Autonomy is a sign of talent in multiple places. It’s why entrepreneurs are more likely than salaried workers to have engaged in illicit activity as a teenager. It’s why young research scientists who narrowly miss out on funding applications early in their careers often outperform those who did get funding over the following fifteen years. And it’s why when capable school students are allowed to miss some classes and undertake self-directed study, they perform better on exams.
It’s not that entrepreneurs are natural rule-breakers. Rather, like many sorts of creative people, they want self-direction. They aren’t going to take the world at face value. They have to figure it out for themselves. Failure improves those scientists’ prospects because it gives them an increased dose of drive and perseverance. Once the system has rejected you, you are emboldened to be more autonomous. More freedom doesn’t mean capable students bunk off school: it gives them room to focus on their work.
A large recent study of artists’, film directors’, and scientists’ careers found that before they start a hot-streak of high-impact work, they take influences from a wide range of sources, which they then use to produce their breakthrough. They don’t work on the most popular topic they find or their most recent discovery. They choose what they are most interested in, where they see the most potential. Self-directed discovery is what sets-up the hot streak.
That is an extract from my new essay “Don’t Trade Your Autonomy For Stability”, published by Entrepreneur First. You can read the whole thing here.
While I agree with everything from the third paragraph onwards (in the full article), I would qualify the opener, which says “his employer wasn’t interested”, which could give the impression that Cisco was somehow shortsighted, even negligent, in passing over this opportunity.
In the real world of portfolio management and strategic investment, it is not the “best” or “smartest” idea that gets funded, but the one that most meets the company’s objectives during the annual budget process. A fundamental rule of strategic investment is that there are always more candidate ideas than there is money to fund them, so in the final decision process, some very good projects get passed over – not because the company is “not interested”, but because there are other projects that better meet strategic objectives at that point in time – for example corporate social media. It could even be that Yuan’s project pitch was not as good as it could have been, and another project wowed the investment committee more – who knows.
Saying “his employer wasn’t interested” certainly makes for a more engaging “hero-vs-villain” story but could hide the fact that Cisco might have been completely justified by not funding Yuan’s idea – at that point in time.
Michael Gentle
I just finished reading the full article. So many thoughts came up for me, and it all hearkens back to why I enjoy reading your work. Namely, I live a late-blooming, entrepreneurial, risk-taking, teenaged-law-breaking, internally motivated, and unfocused life, and feel very understood.
Contrasting the life I live with our culture and traditional paths really puts a spotlight on my weirdness (or is it the world's weirdness...) Our world's incentive structures and trajectory is broken and terrifying, respectively. At this point, I live the way I do out of a moral conviction to not participate in the tomfoolery and I'm unsure I would've came to a recognition of the tomfoolery if I didn't live the way I do. This is the primary reason why personal autonomy (of mind and body) is of paramount importance today: the broken structures destroying our planet and keeping people stuck (by the control/information dynamic) within its deception of stability and certainty can only be perceived by people who are autonomous. It's likely that the survival of our species depends on this kind of autonomy.
So, anyways, HAPPY FRIDAY (to all the atomized, non-autonomous 9-5'ers) and don't forget to practice revolutionary thought over the weekend instead of drowning your regrets and subconscious desire to escape your life in alcohol!