How Open Innovation can Save Lives and Improve Education
I just did an interview for Brainrack.com, where I participated in one of their challenge cases. I like the interview, but it got me thinking crazily again. So I had to expand on it, and this post is just that. If you want to see the kernel from which it sprung, you can read my interview about Brainrack, Education, and Entrepreneurship
In my constant state of feverish, borderline-obsessive need to create value, I recently participated in a Case Challenge on Brainrack.com (full disclosure - founded by a friend of mine). It also didn't hurt that there was a $5,000 prize pool. Thinking through this, how could I not love it? My goal is to make $47,000 pre-graduation, so of course there is the money, but this concept holds another, much more important place in my heart.
Ready? It MATTERS. It actually effing matters. These cases aren't just made up by TA's, graded and stuffed in a drawer at the end of the semester. These problems are experienced by real companies, big ones, from all over the world. They come to Brainrack hoping that young, ahead of the curve students can come up with something new, something different, something incredible that will change the way they run their companies. There is something about working to solve a problem, rather than just working for a grade that shifts thinking. People become result-focused, creative, willing to experiment, more determined. People think in terms of real-world, culture, environment, competition, not just limited to the parameters of the project brief.
It was incredibly fulfilling to read a case about a company, read their stated problem, and truly believe that I had a solution. It was empowering. I set about stating my case, supporting it, researching best practices, branching out other possibilities, and generally kicking that problem's ass with a fervor that I have never had for schoolwork. Now that may just be my particular pathology, and tendency to grade-agnosticism but I believe that many more people would respond well to being confronted with real problems; with tangible feedback and rewards.
Or, a better question: Why not? Even if it is only beneficial for 5% of students, isn't that enough to give it a try? It certainly won't hinder those that are already motivated and engaged. Think about this: There are almost 20 Million students enrolled in higher ed across the country. That is a lot of mental horsepower doing repetitive, rote work, and often duplicating a product of the mind hundreds of times. A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Let's get those brains working on some of the coming challenges. It's not like there is a shortage of problems. We never know what kind of brilliance could come from such a wide array of minds. We may solve some great unknown; we may not. But what is there to lose by trying?
Example: Stanford has a class called "Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability". The goal is to develop products the provide service to some of the poorest nations on earth. The students in that class have accomplished incredible things. They have brought light to darkness, literally. They have launched projects that will save millions of babies' lives. Yes, it's Stanford. Yes, they are brilliant human beings. But with 20 million students in Universities all over the country, I am confident that there is a massive amount of value that could be gleaned from halls of bright, hungry students eager to solve the world's problems.
Give us problems, give us challenges. Assign us the great difficulties of the next generation for homework. After all, isn't that what education is for? Aren't we being prepared to tackle the (formidable) challenges of the pivotal next 60 years of planet Earth? Let's start now. We're ready.
As always, more to come...
Note: I understand that there are basic building blocks of education that are irreplaceable, and that must precede this sort of challenge. My point is that these opportunities can and should be worked into the classroom, into the mainstream of education, rather than extracurriculars and after-school contests.
Another Note: I placed 5th in my first Brainrack Challenge, netting me a nice but dainty $250. You can read the challenge brief here and read a (slightly modified) version of my submission here De Alliantie Challenge
Deconstructing the Challenge (pt. 3) – Eureka!
Read Time: ~3 mins
Once again, the goal is to make $47,000 per year, as a full-time student. We have been through every traditional method of making money, and a slew of rather nontraditional ones as well. We have been through drug dealing, blood donations, and swim lessons. They weren't very promising for reaching our goal.
There is a fundamental problem that underlies all of these different options. An assumption that leads most of the world to lead lives that are constrained by self-imposed limits. You may notice that almost every potential income calculation was in comparison to a unit of time. The problem is how people perceive the relationship between money and time.
Most opportunities for employment or methods of generating income involve sacrifice, most commonly time, but in our examples you would also sacrifice your vitality (blood and plasma), safety (drug dealing), etc. Most jobs, from the highest level officers, to minimum wage laborers, pay you for your time (which is worth more depending on your skill set and knowledge base.) As the previous two posts worth of math have shown, this is probably not a viable way to create the kind of income that we are looking for. The reason is that none of these methods are scalable.
Not scalable means that there is a direct, one-to-one, correlation between the time that you put into making money, and how much you receive. For most college students, and many people worldwide, they do not have the skills or reputation to create a substantial amount of income just by trading their time for money.
