Bridging Academia and Entrepreneurship: Practical Lessons for Founders with Dr. Shari Worthington (Live from Startup Week Boston)

Sean Lane 0:00 Sean, Hey everyone, welcome to operations, the show where we look under the hood of companies in hyper growth. My name is Sean Lane, the next few episodes of our show are going to be pretty special. I recently had the opportunity to be a part of startup Boston week at Suffolk University, which every year brings together a really impressive collection of entrepreneurs, expert speakers, local networking. And this year they had some live podcast recording. I spent one of the afternoons OF THE WEEK interviewing guests on stage in the lobby of Suffolk University, which serves as kind of the main entrance for everyone coming to enjoy startup Boston week, today's episode, and my first conversation of that day was with Dr Sherry Worthington. Sherry is an Associate Professor and Associate Director of the Center of Entrepreneurship at Suffolk. Sherry herself is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in management and marketing in the technology industries, and she's unique because she's one part practitioner, one part academic, which is one of the main reasons why I was so interested in talking to her. In our conversation, Sherry teaches me about her research into the spectrum of different founder identities. She talks to me about how she relentlessly brings practical, real world examples into a theoretical academic environment. And why she thinks that learning to lean into serendipity is the most important lesson that she can teach her students. To start, though, given that we were at startup Boston week, we can sometimes just take for granted that these startups exist and that individuals just make the leap to start a company in the first place. Because Sherry has done a bunch of research into why founders start their companies, I asked her what she has learned about their motivations. Shari Worthington 1:51 Being a serial entrepreneur. I am a very strange person. I have a split brain, half practitioner, half academic, and I kind of alternate between the two, but I've always been fascinated with why people start their companies. I accidentally became an entrepreneur. So I'm an accidental entrepreneur, but a lot of others are very purposeful about it. The thing that really caught my attention was, long ago, I'm a geek, so I've been involved in tech for a long time, and long ago, I started hearing people talk of, oh, well, these tech entrepreneurs, they're great. They all do these hockey stick type growth curves, isn't it great, but they're just in it for the money. And I'm like, Well, wait a minute, I don't know is that jives with what I've learned over the years. And prior to Suffolk, which I absolutely love, I was at WPI Worcester polytech, so I was in the business school next to an engineering school, so we had a lot of engineers, and so I got to meet and work with through the school, as well as through my own work, a lot of engineers. So my background is in science, so thus the ever going to be a geek? And so people like tech entrepreneurs, only started to make money, and I'm like, I don't know about that. So I dug into a major research project on founder identity. So this is about who these people are when they're founders, as they start the company, what motivates them to start the new venture? And, you know, there's tons of research out there. It could be a family business that they take over. It could be like me, an accidental entrepreneur. It could be something where they find a problem in the world that they just really are compelled to solve, and that's where a lot of my engineers end up. And so my research uncovered a number of different things, but the initial Interesting fact I uncovered was my tech engineers were not starting companies to make money. If they made money, they're like, Oh, that would be nice. That's fine. I at least want to pay the bills. But it's not because I'm trying to be rich and famous. It's because I found a problem that is driving me nuts, and I need to solve it, right? So they're problem solvers. So the next stage was I then dug into all the different types of founders and what motivates a variety of different people. And I looked at people in the US, outside the US, young, old, early stage startups. Startups have been around for a few years and really. So the first way you can categorize it is, and this is in all the research, founders tend to divide up into three categories. There's the inventor. I'm creating something right? I've got something I want to build. There is the founder. I want to start an organization, I want to bring employees in. I want to build something and they may or may not have something new to bring in, but they just that's their compulsion. And then there's developers. Those are the entrepreneurs, the founders, who are really growth oriented, and they're ready to do that hockey stick growth curve. So they're there to develop the business, grow it into something big, higher impact, bigger footprint. So you kind of start with those three categories, and then I was like, but that really doesn't tell me a lot about motivations or passions, background, you know, hopes and dreams, things like that. So I then did a next phase of the research that looked at the. Basically individual values, who they are as a person, their goals for the firm that they're starting, and then their passion, what do they really care about? What's driving them forward? And interviewed a whole bunch of people, and ended up finding some very interesting things that, and I'll just go through a few of them, so I really was able to classify, yes, six ish identities, all right. So what we end up with, looking at those three primary factors, individual values, goals for the firm and passion, we end up with kind of an overall hero type of identity, right? They have an external focus, that's the hero type of thing. But they really want to create, they want to explore. They kind of want to do everything. And you can on the podcast, see my little chart. But of course, I have these six different categories, and the hero tends to have something going on in all the categories, whether it's financial success, achievement, solving big problems, self, direction, independence and then organizational focus. They really are trying to do a lot of things, and that's kind of the hero personality, identity. And