Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (March 17, 2021)
Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business and innovation as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa Questions include: How did Champaign become the base of operations of the company? - Why haven't you lived in Champaign for "three decades"? - Is it a doable thing to work at a university and run a startup at the same time? - Hi Stephen, at pre-revenue stage, should a company aim for reaching revenue faster at the expense of cash or for saving cash in order to survive little longer at the expense of time/market opportunity - How do you deal with employees who may be very talented and productive, but may find it hard to fit in with the rest of the team? I wonder if it's even possible for large companies to be agile - How do you plan a roadmap for your company? Does it just happen naturally or is there some deep thought that goes into what you want to make happen? - What's your experience with management paradigms like SCRUM and agile? Can you recommend a 'general strategy'? - Would you please elaborate on the distributed nature of your company? - Should there be a limit on the maximum number of people on a project or in a meeting? - Is there a suitable time period which one must devote to reading about previous innovations/developments related to the theme of a project, before actually jumping onto the implementation? - Is it possible or practical to avoid mid-managers while scaling up the company by creating sub-founders who work just like the founder at the founding stage of the company - What are the most tiresome things in your job as a CEO? - How do you stay so intense and focused after all these years when you could've retired much much earlier?