So we have to challenge this base assumption, we have to escape the endless cycle of the cash-per-hour way of life. So if income generation is our goal, let’s take a look at someone at the extremes of success. Pick someone rich, the people who are among the richest in the world: Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Oil Sheiks, Ted Turner, etc. They all own their businesses (or did, before going public).
Do you think Bill Gates would make any more money on a day that he goes into the office than on a day that he does not? Hell no. His income is largely independent of how he spends his time. This is not a characteristic that is only because he has thousands of employees or a giant company, this is something that is very possible even for one savvy person starting a business.
It's all about building a scalable business. That means that your business functions in a nearly identical way whether you have one, ten, 1,000, or 10,000 customers. There are almost infinite options for this; almost any business can be scalable if framed correctly. But all of these options are dependent on how you, as the business owner, organize the company. The key to successful business practices, as far as creating a scalable company that suits our purposes, is to organize it in such a way so that it does not depend on your time.
There will be much more on this topic in future posts. For now, this is the main take-away: In order to generate significantly above-average income in less time, it's crucial to create a highly scalable business to generate high levels of income from a standard time investment.
More to come... stay in touch!
EJ
Deconstructing the Challenge (pt. 2.5)
Read time: ~3 mins
Ok, so it seems that I overlooked some options for creating income. How about investments? People seem to be making lots of money in the stock market, right? Why don't I just hit a long ball there, and be done with it? Lets take a look...
So if you wanted to play the stock market to try, to make some serious money, there are a number of considerations. First, you can only play with, and thus get returns on, however much you already have (aside from 'margin trading' - another thing altogether) . For most college students, and I suspect most people overall, there is not a lot of spare cash laying around. What kind of money are we talking here?
So an uncommonly awesome stock portfolio would return about 10% annually(this does not take into account trading cost, taxes, etc.). Individual stocks could do better/worse, but overall a well-diversified portfolio doing well would return 10%. So lets use that return. How much money would you need to invest, in order to have that 10% return earn us $47,000 each year? To return 47k, you would need to have $470,000 invested in the stock market. Almost a half-million dollars. Probably not a realistic scenario. If you do have that kind of cash lying around, rock on. You should probably stop reading this and go buy another car.
This is not to discredit the stock market. It is a great institution, and a great investment (usually) for long-term investments. However, unless you are very knowledgeable, and very dedicated to making short-term gains in the market, it is probably not very feasible. (When I say knowledgeable and dedicated, I mean have a serious working knowledge, and work on it full-time, as a day job.) I am proceeding under the assumption that we do not want to just sit in front of a computer all day, following stocks. I have a few fellow students that I know that do or did participate in the market at this level, and let me assure you it is not highly profitable. In fact, it is as likely to lose your initial investment as it is to increase it. I am not interested in potentially losing money, over which I have little control. Lets assume that you don't either. No one should ever be in the market with money they could need in the next five years.
This conclusion includes other, similar investment areas like Currency Arbitrage, Commodity Trading, and Real Estate. All viable areas of investment. The point is, there are millions of ways to make millions, but not all of them are suited for taking on our challenge.
Final word on stock and other such investments: Awesome, great and necessary. However, not for our purposes. The market is not, and is not to be perceived as, a get-rich-quick method. That is a very, very dangerous misconception. You have been warned.
Thanks for reading...Conclusion is next to come!
EJ
(Much credit to my father for inspiring and advising on this post. And in appreciation for a lifetime of finance lessons.)
Deconstructing the Challenge (pt. 2)
Read Time: ~3 mins
Back to the drawing board. We need $47K while enrolled as a full-time student. Traditional job-type math didn't work out very well, so we are going to have to be a bit more creative.
So lets make it more interesting. What about some more extreme measures? Ever heard of people selling blood plasma, sperm, eggs, drugs, and themselves? Think its profitable? I went back to work with some Googling, and some more number crunching. Even more interesting results.
Lets start with drug dealing. Easy way to make a quick buck, right? So long as you don't get arrested, anyway. According to an excerpt from Freakonomics, (awesome book) the average earnings of a lower-level drug dealer are about $3.30 per hour. That's 45% of minimum wage.
The TI-89 reports that to reach 47k, an average drug dealer would have to work over 39 hours/day, 365 days/year. Does not leave much time for dilly-dally. Anyway, this calculation does not include the fact that in the average year, you would be arrested 1.475 times, be injured 1.2 times, and your odds of death are 25%. Madness. Moving on, then...
