| This is brilliant in a way that relates to commercial research in natural science too, generalizing some of the terms and focusing more toward business than academic life: 1. What difference will this work make if you succeed? a. Whose lives will be made better by this research?
-the client b. How will this improve upon what’s currently being done?
-the client will be more satisfied c. Why is this one of the most important questions in the field?
-because a valuable client asked that was easy d. Will it create a big policy change at some level (company, government)?
-if so it will be for the positive with consensus, otherwise no costly changes e. Will it inspire a new class of systems?
-would be good if it was worth building beyond clients' immediate needs 2. Who will care about it when you’re done?
-two clients would be better than one a. Will government agencies care?
-only in a beneficial way, when the FBI comes to your office you want to be their consultant not their suspect b. Will platforms and industry care?
-if you do projects which make them money, more fondness can be expected than if you cost them money c. Will non-commercial researchers care enough to recognize or benefit from it? d. Will non-commercial researchers care enough to teach it to their staff/students? e. Will anyone care about it 10, 20, 50 years in the future? 3. How will this change what other people (defined broadly) are doing? a. Will other researchers change what they’re working on after seeing your work? b. Will practitioners do something different? c. Will users adopt what you’ve made, found, created? d. Will authorities use what you’ve found to draft new requrements/specifications?
-unless no negative impact can be imagined, such a sensitive project might best be shelved until a time of more positive outlook Professor Gilbert has an _internal deadline_ 7 days more strict than the real publication cutoff, actually allowing for reduced stress and making higher Quality output possible in ways others may never achieve: >If the paper isn’t ready, we won’t submit it to that conference or journal deadline; we’ll submit it somewhere later. Naturally deadlines for being AT the conferences are not missed. I bet they can build anticipation about future presentations most accurately when this happens. |