then we have, if we look at gender, they actually break out differently. So males, traditional males and traditional females are what I looked at in this particular study. Traditional males tend to fall into overachieving problem solvers. So they're overachievers. They've got a lot going on across all these different categories that I studied, but they really are focused on problem solving. That's what really stands out. Traditional females, we're actually looking at the same kind of over achievement type of Outlook, but their focus is on more of a harmonious approach to how they build it more on community building. Maybe there's some social cause, but there's definitely also an internal focus on the organization and how they can build it. Still overachievers. We had a lot of overachievers in our group, and these are all tech entrepreneurs, by the way. Then we have I looked at country of origin, so US versus non US, and what was interesting is I found that non US, outside the US. We primarily find the identity that we call a community builder. So they're focused on the organization, on security, and this fits nicely with what we know about us. Or, you know, Western type organizations versus non western, where the non western tend to be very focused on community. You know, from the day they're born, they're focused on a community building. Some of my students from outside the US have a very difficult time speaking up in class because they were trained to not stand out. We're here for the greater good, the whole and so I don't want to stand out in the US. It's independence, it's leadership. And so we're happy to raise their hand and blab forever. So the non US tended to be a community builder, type of a founder, looking to really build that organization. In the US, we had things that are more, not surprisingly, goal oriented around achievement and innovation. So we have seekers looking for new, interesting problems and challenges and trailblazers who are just dying to do something new and different, and so looking at all those different things. So now we have a much more complex way of looking at who these founders are. And in the tech world anyway, even within the tech world, they come out in six different types of identities, and you just never know, right? There's a lot that goes into this. I Sean Lane 8:20 think the most interesting thing about that is that I think a lot of times founders are painted with this single, broad, absolutely, oh, I have a product that's four founders. I market two founders. I write four founders. But in reality, this, just like any audience, can be broken down into a bunch of different profiles, like the one you're describing. Yeah, I'm wondering the male female dynamic that you explained is super interesting to me. I'm wondering if they naturally fell into the inventor, founder, developer categories a little bit differently based off of gender, just based on those traits that you described about how they kind of approach the work that they do. It sounded like maybe female founders were more in that developer category, but I might be making some bad assumptions there. Yeah, no. Shari Worthington 9:00 And if so, if you so, obviously, on the podcast, we can't show this. But if we look at the male female data, right, they are strong. So the big black dots are strong. They are very strong in all six of these categories. But each of them has one missing. So that's really what makes the difference here. So the tech founders, traditional male really are missing the security organization part how do we build internally that kind of stuff? Whereas the females have that strong but they're missing the stimulation, solving big problems kind of a thing, but everything else is the same. So the achievement orientation, self directed, that's all there. The power and financial success is there for both of them. But it's interesting that you know that one little missing category really kind of makes sense, doesn't it? In fact, the second study that I did was taking these same founders and looking at business model innovation. So business models are key to any organization. You might consciously create one before you start a new venture you might. Not right, and it kind of evolves as you go either way works, depending on who you are. Certainly within the academic setting, we teach how to develop business models and how to think about all the major pieces. What is the value you're delivering? Who are the target customers, revenue, costs, partnerships, which are critical for entrepreneurs. In this day and age, you can't be everything to everyone, so bring in expertise to help build a more valuable product or service that you're delivering. So we teach to look at all the different pieces, but a lot of people start these companies just kind of wing it, and they do it, and they they bring together the resources as they need to as they're moving forward. But I looked at the business model development with respect to these personalities, these these identities. I shouldn't call them personalities, these identities and who they are. And you know, we looked at things like strategic positioning. You know, are you creating this company to be the low cost provider, to differentiate, or are you going to do a focus market segment? How deep is your business model innovation gonna be? Right? You start with a business model. You got to change it up. Nothing goes the way you want as an entrepreneur or otherwise, right? And you always have to be pivoting along the way. My favorite term in business pivoting. So the pivoting can also involve what we call depth of business model innovation, which is, is it an incremental innovation? Is it a disruptive innovation? Is it a radical innovation? Right? So there's different levels. Breadth of innovation now involves, how much of the business model are you changing? Right? One component, I'm just going to change the target market. I'm going to just change partnerships. Two components, three, right? How many are you changing in the business model formula that we use, we teach the business model canvas, which has nine components, and the novelty of the business model innovation. Is this new to the firm? Is it new to the industry? Is it new to the world, right? And so there's, again, you can get really complicated on these and a lot of people just brush over it, like, Oh, you're innovating the business model. So we looked at that in