Chapter 30 Chapter 29: Seeing Opportunities Imminent (2)

After the first book was published, I found out that the publisher did very little to promote the book.So I decided to start a company dedicated to increasing the visibility of writers' work, but also to help readers understand the books on the market and provide them with content that interests them.This time, many people asked me how I came up with the idea of ​​starting a company.Starting a business is obviously a challenge for me, but I believe I can pull it off. I founded Book Browser in 1991, years before the internet.My idea is to build a book search system for bookstore customers based on the newsstand.I designed the system model on my Apple computer with Hypercard software (Hypercard, a software that allows users to establish "card" to "card" links, similar to the popular links used on the Internet today). Through this software, readers can View links to books by an author, title, or category.I visited local bookstores and talked to bookstore managers about bringing the kiosk into the bookstore; I also approached a number of publishers and asked if they would be interested in adding books to my system.Convinced that the idea was sound, I hired a programming team to create the software system.Nobody told me I could do it, I should do it... I just did it, that's all.

see the opportunity close at hand Slowly, I gradually discovered that there are two types of people in the world: one kind of people needs permission from others to do what they want, and the other kind of people approves themselves.That said, some people look for motivation within themselves, while others wait for external forces to push them forward.From personal experience, there are countless benefits to being proactive and seizing opportunities, rather than waiting for others to deliver them.There are always many gaps around waiting to be filled. Opportunities are like scattered gold nuggets lying on the ground waiting for someone who wants to pick them up.Sometimes it is as simple as looking up from your desk, looking further afield, or looking out of a house, or across a residence, or across a street, or around a corner, to see the void. , found gold nuggets.However, only if you are willing to pick up the gold nugget can you really hold it in your hands.

That's exactly what Paul York, director of Stanford University's Biodesign Initiative, discovered.Paul's research base is located in the School of Medicine, just across the street from the School of Engineering.About 10 years ago, Paul discovered that Stanford had lost many opportunities to invent new medical technologies because it did not create conditions for teachers and students from the School of Medicine and the School of Engineering to work together.Medical personnel, including doctors, medical students, and scientific researchers, need engineers to help design new products and new processes to improve medical care; while engineering personnel across the street are hoping to find urgent problems to be solved so that they can flex their muscles.So the leaders of both sides got together and spent several months discussing ways to cooperate.The negotiation process is complicated by the fact that medical schools and engineering schools work differently and use very different terminology.In the end, they finally devised a plan, and the Biodesign Project was born.During the same period, Paul's colleagues in other medical and technical professions formed similar partnerships, all of which eventually came together under one larger group called BioX.This plan is so ambitious, so it took several years to form the current interdisciplinary cooperation and fruitful research results.A new building was built between the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Engineering as a research base.What this story reveals is that sometimes opportunity is just across the street—you just have to look up a little to see it.No one told Paul to do this, but he saw the need and went to fill the void.