Business, Innovation and Managing Life (November 27, 2024)

The Stephen Wolfram Podcast

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business, innovation, and managing life as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa

Questions include: If your last name was something like Smith, would you still have named your company after your name or gone with something different? How does one decide that? Are there certain criteria to fit so there aren't a bunch of "Smith" companies? - Actually, now that I think about it, it's strange we don't have a dozen "Einstein" incorporations. - Reminds me of the old Dilbert series where the pointy-haired boss says "The name of the project is the most important thing!" before they even know what the product will be. - So a name is like a joke: if you have to explain it, then it does not work? - ​​Little like "complex numbers." Just the name sounds scary to students. - Can names be copyrighted? - What role does AI play in brainstorming or generating company names? Will AIs start naming and running their own company? - With a name like Wolfram, people will think physics. Wolfram is becoming synonymous with cutting-edge physics. - Are there any specific naming conventions or patterns that tend to perform well in the tech industry? - Have you tried asking an LLM for business advice? - Do you think trends in naming, like all the "-ify" startups, will hurt a brand in the long run? - What advice would you give to a computer scientist that wants to pursue synthetic biology? - That's important to have a way to gauge biological evolution as a state of increasing complexity. - How do you determine how innovative something is? What are the key criteria for assessing innovation? - What's the best way to test a business idea before going all in? - I have experienced trouble at university learning electrical engineering. I can now understand the intent to teach the intuition in EE is not translated to coherent actions by the teachers. What are the pitfalls experts should avoid in order to maximize the quality of their teaching? - I've always wanted to sequence my genome! Its amazing we have made this possible!