Collaboratory for Individual Resilience and Uncertainty Management
The Collaboratory for Individual Resilience and Uncertainty Management (CIRUM, pronounced "serum") is a joint research effort between the Stanford University Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness (https://sdgc.stanford.edu), the IE Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center (https://www.ie.edu/entrepreneurship/), and the University of California, Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (https://scet.berkeley.edu/).
Silicon Valley is known world-wide as home to risk-seeking entrepreneurs, financiers, and corporate leaders looking to disrupt the status quo. The high risk associated with entrepreneurship and innovation stems from the near impossibility to foresee and mitigate all of the risks that threaten a startup or disruptive innovation. These risks include technological risk, market risk, financial risk, regulatory risk, competitive risk, and personnel risk, just to name a few. Over and over, we have found that successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and founders posses two fundamental ingredients; (i) a risk-taking entrepreneurial mindset, which is buttressed with (ii) a robust entrepreneurial skillset.
Objective
The Collaboratory for Individual Resilience and Uncertainty Management (CIRUM) is focused on the development of tools to help individuals understand, quantifying, and manage their mindset for entrepreneurial and innovative risk-taking. Over a decade of research has indicated that, in most cases, an individual's propensity for risk-taking and comfort with uncertainty are independent with regard to their personal life and their professional life. Thus, it is our objective to create, test, validate, and publish new methods and tools that quantify a person’s level of comfort with uncertainty, emotional intelligence, and other specific innovation and entrepreneurial traits in both their personal life and professional life. This quantification is done using the "PW Scale", first proposed by the Applied Innovation Institute.
As seen in the figure, an individual's "PW" is comprised of a personal-life component (P) and a work-life component (W). Both of these components are associated with a numerical value from 1 to 4. Individuals with lower numerical scores are more comfortable with certainty. Individuals with higher numerical scores are more comfortable with uncertainty. The scores "P1" to "P4" refer to an individual's level of comfort with uncertainty in their personal life. A individual with a score of "P1" strongly dislikes any form of uncertainty in their personal life. An individual with a score of "P4" is very comfortable with uncertainty in their personal life. Similarly, individuals with a score of "W1" strongly dislike uncertainty in their professional life, while individuals with a score of "W4" are very comfortable with uncertainty in their professional life.
Every individual possesses a combination of these scores (i.e., P1W4), which is ultiamtely expressed as a unique innovation style and entreprenurial mindset. Once again, over a decade of research has indicated that, in most cases, risk-taking and comfort with uncertainty on the P and W scales are independent variables for any individual. Further, there may be a specific set of PW score "couples" are a strong indicator of an individual possessing the risk-taking mindset necessary for entrepreneurial success or as a disruptive innovator.
Description and Collaboratory Partners
As described by William A. Wulf in 1989 a collaboratory is "a center without walls, in which the nation's researchers can perform their research without regard to physical location - interacting with colleagues, accessing instrumentation, sharing data and computational resources, [and] accessing information in digital libraries." (Wulf, W.A. (1993) "The Collaboratory Opportunity" Science 261(5123):854-856) Recent research has concluded that the "collaborative learning laboratory model, the 'Collaboratory', expands and enhances procedures and practices, filling gaps between the technical and non-technical issues...via virtual and remote telecommunications in reliable and synergistic ways." (Handman, D., & Albert, R. (2017). "The Collaboratory Experience" Journal of The Colloquium for Information System Security Education 4(2):1-11). Thus, the Collaboratory for Individual Resilience and Uncertainty Management (CIRUM, pronounced "serum") is an international research "center without walls" bringing together expertise in the fields of innovation, entrepreneurship, and cross-cultural learning and knowledge management.
Stanford University Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness
The Stanford University Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness engages in multidisciplinary research that advances sustainable practices across multiple cultures, businesses, industries and economies. The Center's researchers strive to learn more about the cross-cultural implications of globalized growth and the implementation of strategies to facilitate sustainably sound development. SDGC looks to develop a better understanding of cross-culture and multidisciplinary based learning, decision making, and leadership development. Its focus is on how to more efficiently and effectively foster innovation and to develop better leadership. The goal of such research is to facilitate a conversation focusing on organizational decision making and behavior in an interdisciplinary (but disciplined) and cross-cultural fashion, considering today’s global networked society. The intention is scientific, to explore disciplinary and cultural differences in order to identify fundamental commonalities in processes of innovation. Stanford Researchers: Dr. Jie Wang and Professor Michael D Lepech
IE Entrepreneurshp and Innovation Center
The IE Business School, located in Madrid, Spain, was founded in 1973 by a group of ambitious entrepreneurs. These individuals set the tone for what IE Business School would become—a dynamic institution committed to innovation, disruption, and above all, entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is part of the school's DNA and it is that entrepreneurial spirit that defines it.The IE Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center (https://www.ie.edu/entrepreneurship/) has a mission to support the development and consolidation of IE student and alumni start-up companies, both in Spain and abroad. The Center are also proud to provide financial support to those initiatives seeking to make an impact on society by promoting positive growth and social change. IE Business School Researchers: Professor Paris de L'etraz
University of California, Berkeley Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology
The Pantas and Ting Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (https://scet.berkeley.edu/) is the premier institution at UC Berkeley for the study and practice of entrepreneurship and technology innovation. Since 2005, SCET has created the foundation of Berkeley’s entrepreneurship ecosystem including SkyDeck, the Fung Institute, the Engineering Leadership Professional Program, Global Venture Lab, and an extensive ecosystem of Silicon Valley and Global partners. The Center is also known for developing the Berkeley Method, an internationally recognized approach to teaching technology entrepreneurship to undergraduates, innovation to Ph.D. students, and technology firm leadership to professionals and executives. As part of the Berkeley innovation ecosystem, the Sutardja Center also collaborates closely with Berkeley's Jacob’s Institute for Design, the Haas Business School, and the CITRIS Foundry. University of California, Berkeley Researchers: Professor Ikhlaq Sidhu