comparison to the people in this study, and we found some interesting results. And again, I've got these, these, these huge charts here with all these little dots in them. And what we found is that there's no set formula. Females tend to be better at Innovate. Well, it goes back to this traditional females tend to be better at innovating relating to internal company factors, key resources, key processes, whereas traditional males tend to be better at the external facing things. Who is the customer segment? What are the external partnerships we're going to create? And so again, it comes down to things that really make sense in terms of what we know about traditional gender roles, but we never really think about it to the depth of but what does that really mean, right? How does that affect my company? So traditional male founders may end up being really good at creating these hockey stick growth curves, right? But they may not be as great as supporting the employees, creating a real community, a personality within the organization. Traditional females tend to be much better at that, and then identifying with the customer and creating things that strongly attract the two, or bond the two, hearing Sean Lane 13:15 a real academic breakdown, real research and findings, is so refreshing, isn't it? You can get into the nuance and the lessons in a very real way compared to the pithy posts of LinkedIn. If you're listening to this, whether you're a founder or not, reading Sherry's research and figuring out what identity you most identify with, might be a really interesting exercise for yourself. You can find a link to Sherry's research in the show notes. And as I was listening back to this, I got curious for myself, so I downloaded her paper on founder identities, uploaded it into chat GPT, and asked chat GPT, based on everything that it knows about me, which founder identity it thought I was from Sherry's research, the answers were pretty amazing and honestly, pretty accurate for me. Chatgpt went so far as to give me a blend of some different founder identities that it thought I was a mix of. It said I was 60% execution driven. Identity. I get things done, I optimize, I don't pivot recklessly. It said I was 30% community driven. I deeply value my network and my audience and let them guide my strategy. And I was 10% visionary. I have a clear Lighthouse vision, but balance that with pragmatism. It even brought in some of my weaknesses, so that I should consider those and understand what my weaknesses might lead to from the research that Sherry had provided. Kind of amazing, right? What a great way for entrepreneurs to do some self reflection on their own strengths and weaknesses. We're going to talk more about those strengths and weaknesses in a bit, but let's get back to Sherry. The next logical question when you acknowledge that these different profiles exist, is, does the profile. Profile of a particular founder have an impact on the outcomes of the business and how self aware are the founders of their own profiles. So in Shari Worthington 15:11 fact, the second study that I did was taking these same founders and looking at business model innovation. So business models are key to any organization you might consciously create one before you start a new venture. You might not right, and it kind of evolves as you go either way works, depending on who you are. Certainly, within the academic setting, we teach how to develop business models and how to think about all the major pieces. What is the value you're delivering? Who are the target customers, revenue, costs, partnerships, which are critical for entrepreneurs in this day and age, you can't be everything to everyone, so bring in expertise to help build a more valuable product or service that you're delivering. So we teach to look at all the different pieces, but a lot of people start these companies just kind of wing it, and they do it, and they bring together the resources as they need to as they're moving forward. But I looked at the business model development with respect to these personalities, these identities. Shouldn't call them personalities, these identities and who they are. And we looked at things like strategic positioning. Are you creating this company to be the low cost provider, to differentiate or are you going to do a focus market segment? How deep is your business model innovation gonna be? Right? You start with a business model. You got to change it up. Nothing goes the way you want as an entrepreneur or otherwise, right? And you always have to be pivoting along the way. My favorite term in business pivoting. So the pivoting can also involve what we call depth of business model innovation, which is, is it an incremental innovation? Is it a disruptive innovation? Is it a radical innovation, right? So there's different levels. Breadth of innovation now involves, how much of the business model are you changing? Right? One component, I'm just going to change the target market. I'm going to just change partnerships. Two components, three, right? How many are you changing in the business model formula that we use, we teach the business model canvas, which has nine components. And the novelty of the business model innovation, is this new to the firm? Is it new to the industry? Is it new to the world, right? And so there's, again, you can get really complicated on these, and a lot of people just brush over it, like, Oh, you're innovating the business model. So we looked at that in comparison to the people in this study, and we found some interesting results. And again, I've got these huge charts here with all these little dots in them, and what we found is that there's no set formula. It goes back to this, traditional females tend to be better at innovating relating to internal company factors, key resources, key processes, whereas traditional males tend to be better at the external facing things. Who is the customer segment? What are the external partnerships we're going to create? And so again, it comes down to things that really makes sense in terms of what we know about traditional gender roles, but we never really think about it to the depth of but what does that really mean, right? How does that affect my company? So traditional male founders may end up being really good at creating these hockey stick growth curves, right? But they may not be as great as supporting the employees creating a real community, a