Storytelling Revisit

This paper that peggy and henry wrote for iui this year made me start thinking about storytelling again - the missing piece in our company currently that I used to take as the most important element. Somehow it led me to the thinking of the comparison between the two cultures that i've been through or encountered along the process for the purpose of innovation: the media lab-style research, which is about not being afraid to push boundaries, whereas the silicon valley- or MVP (minimum viable product)-style entrepreneurship is about not being afraid to make things quick and dirty, and push it on the web as quickly as possible. While there is not necessarily any direct contradiction between the two, somehow I see some sorts of difficulties in myself working on a startup, coming from a media lab background.

The problem that I'm facing is: "how do I make things that are of good enough standard in terms of the quality of the service, and the balance between the fun we have and the compromise we make for the sake of financial reality and revenue model, at a reasonable speed for a seed-stage company? how do I make sure things are progressing smoothly in a right direction that, it doesn't fall too much ahead of the market needs of the modern world?"

Coming back from the valley a few days ago, we learned that all we have to do right now is to make the product. Because people generally agreed with the market potential, as long as we can make it real rather than sample paper documents. And I believe we are now at a stage where it's like when Hugo made ConceptNet back then - as long as we can endure this hardest part and really get the engine to work, after that there will be hundreds of fun projects that we will be able to work on, each providing huge values to our users under their respective usage scenario.

That's said, maybe we don't really need to try to make any sorts of big decisions right now. Whatever works the best for us to get the things done most efficiently and to live an enjoyable life at the same time, works as the best solution.

It's not that easy to keep myself in this mindset though, maybe I'm so used to making sure everything's right before diving into something. Although in the startup world things seem to have to be like this. Cuz you never know what would happen, and what the best solution would be.

Maybe writing is also very important for us too - than reading - because it keeps us thinking and creating and innovating, and keeps us in the mindset of creating something, just like the important mindset when doing research (after all the coherent part is exactly "innovation"). When Einstein left this invaluable passage "Imagination is more important than knowledge", I wonder what the daily practice it is that he does everyday in order to keep his mind clean, fresh, and enthusiastic? Maybe he wrote.

Anyway, I really don't want the storytelling part to be left out. That's where my passion lies in, and why I founded this company. It's StorySense Computing.

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