This article was first published in www.yourstory.com on April 11, 2014
http://yourstory.com/2014/04/phd-scholar-entrepreneur/
I am a PhD in finance with a stable job and the
assurance of a fixed expected salary every month. My husband is an
entrepreneur, and worries daily about weather, inventory and changing prices.
To use a cliché, we are as different as chalk and cheese.
Yet, there is something that binds us. Our journeys.
His journey comprised of leaving a comfortable job and creating something of
his own. Mine comprised of devoting about six years of my life to doing a PhD,
after having already spent 19-20 years studying.
While doing a PhD is not often compared to being an
entrepreneur, there are more comparisons than meets the eyes.
The investment in terms of time and the opportunity
cost of not taking up (or leaving) a job is huge as the stipend paid to a PhD
student is far below what he or she would earn by working in the industry, just
as the first few years of an entrepreneur is spent thinking about every penny.
On top of it, the horror tales of endless hours one has to put in, the ever
shifting finishing line, and the failures dissuade many from taking up a PhD
program, just as the same reasons prevent many from leaving their jobs.
There are many who take up a PhD program but abandon it
midways. Excessive reading, long hours, low pay, when other batch mates from
graduation and post graduation days go for long foreign holidays and eat at expensive
places, wear expensive clothes, it keeps reminding you of the life that you
could have had! Sure enough, I keep reminding my husband of all the foreign
vacations that we could have had!
Then there are others who take it up and stick to it
till they finish. Once they decide to stick to the program, it does not take
long for them to realize that they have made an investment which would change
the way they think forever. The key is of course to get into a good PhD program
which gives you rigorous training. A startup’s story is pretty much the same.
Once it survives a few years, the chances of its success are high.
The coursework in a PhD program intellectually
stimulates, teaches one to learn beyond the superficial and to dig below the
surface. An entrepreneur goes beyond the theory and thinks out of the box to
reach its customers. He must always innovate and improvise.
Next comes the periods of independent study. Most of
the PhD programs have long periods of independent study, where the candidate is
given time to read, formulate the hypothesis, review the literature etc. It is
easy to keep postponing all this as there may not be anyone watching or asking
for progress at frequent intervals. Discipline and self-motivation is the key
here. Without discipline, one may take eight to nine or may be more years to
complete their thesis.
When I complain about the long hours that my husband
spends in the office, his reply is usually, “if I don’t do it, who will?” Since
an entrepreneur is his own boss, spending that extra hour in the office takes a
lot of motivation.
An important milestone is getting the proposal ready.
Curiosity to find something, to discover something new, or to fill an important
gap in the existing body of literature results in a good defendable proposal.
Some people are born curious but others acquire the curiosity when they
repeatedly read about a single topic and related work. Similarly, for the
entrepreneur, that first product or the first order is the most important
milestone. It can be the defining moment for the venture.
The process of writing a thesis is actually a process
of self discovery. The journey itself seems like the destination. The quest for
accuracy, for measurement and deduction, the single minded pursuit of data
collection, learning to write and run codes (which have become an integral part
of doing a PhD now a days) which one earlier thought one was never capable of
doing, are all activities which stretch the boundaries of learning.
An entrepreneur also discovers that while his core
competency might be marketing or finance, he is an office boy to a CEO, an
accountant to a strategist, all rolled into one.
Then comes the stage where the comments of the
supervisors, advisors and friends start coming in. Incorporating changes and going
through the drafts of the thesis numerous times needs patience. There is no
choice. If one does not have this trait, they simply have to acquire it, just
like an entrepreneur keeps revising his product and strategies as the business
progresses.
When the thesis is submitted after all the years of
hard work, the feeling is unbeatable. The defense of the thesis and the award
of the degree is the stepping stone to a career in academics and lifelong
learning. Similarly, when a venture succeeds, it brings immense joy and wealth
to the entrepreneur.
So, if you are passionate about something, either do a
PhD in it or become an entrepreneur with a venture revolving around your
passion!
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