So what about selling your natural assets? There seem to be a number of ways to go about this. Lets start nice and easy: blood plasma. Most clinics pay about $30-50 per visit, each of which takes about 90 minutes. At a maximum of twice a week, this could only yield a bit over $4,000 per year. Also (according to reliable, experienced sources) each visit leaves you very tired, and useless for the rest of the day. Not worth it.
Selling sperm. Sounds wonderful at first, assuming you have no moral issue with it. However, the selection process for sperm donation is very rigorous, takes about 6 months, and less than 5% of candidates are accepted. Most clinics require college graduates, which is less than ideal for our purposes. If this still sounds like a good idea, consider this: most clinics will not allow you to engage in any sexual activity outside the donation center. At all. If you still think its a good idea, and can pull it off (lol) you can expect to earn maybe $10,000 over a year at the very best. You will also probably only be eligible for 6 months to a year.
Ladies, I'm not neglecting you. You may not be able to donate sperm, but you do have the opportunity to donate eggs, or be a surrogate. And while an average surrogacy could pay around $25,000, that obviously comes with a large... inconvenience. So maybe just sell the eggs? You could stand to make somewhere around 5k, but again, this comes with a lot of stipulations. Egg harvesting usually means a lifestyle of no drinking, no smoking, no sex. You will also be subject to daily hormone injections, constant blood tests, ultrasound scans, and plenty of other medical jibberjabber. I believe in a woman's right to choose, and will not even offer an opinion on this paragraph...
If you're considering selling a kidney, stop it. Its not even legal in this country. If you find a country in which it is legal, you probably should not elect for surgery there. So there.
Prostitution. Not legal, but this is an exercise in expansive thinking, so that shouldn't stop us. Assuming you were an 'independent contractor' meaning that no one was taking a cut of your earnings, and that you wanted to work an average of 6 hrs/week, so just weekend nights, you would need to find some clients willing to pay about $157 each hour. I even built in two weeks off each year. Everyone loves a vacation.
So there are some of your more unconventional, and significantly more unpleasant options as far as generating money. There really wasn't even a remotely good choice in there. Well, maybe prostitution, that wasn't too bad. Minus that whole jail potential. And the potentially horrifying 'clientele'.
So another post, and pretty much another set of strike-outs. Might have seemed ridiculous, but just trying to cover all the bases. However, I promise that all of this has a point, and I promise that the point will be well made in the third and final post.
Thanks for reading, and check back for the conclusion!
Deconstructing the Challenge (pt. 1)
Read time: ~2 mins
Ok, so I've committed to shooting for $47,000 before I graduate.
Ready, Set, Go.
Well, as most people know, making money is not easy. Especially not that much money. Especially not that much money while enrolled as a full-time student.
Typically when people need money, they get a job. So that's where I started. Sat down with the trusty TI-89, and crunched some numbers. They were scary numbers. Here are some highlights.
(To simplify things, I did not include tax, as there are a number of variable involved there. You could safely assume ~25% tax rate, which makes each of these numbers significantly more scary.)
Having a minimum-wage job($7.25/hour, as of this summer) would mean that I would have to work 17.81 hours/day, if I worked 7 days per week. If I wanted weekends off, I be working 24.93 hours per day, 52 weeks a year. Ouch.
If the job paid $10 per hour, which is an above-average part-time job around campus, one would have to work almost 13 hours/day, all week, all year. Again, taking weekends off would mean working over 18 hrs/day, all year. Still Ouch.
Ok. So obviously a wage-job can't possibly get me there. Not on its own anyway. So now I turned to marketable skills. Things that can be taught or used in shorter times, but would earn more money. For instance, I spent my whole life swimming, and I coached and taught for a number of years. So I could probably arrange a series of 1/2 hour to 1 hour private swim lessons and average around $25/hour. (Almost everyone has some sort of skill like this: Language, musical instrument, art, etc.)
So assuming $25/hour; what kind of time would one put in to make $47K? 5 hours/day, 7 days/week, 52 weeks/year. Want weekends off? Then you're working over 7 hours every day. This works out to about 35 hours every week. That's almost a full-time job. Possible, much closer, but still probably more than one would want to deal with on top of a full course-load.
The typical college job is part-time, somewhere around 15 hours/week. So if that was all the hours you worked, you would need to make almost $63/hour to make it to 47 grand. Most of the people who make that kind of pay without a full degree are freelancers and some consultants. As a college student, I can't see too many opportunities for me to be able to command that kind of pay. If you can, more power to you. Do it. I'm going to keep looking...
