Guy Kawasaki on Science
I’ve been thinking that science should pull from the expertise of other disciplines, like business, marketing, and PR in order to improve its public face. Science needs a new face, let’s find out how people view it and how to mold that image.
Along those lines, I asked businessman / marketing expert, Guy Kawasaki, a few questions. His answers are below:
1) What is science to you?
Science is cutting through the bull shiitake to find out how the world truly works.
2) As a businessman and entrepreneur, does science influence your actions? If so, how?
I would make the case that the computer and Internet exists because of science. Thus, science is the basis upon which all tech businesses are based. In particular, I love social sciences like psychology and sociology.
3) What aspects of science do you find most interesting or relevant?
I’m a pragmatist: anything that can improve marketing, sales, and evangelism and anything that can help engineers develop great products.
4) In your Twitter feed you make a point of linking to science stories on a regular basis, and you’ve included science round-ups in your blog. Which stories catch your attention and why?
Here’s what I do: I go to http://science.alltop.com/ and http://psychlogy.alltop.com/ and look for stories that people will retweet. That is, stories that are so compelling that people cannot resist spreading them.
A few day ago, for example, there was a story about how masturbation can help with allergies. Perhaps not the example you wanted to hear, but it was very popular. In general, tweets about science are very popular.
5) How well does the science section in your website, Alltop.com, perform compared to, say, tech or health? Is it popular, or is it niche?
Alas, it’s smaller than Tech, but I would not have 97,000 followers on Twitter without it, and Alltop would not be what it is without my Twitter following, so Science.alltop is very strategic for us.
6) How do you view the current state of science media in the US? What is good, and what could be improved?
I am not qualified to judge. I think it’s good, but I really don’t have any expertise to effectively answer this question.
7) How do you view the current state of science education? What is good, and what could be improved?
I’m not afraid of answering questions, but I just don’t know. Your readers should appreciate a marketing person who knows what he doesn’t know. I would be a hypocrite to say how much I like to find the truth and then go spouting off about topics that I don’t comprehend.
8 ) Do you have any PR or marketing advice for science?
This I know. Scientists should be thinking “push” as in pushing out the value and wonder of science. Waiting for the inherent wonderfulness to “pull’ people in is a risky proposition. Therefore, science needs science evangelists who “spread the good news” to the people. Contrary to the field of dreams theory, good stuff is still “sold,” not “bought.”
The immediate challenge is that in a recession, there’s not much patience for science that is years from appearing as a product or service. Everyone is thinking about a six to twelve month time-to-market strategy. This is unfortunate, but a fact of life these days.
However, I predict that thirty years from now, we’ll look back on the first twenty years of this century and say, “Wow, who would have thought that science could fix so many fundamental problems like energy, pollution, and health so fast.”
If science could get us off oil, its marketing and PR would rock for quite a while. This would be a bigger deal than getting a man on the moon, and that was a very big deal for science.
Guy Kawasaki is a founding partner and entrepreneur-in-residence at Garage Technology Ventures. He is also the co-founder of Alltop.com, an “online magazine rack” of popular topics on the web. Previously, he was an Apple Fellow at Apple Computer, Inc. Guy is the author of nine books including Reality Check, The Art of the Start, Rules for Revolutionaries, How to Drive Your Competition Crazy, Selling the Dream, and The Macintosh Way. He has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
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I’m sorry, this is just TOO funny not to comment:
1) Find link to masturbation research.
2) Tweet it.
3) Watch it spread.
4) Conclude that people are interested in science.
Am I the only one who sees a disconnect here? 😉
Great post! Love the comment that Science is the basis/progenitor of Technology – I think this relationship sometimes gets lost in the race to create the next, greatest tech innovation.
As innovation cycles accelerate, the lag time between scientific discovery and technological application will be getting smaller – making pure science increasing relevant to our daily lives.
We should start promoting Science now.
@Ike
It may not mean people ARE interested in science, but it is a great sneaky way to seduce people into the realm of science. So to speak. 🙂
Extremely valuable information in this interview: status of Alltop.com’s science section. It means someone, or a collection of someones has the opportunity to step to the plate and fill a niche.
Alltop.com is becoming a major player in the blogging world, and accruing a lot of “authority” with Google, meaning that the science blogger who makes an effort to stand out here will likely see their own blog’s authority rise in the search engines.
“Scientists should be thinking “push” as in pushing out the value and wonder of science. Waiting for the inherent wonderfulness to “pull’ people in is a risky proposition.”
Yes. OMG yes.
What I keep hearing from scientists, labs, universities, and many bloggers: “people just aren’t that interested”, or “if we put up a bunch of videos people will watch them”, or “well we HAVE a website…!” *ahem*CIRM*ahem
The world doesn’t work that way. Only scientists and engineers go out in search of new information. Everyone else has a zillion other things they’ll go out in search of first, and they need science information to come to them already formatted to fit into their lives.
But everyone is different; there is no one-size-fits-all format of science info that will get the knowledge into people’s heads.
That’s why science needs to be told in stories, and filtered through thousands blogs written in a friendly and “localized” tone, and popularized through radio, video, and everywhere else. It needs to be a part of the quilt of culture, not just “out there”.
I am passionate about this and that’s why I’m starting my Subversive Science radio show. 🙂
Dr Sanford, great idea for an interview.
Naomi, my dream growing up was to be a science journalist. I tried majoring in geology to give me the broadest grounding in as many sciences as possible, but the school wouldn’t let me go without a marketable focus.
Science needs STORYTELLERS. It does not need frat-boy level stunt humor.
Great writing engages and attracts, and there are more than enough compelling stories waiting to be told — and some wonderful analogies to craft along the way to increase overall scientific understanding.
We’re not going to get there sinking to the level of fart jokes and calling it high art.