personality within the organization. Traditional females tend to be much better at that, and then identifying with the customer and creating things that strongly attract the two or bond the two. So my background is biology and psychology, and then I stumbled into business. So the psychology side of me says, and Freud had all his problems, but Freud and young, I actually believe, had some really good stuff. Awareness is critical. So if you know to look at these things and go power, financial success, what does that really mean to me? Right? I have a set of questionnaires and things that can determine these things, but I don't have really good self assessment tool, but you can think about it, right? Am I motivated by financial success, or just want to pay the bills? You know? Am I motivated to innovate, to create something new, to make a name for myself? And you know, Elon Musk put my name across, you know, 10 different companies, and these are mine, solving big problems. Am I challenged to solve puzzles, right? And I see a problem like somebody's got to do something about that, and I dive into it so you can kind of do your own self assessment and get a rough idea of what really drives you. The challenge is to figure out what's maybe missing that really would help your organization. In the end, all of these things have a role to play, but that's also the value of a founding team, right? So the initial founder brings some traits to the equation, but the team now you want to spread out and make sure they cover a lot of things. So one of the things I teach in my classes, which drives my students crazy, is do not found a company with just your color. Classmates, right? The problem is, they all were trained to think the way you do. So now we don't have any diversity of opinion, of thought of, you know, views of the future, and it's great to start with a few of them, but just make sure that you're rounding out the team with other views. And you know, so whenever I create a team in my classroom, right? I said, you know, okay, we have to do gender diversity, we have to do racial diversity, country of origin, faith based, you name it. I want to mix these teams up as much as possible, because that's the way you're going to get the broadest diversity of ideas. And you know, one of the essential components of entrepreneurship is creativity. Creativity is all leads to innovation without the creativity, right? And all those different thoughts now it will lead to some arguments, and that's okay, right? We have to have a few arguments along the way, but as you're having those discussions, you're ironing out details and figuring out how each other works, but also what's best for the company. Because what's best for the company isn't just for one person to say. You know, most of them new ventures are founding teams, and so they've all got to be in and all kind of have to be growing in the same direction, but you got to figure out your direction. This feels Sean Lane 21:13 like one of those lessons that Sherry's students would hear in her class, but they would pick their friends or their close classmates anyways, for those teams, if it weren't for her insistence, the lesson here is so important, and it'll only make your team, your company, stronger if you heed her advice. Sherry is a professor, so the students in her class have already opted in to learning from her but for all the founders and operators not in her class, and given the exorbitant amount of information that's available to them. How does Sherry recommend that entrepreneurs go about their own learning outside of her class? Shari Worthington 21:47 Whenever anyone asks me that question, I immediately go to the elephant in the room, which is, right? I'm an academic, I'm a practitioner. And people go, should people go to college, right? Should entrepreneurs go to college? Why bother look at Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, right? And I'm like, they're the exception to the rule. There are certainly founders out there who've been successful without the traditional college path, but I would argue that they also are people who are uniquely positioned with a set of resources that not everybody comes to the table with. So Steve Jobs had his little crew that worked in the garage, right? That initial, oh, what it was, it was the brew club or something, right? There were the techie guys who were just experimenting, Steve Wozniak at all those guys, Bill Gates, right? Had his crew at Harvard, right? And they were, like, creating this cool stuff. Steve Ballmer and all that. So I get a lot of entrepreneurs that come to me want to be entrepreneurs who, like, I don't have, you know, a partner that I can team up with. I don't have someone who has the business knowledge, or I don't have someone who has the technical knowledge. Where do I start? And this is where college is a unique resource, because there's so much that you can get from it. And there are schools that do a better job than others. My alma mater, one of my alma maters, St Lawrence, great school, liberal arts school, really good in the financial services area. A lot of people go to Wall Street. They were awful when it came to business development. But now here we are, many decades later, and they're starting these entrepreneurial venture clubs. I'm like, it's about time, right? I got my MBA Babson. Now Babson is known as the place for entrepreneurship, and they have a lot of different resources, events and faculty that will work with you and external partners, alumni. But it's not the only place, and Babson is kind of a different environment. We have places like Suffolk right and northeastern and BU and BC right here in the city. We've all gone to extensive lengths to create these communities. So, you know, students at Suffolk can come to an event like this and be exposed to 789, 1000 people in the environment that they wouldn't have known about otherwise. And so I have students afterward telling me, I met the guy, and we're going to do this, and we're going to create this new venture going to do that. And where I met a team, I went over to one of the job sharing sites and found this venture that I'm going to jump in on. I mean, it's really interesting, when you provide just open the door. We also have access to alumni. We bring alumni in to speak in classes. We have angels and VCs on our staff teaching as well as alumni. And so we make those connections all