To stay on the cutting edge, Palmer Luckey reads academic literature across many fields. He argues that academics effectively survey the state-of-the-art and identify key players and new approaches. While their own work may not be practical, their research provides a reliable, consolidated signal of innovation.
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With industry dominating large-scale model training, academia’s comparative advantage has shifted. Its focus should be on exploring high-risk, unconventional concepts like new algorithms and hardware-aligned architectures that commercial labs, focused on near-term ROI, cannot prioritize.
Top entrepreneurs don't just build a product; they become historians of their domain. They study predecessors, understand market evolution, and learn from past attempts. This deep historical knowledge, seen in founders of Stripe and Airbnb, is a key differentiator and trait of the very best.
A common trait among exceptional founders is a deep, almost academic, understanding of their industry's history. They learn from every past attempt, success, and failure. This historical context allows them to innovate with a unique perspective and avoid the pitfalls that doomed their predecessors, a sign of true commitment and expertise.
Instead of a linear handoff, Google fosters a continuous loop where real-world problems inspire research, which is then applied to products. This application, in turn, generates the next set of research questions, creating a self-reinforcing cycle that accelerates breakthroughs.
While domain experts are great at creating incremental improvements, true exponential disruption often comes from founders outside an industry. Their fresh perspective allows them to challenge core assumptions and apply learnings from other fields.
Asset managers can avoid recycling old ideas by running a parallel institutional research service. The need to deliver fresh ideas to sophisticated, paying clients who challenge assumptions creates a powerful forcing function for continuous, contrarian idea generation that benefits the asset management side.
Luckey's invention method involves researching historical concepts discarded because enabling technology was inadequate. With modern advancements, these old ideas become powerful breakthroughs. The Oculus Rift's success stemmed from applying modern GPUs to a 1980s NASA technique that was previously too computationally expensive.
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Truly great ideas are rarely original; they are built upon previous work. Instead of just studying your heroes like Buffett or Jobs, research who *they* studied (e.g., Henry Singleton, Edwin Land). This intellectual genealogy uncovers the timeless, foundational principles they applied.
Early-stage MedTech founders should deeply study existing patents in their field. This research goes beyond ensuring freedom to operate; it provides a strategic map of the competitive landscape, revealing opportunities for iteration, new combinations, and a stronger foundation for future filings.
Cohere's CEO believes if Google had hidden the Transformer paper, another team would have created it within 18 months. Key ideas were already circulating in the research community, making the discovery a matter of synthesis whose time had come, rather than a singular stroke of genius.
