Business, Innovation, and Managing Life (August 3, 2022)
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: In science, when is it preferable to self-publish rather than go through academic journals? - What place do you see for competitive behavior (especially in respect to the paper/citation system) in science? - What do you think would be a good replacement for peer review? - Have you ever considered working in finance instead of physics? Many very smart people work for trading companies (such as RenTech/Jane Street) for a couple years. - I sometimes think we waste some of our brightest minds on "making money." Could we somehow "shift" the market demand for technology that highly favors intellectual advancement in ideas sufficiently so that these "analytically bright" people are interested in scientific progression? - How do you "decide" to direct your behavior when faced with aggression in tense meetings? - Is it possible for low-level employees to prove themselves by solving complex problems in an operation despite lacking the typical formal qualifications of education, but nevertheless being promoted? - One of the best docs for technical computing comes from Wolfram. Is there any general philosophy in Wolfram on balancing technical and business-oriented documentation that generates leads? - What advice would you have for someone who wants to pursue some academic field that's a bit unorthodox—like, say, your kind of physics—as a graduate student? - What I've been told is to save that for when you become a tenured professor (if ever). Is there a way to contribute to science without a college degree? - Humans were scientists for a long time before there were college degrees (let alone colleges).