the time, partners, right? So one of the big things a lot of students ask me here is, I need access to engineers, software, hardware, whatever. And I'm like, Okay, so I'm in a weird spot where I can actually make those bridges. We have a College of Arts and Sciences here with a software development program, but I also have connections back to WPI and to other schools, and it's like, you know, you just it's networking, right? And College gives you a network that you would be hard pressed to duplicate otherwise. And Sean Lane 24:50 I also think that the macro theme of everything you just said, and all the examples you gave are instances where you're able to make what could be a very theoretical. Actual academic environment more practical and more real for the students who are taking advantage of it, right? Because it's awesome to learn about, you know, development or sales or go to market or marketing, whatever. It's way different to be like, hey, this campaign's got to go out the door in two weeks. What are the things that we need to do to work backwards from September 20 to today to get this thing out the door. And I think that's probably where, you know, people might think that a MBA program or an academic environment might fall short, but you all have really thoughtfully embedded those into the program itself, into Shari Worthington 25:36 everything, and it's very interesting you bring that up. So when I got my MBA. I got it part time, and I was a product manager in the computer industry, so that's where I spent my first 10 years. So I come in with a couple of years experience as a product manager like I need my MBA to really understand more about what I'm doing. Almost every class I was in I got into arguments with my professors. This isn't practical enough. Why are you teaching me this theory? Oh, great, that's fine, but you need to take it to the next step. And so this is way back then. I'm sure it's changed since then, but you know, back then, the classroom was purely academic theory. Here's what we've learned, and not now. Here's how to put it to work, and here's how to make those connections for yourself and help you take that next step. So I'm sure that there's some interesting professors who might have interesting thoughts about me, but I did. I argued with them all about that, but then I got out here and I'm like, I am not going to do it that way, right? And luckily, I work with a team here. The entrepreneurship department at Suffolk is amazing, and many of us have that drive to make sure it's easy to create the path from the classroom in the classroom to outside. So within the classroom, we're doing events. So for instance, we have a new course here on innovative teaming. So half of the class, all students, have to take it. Half of the class is team management, how to put together a team, how to innovate the team, how to work through the ups and downs of teams. We all have to work in teams. It's not always pretty. And then the second of the class is entrepreneurship. So entrepreneurial mindset, how do we apply creativity, innovation, passion, persistence, all these things in an actual, you know, in the environment? So we take what they've learned kind of academically with a little bit of hands on experience, and then we put them through a startup in residence event where we bring in in the classroom, we bring in five to 10 founders, and do a networking session right there with the students. You know, make it or break it, you're gonna have to give your pitch and all this. We also do an improv session in class. So we bring improv asylum in, and we have Steven Donovan, one of their people is great. He comes in, and we spend an hour and a quarter doing improv, kind of business improv, but it's a mixture of just thinking on your feet, business wise, he'll put people up at the front of the classroom and say, Okay, you're gonna launch a new product. What's the name of the product? Okay, you don't launch product. Who's the target market. And they just spur the moment. You have to come up with it. We also, at the end of the class, we do this several different ways. Here at Suffolk, we do a design a THON. So, you know, hack a THON, put everybody in a big stadium, and then you've got to come up with a way to solve a problem. Well, this is a design a THON. So we bring a client in, and they give us a problem that nobody knew about ahead of time, right? And now you've got a problem, and now you've got four to five hours to solve it, and then come up with a really great pitch that you can give at the end to the client, and then we give up prizes and all that stuff. So we're bringing all of that right into the classroom and then through the Entrepreneurship Center, making those external connections even more deep. Sherry's Sean Lane 28:38 explanation here just furthers her earlier point that these founders are not all knowing beings. They have strengths and weaknesses, superpowers and blind spots, and I think of all the exercises her students go through, they're almost designed to expose students to the things they don't know they don't know. For example, more technical or product minded founders might not have a natural tendency to think about marketing or go to market execution. I found something to this effect when I was reading some of Sherry's work before our interview. Here's what she wrote on the topic of what she calls entrepreneurial marketing. Quote, competence in entrepreneurial marketing is demonstrated by the ability of the marketer to implement a vision based on the creation of value. The marketer must master the value creation process and then find ways to gather the resources that will create such value. Yet, Business School graduates tend to lack many types of entrepreneurial skills, including entrepreneurial marketing. A deficiency in entrepreneurial marketing skills has been found to be one of the leading causes of entrepreneurial failure. All right, so I asked Sherry, if a founder can recognize this gap in their own abilities, how do they overcome it? Entrepreneurial Marketing Shari Worthington 29:54 is an interesting case example, because they might not be the founders of the firm, right? They may actually. US be all right, you were brought in to lead this team, and you're one of the, you know, the management staff. Let me go back to So the difference between marketing and entrepreneurial. Marketing really comes down to creativity and innovation, thinking