation, and managing life. Topics include his favorite book, diving deep into various topics, maximizing productivity by working around constraints, balancing interesting work and making money, saving experiences and code review, evaluating computer time usage, establishing the Wolfman Institute, and understanding the foundations and building from there.

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Introduction

00:00 • 2min

The Challenges of Diving Deep

02:20 • 26min

Maximizing Productivity by Working around Constraints

28:11 • 23min

Exploring the Balance Between Pursuing Interesting Work and Making Money

51:28 • 3min

Saving Experiences, Code Review, and Peer Review

54:10 • 4min

Evaluating computer time usage, management structure, and the physics project

58:27 • 2min

Establishing the Wolfman Institute and Exploring AI Implications

01:00:51 • 2min

Understanding the Foundations and Building from There

01:03:16 • 21min

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa

Questions include: What is your favorite blog/book you've written? Any specific reason, why or why not? - How was your trip? Was it for business or just for fun? - As a remote CEO, do you ever get cabin fever from being home constantly? Do you try to keep work in certain rooms of your home to combat this? - Have you tried anything like tracking your sentiment as you work by using a neural net to analyze a video feed of your face/body? - I'm struggling with this nagging feeling that I'm progressing slower than I want to. I know I'm doing what I can, but I still can't shake it off. Have you ever dealt with this? If so, how? - What management strategies do you use to get the most out of your employees? - How can I increase the chance of my admission to a master's degree in complex systems or cognitive sciences? - How do you decide on when to make a big change in the technology you use/build, for example, switching Wolfram Workbench from Eclipse to VS Code? - Good project definition—formalizing what a project means—is one very important part. But how much do money/stock options/vacations (to avoid burnout) influence employee morale? Or giving them a project that they want to work on, or people they want to work with? - I've been one to say, "If I get more money, I'll care more." In the end, it didn't work. It's better to optimize for things that you just like working on. - What do you think about code review/peer review? Does it slow down a company or research? Do you think there are other alternatives to this? - How often do you work on the Physics Project in terms of weeks or months? How do you manage your life to work on this when finding the rule of our universe has no business case (at least in the short term)? - How do you deal with confusion and the feeling of "I don't understand this"? - Given your knowledge of the foundations of math and physics: do you bother to research the fundamental theories of project management, or try an attempt to formalize it, experiment with different project definitions, etc.? - How is the process of picking a mentee? Do you look for specific clues? Is there anything an individual can do to stand out? - You seem to care a lot about the history of ideas in scientific areas. Do you think this is a must for producing meaningful work in research? - I work as an innovation consultant. For a year now I have been on a journey to redesign/innovate and develop a new type of computer case. But I battle with this feeling all the time that I will fail and don't have a chance against all the "giants." How do I overcome this feeling? Or do I just accept it and go on?