Well, we have explored a few of the traditional methods. So far, not looking too great.
Tomorrow on the next post, we will explore some more 'colorful' options. Check back for more!
Thanks for reading! If you have more ideas/suggestions, comment them...
The Manifesto
Hey, Welcome to College Lifestyle Design
This is technically the explanation of what this site will have, and what it will be for, but I'm going to use it as the first post as well. In the future, you will be able to find this on the 'Manifesto' Page. If you have any ideas for posts, or something you think would be awesome, let know. I will answer your e-mails. Unless they are super-dumb. Also, if you know of (or are) an awesome person, who has something to add to the site, let me know as well. I'll be really excited to hear all about what you do, and help you share with it with everyone else!
So without further ado...
The Goal
This site will host a practical account of my opinions and experience regarding my education. In order to make this practical, and applicable advice, and to prove that I’m committed, I have a tangible, measurable goal.
Goal: I want to make more than the average starting salary of someone with my degree (>$47,000) before I graduate.
This could take any number of forms. I may end up taking on a full-time job, while still in school. I may find a way to grow my company to proportions that would sustain this level of income. I might find an audience for lucrative consulting work or some sort or another. I might win the lottery. Who knows?
(As a clarification, I have no ambition to turn this blog into a profit center. There are very few highly profitable blogs out there, and my only hope with this is that it will potentially sustain itself through ad revenue. The main goal here is creating connections, and cultivating community.)
(In my view, there is a lot more to this experiment than money, but since that’s the way most people “keep score” in life, and it is very easy to understand, I will use that as a starting point. Hopefully I encounter some more meaningful metrics along the way.)
The Reason
The reason this is my goal is to prove that the degree is not important. Everyone sees it as a beacon, that once you have a degree, you are vetted within society, and have a safe, secure future. Not anymore.
I have watched many of my friends and colleagues graduate into a job-less abyss. They seemed utterly confused by this, as though they had assumed that once they were through college, life was on auto-pilot.
We need to realize that the future is different. The skills we need to succeed we are not learning, and perhaps cannot learn in today’s classrooms.
Long story short, I believe that the skills and connections I need to succeed in my area, and in my life, rarely come up in a classroom. So, there is my mission. To prove that income generation, (which is the main correlation to the value of a degree) is in no way attached to your particular degree, or the classes you take. The reason I want prove this, is to illustrate that what matters is what you do with your time in college, what you learn, who you meet, and how hard you work. Not the act of crossing the finish line, or the ribbon you get upon completion.
The Hope
My hope is that this will set people free, shake up some minds, and show some people that there are more paths than just those walked by your parents or your teachers. There is a huge, incredibly exciting and very educational world out there to go play and learn in. I want more people to realize it. Don’t let yourself be trapped by popular societal perceptions and unwritten rules.
I know there are many, many students out there who feel the same way, and I hope to connect and encourage, unite us all to share our stories, successes and failures. Learn from each other.
I hope that this site is a step towards bringing to light and creating a movement of this growing underground army of practical, ambitious, creative, hungry and brilliant people.
The Content
To support this idea, I will be doing a few things on this site. I will be writing about what I’m doing to achieve my goal, and how I’m getting there. I will be writing about how I’m handling school along the way, what I like about it, and what I think can be improved. I will talk about experiences good and bad. Also in the school talk will be some time management tips, maybe some study shortcuts.
I hope to have some guest posts, and share some other students’ experiences, and opinions. I also hope to have some interviews with some interesting people of all opinions. Ideally included would be professionals of all types, graduates of different types of institutions, professors and academics.
The Exceptions
I know these are not universally applicable opinions, as everyone’s goals and abilities are different, but from the conversations I’ve had with many of my peers, there are a lot of people out there unsatisfied with the education they are getting.
This is my acknowledgment that these principles are certainly not applicable to all areas of study. For instance, I still think doctors and lawyers should be fully applying themselves in classes. However, I may meet some who feel otherwise. Anyway, the admission is made here and now, this is not universally applicable.
The Focus
I would love to turn the world of higher education upside down, sit them all down, lay down some facts and tell them what our generation needs, the raw materials and skills we need to cultivate to assume our role as the repair-men (and women) of our economy and our planet. However, I feel that that could be a perilous black hole of effort and exasperation. I think it would be much more fulfilling, gratifying and productive to help, advise and connect other like-minded students. So that is my focus.