on your feet, and the pivoting fast, you know, failing fast, pivoting, learning as you go. It's a mindset. And really, what we teach here, we certainly teach actual entrepreneurship and how to do things, how to write a business plan, financial statement, but entrepreneurial mindset is the bottom, the base, the core of all of this. So can I think? And I really like to break it down into five pieces. There's creativity, and how you harness your creativity to actually turn that into innovations. If you're not innovating, you're likely to fail, right? If you're not doing something new and different, you're not going to go very far. You're going to end up competing on price, and that's an ugly place, and I've seen way too many companies do that. But then there's also the, what I call the three P's of entrepreneurship, which is passion, right? What it really drives you persistence, right? And that's really about grit, right? And can you really keep going through the ups and downs, but understand the difference between persisting in a reasonable manner versus persisting and ignoring all the outside feedback you're getting. There is a time when you have to maybe end what you're doing and start something new. And then the last one is pivoting, which, again, my favorite term. We all pivot all the time in everything that we do, right, family life, work life, it doesn't matter. We're pivoting all the time to try to make do. And there's an art to that right, that the recognizing the feedback, is it worthwhile? Is it something that's relevant to what I'm trying to do. And then do I pivot a little bit, or do I pivot a lot? 180 degree, 10 degrees. One of the interesting examples I saw was at a venture forum meeting where a bunch of entrepreneurship teams were brought in, so new ventures, they were in the process of launching them, and they had a bunch of serious investors there, right? Some people with lots of chops, and the student teams are presenting their ideas, and they would have been working on, you know, developing the further. And one of the teams got up and they were doing something in the restaurant industry, providing some kind of a service. And they got up there and they talked about what they'd found out from the customers. They said this, they said that and everything. Said, you need to pivot, right? I mean, I'm listening to this going, Oh, great. I can't wait to hear what they decided to put Not an inch of pivot, right, not a degree, right? They and then, so we're going to keep doing this. And I was stunned. I was like, how can people be so blinded to external feedback. But again, it's a level of is the persistence too much? And you end up with negative persistence versus positive persistence. And it's a trick to find, you know, kind of the final, I don't know, the gray area between the two, and how do I decide what makes sense and what doesn't? So there's a grit score out there. Angela Duckworth has done a study and you can get a grit score, and so it's out of five, zero to five. Mine's 4.4 right? So that's pretty high. And I think if I did it back when I was in college, they probably would have still been the same, because I remember me in the lab and keep going, you know, no matter what, but I have to now be cognizant of the fact that, well, gee, isn't that nice, but there's a negative side to that. So do I push things too far? Now, when it comes to my PhD and all the research I had to do, the persistence was a very good thing, right? You have to get through that no matter what, but there are times in your life where you have to say, Stop, like one of my ventures. So I have a fun but failed venture of the five, and it was so we had created a publication way back in the day. That was the first publication to cover where to find science and engineering stuff on the internet, before the web. All right, so this is going way back. So we had this publication, and I had engineers and scientists, my friends, mechanical engineers, electrical biochemistry, physics, you name it. And one of the people I was working with on that project, we were sitting around one day just talking, and we go, we should create a mouse pad. Remember mouse pads? Nobody uses them anymore, because we've got track pads or phones, but mouse pads, and we're like, oh, we should put the periodic table of the elements on this mouse pad for all our geeky friends, right? I mean, that's the ultimate geek toy. And so we did, right? So chemists would love it, all the science people would love it. So we created this mouse pad. It was really high quality mouse pad, and had the periodic table on it. It was great. We loved it. We're having so much fun, but it took us a little while to learn we were never going to make enough money. We are not going to make a profit on it, right? Because at the same time as we were doing this, Microsoft, Apple, AOL, were giving away mouse peasant, they were going out of style. And I'm like, well, even though people think this is cute, right, they're not willing to pay more than 1215, bucks for it. We can't make a profit or a small volume. We have to give it up. So again, that's a case where the persistence. Could have kept going, but I just would have lost more money. And I'm like, yeah, maybe not. Sean Lane 35:03 It's interesting. I feel like this is kind of true. Whenever you have this kind of codified list of principles or traits, all of them are lovely, but individually, one of them, in a vacuum, could be a problem, right? And so like, the grit and perseverance, persistence is, I think, a good example of that that like you could be the grittiest person in the world, but if you don't know when it's time to pivot, or when it is to be creative, or take these other ideas into consideration, it might not be. It'll be a weakness for you at that point, as opposed to a strength. The other thing that I wanted to make sure we talked about, because I think it's super interesting in an environment like where we're in today, and I know it's something you talk about a lot as this idea of serendipity in your career, right? And I would imagine there's probably some in some of the stories you've already told today, and there's some you know are all around us here today with the people we might meet you and I meeting in the first place, definitely a serendipitous moment, right? And so tell me why this is something that you talk about a lot, and take time out of your curriculum to make