Things I learn about industry vs academia

Sharing some thoughts about industry vs academia (in robotics) that I've learned since working as a robotics engineer in industry.

Industry - vs Academia (in robotics) [part 1]

Most students who work in the field of robotics probably wonder what it is like to work in the robotics industry. Here are some thoughts I want to share after my first 1-on-1 with a new graduate (PhD) who joined our team this week as an applied scientist. One way of thinking is to treat both cases as “running a business,” with the idea that “the goal of a business is to provide value to their customers.”

With this mindset, I see working in academia (for the first 5 years), e.g., as a professor, in robotics as growing a startup. The principal investigator (PI), i.e., the professor, is the owner/CEO of the research lab. As with any other startups out there, the goal of the lab is to grow quickly to a sustainable state. This requires the PI and the students to build reputation and impact in their community. Once the lab reaches that state, it is on the PI to decide what the lab should ultimately become, i.e., landing on a more matured business model.

With this "business" concept as a common ground, we can start to compare industry versus academia in robotics. There are three main topics I want to highlight: value, customer, and growth. (Note that I'm not trying to judge which one is better.)

value

• Industry

  • Industrial robotics businesses often deliver value in two ways, through service or products. Take Amazon as an example - the robots that move around in their warehouses speed up the package handling process, improving the delivery service for Amazon's customers. On the other hand, robotic manipulator companies like FANUC, ABB, KUKA, YASKAWA, etc. build robots as a product and sell them to their customers. These values also correlate with a simple and measurable metric: money. This metric works for both the business side and the customer side. For example, customers can measure how much cost they save by buying several robots. Having a clear metric is crucial to building an effective feedback mechanism that can help steer the growth of the business.

  • Other values, such as customer satisfaction, require more effort to evaluate. However, industrial robotics businesses are more likely to have the resources, i.e., dedicated employees and customer networks, to collect data and use that to help steer the growth of the business as well.

• Research labs also deliver values in two ways, talent and innovation. The talents, i.e., undergraduates, master's students, PhDs, and postdocs, that a lab cultivates are extremely valuable to both industry and academia. The innovations, i.e., research papers and design prototypes, also have the potential to have a positive impact on the society. The biggest difference, however, is the absence of metrics to evaluate the actual value. One of the “indicators” is citation count. The idea behind this is that more people will cite a paper if they find it delivers value to them. Still, most PIs prefer not to let citation numbers heavily influence their lab’s research direction. While citations reflect the current community’s response to the research work, many research projects are forward-looking and may not be immediately recognized for their value. An excessive focus on citations can hinder the development of long-term vision and potentially groundbreaking research.

Again, my goal here is to describe two different environments. I can see that different people will have different preferences. I'm just listing out my subjective observations, but I hope they are useful for you. :)

(I notice I’m running out of space! I’ll leave the other two, customer and growth, until next time!)

Others - YouTube channels that I follow

In this “YouTube channels that I follow” sections. I’ll share some of my favorite YouTube channels :)

This week is Lindsay (@xiao_lin_shuo) [YouTube link].

Leveraging her background in business and economics, Lin explains the abstruse principles of economics and the complex situations in the business market in an easy-to-understand and engaging manner (she is really funny and I also learn so much from her). Her recent video on Singapore economics [link] are interesting.

Obviously, her content is in Mandarin, which makes it less accessible (you can still try auto-subtitles). (This is the only non-English YouTube channel I plan to talk about. So bear with me.) One interesting thing about her channel is that most of her video views are more than 50% of her subscriber count. That suggests her video content and quality are pretty good …?

Here is her self-intro (translated from mandarin) “Hi there! I'm Lindsay, welcome to my channel. Let me briefly introduce myself: I went to Peking University for undergraduate, and Columbia University for graduate school, and I've worked at JP Morgan. … In this channel, I'll mainly be sharing valuable knowledge and insights. I'm looking forward to growing together with all of you!”