Do you know the way to innovation?
Learn how the way to San Jose helps reach the innovation land.
Alan developed a curiosity in childhood. Always looking to learn more about science and technology. He did his undergraduate studies at ITESO, a private university in Guadalajara. Alan and his friends continuously asked their professors for more lectures about new things in electronics.
In their mind, the following activities were the subject of conversations:
How do we find the way to innovation?
How do we learn what we like?
How do we work in teams to learn collaboratively?
What kind of challenges, contests, and competitions were available to participate?
How do we find a good problem to solve?
Alan´s dilemma was whether to work for large organizations or startups. In his local Guadalajara, several transnational companies were located, and there were very few startups for which to work. He chose the first large companies to have stability and constant income. Alan explored working for a startup in medicine, an endeavor with very high risk, many issues to fix, and regulations to comply with.
Finally, one day, Alan was invited to work for a large company in Silicon Valley. At this time, Alan found that moving from Mexico—the low-cost site—to Silicon Valley, where innovation happens, is not low-cost. It is risky. Individual contributors focus on big things and changes.
This invitation changed the way he saw innovation in his daily activities. He recalled the academic world while in the university and used the knowledge and experience shared by his teachers to influence his life. Jumping from school -> industry -> entrepreneur -> industry, he landed into a fantastic world where he has been doing original designs, creating intellectual property and wealth.
It is time that Alan is asking himself:
How can he share his knowledge?
How can he share his expertise?
Alan is facing a time management challenge: Can I be a full-time innovator, or how do I manage my time to get involved? The answer is the 80/20 timeframe. Developing activities 80% and learning 20% of his time to nurture his journey to innovation,
Alan builds his reputation with discipline by developing new things and managing risk. These are some of the goals. Several skills and learning areas are critical thinking, validation, design thinking, and system design.
Sharing his knowledge without sharing intellectual property that needs to be kept inside his company is today a rewarding activity, by looking at how to help people in his surroundings. Alan's mentees and collaborators, who are exploring how to get involved in developing embedded systems and learning how to design and program Arduinos and FPGAs, have been the most exciting activities that Alan enjoys today in his spare time.
Alan never envisioned the journey he traveled to reach innovation. Serendipity and curiosity helped him find the way to reach his dreams, and now he is working to help people like him who will be great engineers in the future.
NOTE: This post was fully written by human intelligence.