sure it's something that you're teaching your students about absolutely Shari Worthington 36:02 so this is a critical skill to learn. So being able to embrace serendipity. So serendipity, things happen all the time around you. Do you recognize that they're happening, and then do you stop and evaluate whether you should take advantage of it? A lot of people don't, and really, what this comes down to in terms of entrepreneurship and new ventures, is the core of everything. Entrepreneurship is not only the mindset, but do you have an opportunity that's worth pursuing? So we call that entrepreneurship opportunity recognition. So entrepreneurial opportunity recognition, do you have an opportunity that's worth pursuing? And we have to look at the desirability, right? Is there a market that really wants it? The feasibility, can we technically put it together and then the viability? Can we build a business around this that's eventually going to at least break even, if not, hopefully generate some profits? So this ability to recognize opportunities comes in many different forms. There's some people that purposely go out there and scan their industry, scan their environment, looking for gaps in the market, right? Is there a gap? I don't care what it is, but I just want to find where those holes in the market are. There's other people that are a little more happen, you know? Oh, whatever happens happens. But I am a firm believer that serendipity plays a big role in all of these right things are happening constantly. Are you actually noticing that they're happening? And I've gotten separate research on that one whole model and everything on that, so I'll give you an example. So I am an accidental entrepreneur, so serendipity has played a huge role in my career, and it ends up in the strange spot I am, but I love how it all ended up. So I started out as a science geek, didn't make enough money, accidentally ended up with a part time job in business. Before long, that turned into a product management role in a computer company. And then all of a sudden, the computer industry started to go through some shakeups. So I ended up starting my own agency, marketing agency, but I wasn't intending to do that permanently. So I was out interviewing for jobs, right? I was in turn around, that didn't turn around. And so I was interviewing for jobs, and you know, I got some offers. Like, yeah, that's not quite as much as I want. And it turns out that a number of the companies I was interviewing at would love to have me work for them, but they couldn't afford me. I was like, Well, how about if we do a few hours a week? So it's just kind of to fill in. While I was interviewing. Two years later, I turn around and go, I have to hire somebody. Holy cow, this is now a career. So it's just, you know, accidental things, opportunities to come up. So again, serendipity during those interviews. Do you stop and think, Well, maybe it's not going to be a full time job. Look at it more creatively, you know, with a wider view, maybe it's something short term, something number of hours, whatever. And then with my business right opportunities, I happened to run into a client, a client complained that Apple Computer was not helping them as much as they wanted. They were creating peripherals for Macs back in the day, and Apple wasn't helping them so much that they wanted. And I said, What if we create an organization that brings all sorts of developers together to then work with Apple, and now you've got a bigger impact, because there's a lot of you versus Big Apple. And so all of a sudden, this created a new opportunity, and that led to my publication, and then this silly mouse pad business. And then at one point, not the best of times, but I ended up getting divorced. I was like, Oh, this is sad. I want to do something new in my life. And it just so happened, WPI had come to me and said, You need to teach here. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? Didn't pay well enough? I'm like, no, no, schools don't pay well enough. I'm not going to do that. But they talked me into because I want to do something different. So I went in as an adjunct, and then I was like, Oh, I really like this. I was told once, long ago, in a seminar series I was doing for small business owners, trying to find what you're really good at and what you love, what you're passionate about, one of the things that popped up on my list was public speaking. Like, what I don't know, turns out teaching is. Really kind of performance art, and you're doing all this speaking to the class, and it's a lot of fun. And then along the way, one of my colleagues turned to me and said, You really should get your PhD. And I'm like, Are you crazy how old I am? And i Turns out it was a brilliant move, and I ended up with two full time jobs, right? Sean Lane 40:15 It's an amazing story and an amazing path that you've taken. How do you teach people to lean into the right kind of serendipity. And I frame it that way, because here's what I want to be cautious about, what people might take away from the story you just told, saying yes to everything might not be the best path, right? Looking for those moments amazing. Completely agree with you. But then I think you can take that too far, and all of a sudden you're spending time. And I ask this honestly as a selfish question for myself too, like there might be things that I say yes to that are not going to necessarily be revenue generating activities for me, right? And so how do you teach people to lean into serendipity, but be careful about the balance of how they spend their time? Because if you're just saying yes to everything and showing up to everything, you might not end up with a real direction at the end of that. Does that make sense? It absolutely Shari Worthington 41:06 does. And it's interesting that you asked that, because I never really thought of my story in this way. But if you look at how I transitioned, my transition into the computer industry was a part time job, I could walk away from that at any time. My transition into education was an adjunct, right? I can walk away from that at any time. You're just teaching one or two courses, right? And so the PhD was a whole different thing that one you're in or you're not right. And there's a saying about when you get your PhD, if you don't cry when you're getting your PhD, you're doing it wrong. I can tell you that is absolutely the truth. You