This semester I'm taking my first MBA class at UC Berkeley: Impact Startup Launchpad. I've always wanted to pursue a technology startup that is at the intersection of my intellectual interests (optics, imaging) and some social good (ex: womens' diagnostics, environmental monitoring, etc). My hope is that this class will teach me the framework and establish the connections I will need to later pursue this dream post-Ph.D.
This week, we are undergoing the brainstorming phase of choosing which problem to tackle. The rest of the semester, we will undertake problem discovery and solution validation (more on that later).
Figure 1: Visual Map of Impact Wishes
After brainstorming several potential "wishes", I narrowed down to my top three:
1. I wish women in rural areas had improved access to diagnostics and treatment. (WOMEN)
2. I wish orphans (in India) and foster children (in the US) had access to education in a safe, encouraging environment. (CHILDREN)
3. I wish seniors could be matched with local youth students to help them with daily living and companionship. (SENIORS & YOUTH)
However I'm caught between choosing one of the first two. The first wish is likely more relevant to my Ph.D. research in computational imaging...which is kind of why I'm more inclined to it. It's a little bit more of my research solution looking for a problem that it can fit. Normally, this is frowned upon in the startup world as there are too many engineers fitting their "solutions" into problems that don't exist. But sometimes it can work. One example is actually in my research case. Let's dig in below.
My engineering research lab at UC Berkeley works in a field called computational imaging - this is the intersection of hardware and algorithms to push the capabilities of what we can see. And in order to understand the world, we first need to be able to see it. This is where our research comes in. The lab historically has an expertise in biological microscopy, i.e. enabling biologists to make discoveries by improving the imaging tools at their disposal.
I'm working on a project that enables "spectral imaging" in a - which is basically resolving the colors (or light spectrum) that biological samples light up (fluoresce) with more finely. We originally pursued this "solution" for its intellectual intrigue. My advisor then shared our publication with the wider Chan Zuckerberg BioHub network. We received a response from another investigator in the network who has some novel samples but no easy way to image them. And so my current project is applying our current solution to this investigator's problem.
I'm wondering if I can follow a similar model through the course of this class. This pathway would be: propose a technological solution and see who out there has a problem it could fit to. But I think that requires two things: 1. access to a diverse but relevant population of "problem clients". 2. A shared language or understanding of what the solution can do and what the problem requires. The above example fit these two requirements - the BioHub consists of scientists who share a common background in engineering and work on adjacent areas geared towards eradicating disease. This works in research, but is more difficult to implement in the real world.
Another path is to form a hypothesis of what your technology can solve. And then embark on the problem discovery journey to understand if that's actually the case. My worry here is - what if the answer is the technology doesn't fit? Do you abandon the technology? Or adapt it to the problem? Or simply start over and choose another problem?
The more common path which seems to be encouraged in this class is starting with a passion area or problem. Then learn as much as you can about the root cause, unmet need, and form a solution around that. Pursuing my second wish would go down this path. When I was a kid, I remember lying awake in bed worrying about this problem. I know very little about parent-less children and would learn a great deal. But it won't capitalize on my knowledge and expertise in electrical engineering, medical devices, sensing and imaging.
So! This is the crossroads I'm currently at.
--- Update Dec 2021 ---
I decided to pursue a journey exploring how womens' health and diagnostics could be improved through microscopes, pathology, and imaging. I spoke with a dozen stakeholders from gynecologists, pathologists, to patients. My final presentation on: making cervical cancer screening more accessible to mobile clinics by using on-site (phase-imaging) microscopes that required no sample prep. Thank you to all my interviewees and the class staff for their guidance!
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