did it right. But, but it really is about, you know, taking a reasonable approach to how you do it. You want to embrace opportunities, but you also don't want to dive down into the rabbit hole, right? And you get lost and something like that. So I just happened to have embraced mine in ways that I could back out if they didn't work out, but once I found out they did work out, I dove in. So here's one of the ways I have my students experiment with this, is I challenge them in my design thinking class to do things differently, change your routine. We all get caught in these routines, habits and also knowledge corridors. Here's what I've know. I've learned really well, and I'm going to stick to that, because I'm good at that, but that then, you know, you now have a problem getting, you know, how do I be more creative when I'm stuck in this one path? So I challenge my design thinking students to walk to class in a different path for the next couple of weeks, and also do it differently, right? Notice what's going on around you. And, you know, just kind of see what happens. So one of my students came in the next class and was so excited, right? He's like, you're not gonna leave. What happened? So I walked a different way to class. I took off my earbuds and I put my phone away, and I just kind of wandered down the street. I literally ran into Jaylen Brown. Literally ran into him look up, and I go, Oh my God, that's Jalen Brown. And Jalen brown leans out. Hey, how you doing? And the student was like, flying high for the next week. He was like, I tell this story all the time because he still, as I saw him recently, he's like, I still can't believe that happened. And he said, If I had been on my phone with my butts in I would have been one of those bumps that we do all the time, and you never would have stopped to look. So I challenge people to at least start by getting outside of your routine. Do things a little bit differently, challenge yourself, drive to work a different way, drive to the grocery store. It doesn't take much to just start you on this different path, and you start noticing things you didn't notice before. For our Sean Lane 43:34 non Boston listeners, Jalen Brown is the NBA champion from the Boston Celtics and rainy NBA Finals, MVP, which, if you're in college and you bump into on the streets of Boston, is basically as good as it gets. It is as good Shari Worthington 43:45 as it gets. You pass out at that point. Sean Lane 43:55 Before we go, at the end of each show, we're gonna ask each guest the same lightning round of questions ready? Here we go. Best book you've read in the last six months? Oh, Shari Worthington 44:07 wow. I read a lot of books. I have two, one that I reread and one that so the midnight library on the fiction side, I've read that. I love that book, but I'm not as much of a fan of his other books. So Matt, I don't know what's going on, but midlife, Robert was brilliant. And then on the non fiction side, Nicholas Carr, C, A, R, R writes for The Atlantic. It is called, oh, what is the book? It's based on the article he wrote in The Atlantic called is Google making us stupid? And it really is about the internet and our obsession with phones and social media, the internet, all these things. And what that's literally doing, it's changing the way our brains work. So it's changing pathways, and not necessarily in a good way. Sean Lane 44:51 Check that one out. Yeah. Normally ask ops folks their favorite part about working in ops. You're half practitioner, half academic. You qualify favorite part. Working in OPS, I Shari Worthington 45:01 got to say, working with students, it is so exciting and it's so invigorating. And I'm learning all the time. As soon as I step into the classroom, I'm going to learn something new from these kids that you know, all their experiences, all their learning and their joy that they bring to the classroom. And not all of them, everybody you know, some people like you know, all right, we'll see. But most of them come in very excited. I had a kid in one of my classes come up to me and introduce himself and go. My sister just got this job. She's trying to think, you know, does she need to get an MBA or a master's in science or a PhD? So we just had this whole new discussion. And I was like, wow, I never thought about that before. Sean Lane 45:35 Flip Side, least favorite part about working in OPS Shari Worthington 45:40 paperwork, Sean Lane 45:42 that's a good answer. That's a good answer. Someone who impacted you getting to the job you have today. Speaking of serendipity, Shari Worthington 45:48 yeah, that's interesting. And I gotta say, I interviewed here at Suffolk twice. So the first time I did not get the job, but I remembered them well. And the second time I came in, actually, they came after me the second time when the job opened up. And even though I love the people that admit that, I gotta say it really is my mom. My mom gave me the optimistic outlook and the persistence and the willingness to admit when you're wrong and just embrace joy. So I still gotta go with my mom. That's Sean Lane 46:16 amazing. God bless her. Last one, one piece of advice for people who want to have your job someday. Oh, Shari Worthington 46:21 wow, you got to be willing to work long hours. So it's a lot of fun. I get a lot of joy out of this. But the bottom line is, if you're going to do two jobs, two full time jobs, which, by the way, I've always worked two jobs, one part time, one full time, I enjoy it. Two full time jobs is a challenge. Time management skills become paramount, but also you have to be willing to make choices prioritization. And I take one day a week for my personal life. Otherwise, I'm meeting all these other people and doing all these other things. Sean Lane 46:59 Thanks so much to Sherry for joining us on this week's episode of operations. Also, a special shout out to Stephanie and Samantha and the entire team at startup Boston week for letting us record the operations podcast there on the stage. Had an absolute blast. If you like what you heard today, make sure you're subscribed to our show. You get a new episode in your feed every other Friday. Also, if you learned something from Sherry Today, or from any of our guests, please leave a review on Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, six star reviews only. All right, that's gonna do it for me. Thanks so much for listening. We'll see you next time you.