I have been studying the concept of attention, especially in relation to the more recent concept of the attention economy. I started a wiki on the subject (with some contributions from a previous friend) but it has been closed to the public until now. Even though it’s still immature we decided to make it viewable and open commenting to the public.

In short, the Attention Wiki is a discipline wiki aiming to facilitate the development of the interdisciplinary study of attention as a limited resource (also known as Attention Economics). A discipline wiki is a type of wiki that is used to organize and integrate the body of knowledge pertaining to a specific area of study.

I believe that wiki-style knowledge organization is something the academia can take better advantage of. But the traditional wiki method as conceived in open content sites such as Wikipedia is not suitable for academic purposes. An academic discipline wiki needs to be managed and moderated, authors should not be anonymous and should be recognized for their significant contributions, and certain structures should be used as the framework for the organization of the content. Read more here.

We will be trying to implement all this in the Attention Wiki. Wish us luck!

A friend e-mailed me 3 ways to catch a tiger:

The Newton Method:
Let the tiger catch you. Every action has an equal opposite reaction.

The Einstein Method:
Run in the opposite direction to the tiger. According to the theory of relativity the tiger will run faster and get tired. And then you will be able to catch it.

The Police Method:
Catch a cat and torture it until it agrees that its a tiger.

…

So this tickled me to get creative and come up with some more methods to catch a tiger:

The Logical Method:
Do not “not catch a tiger”.

The Mathematical Method:
Catch n tigers and let n go to 1.

The Linguistic Method:
Define “catching” as “not having”. You have now caught many tigers.

The Philosophical Method:
How can you be sure you have not already caught a tiger?

The Managerial Method:
Hire somebody else to catch the tiger.

The Marketing Method:
Name your cat “tiger” and then catch it.

The Software Method:
Add a tiger plug-in to your cat.

The Wikiality Method:
Create a page for yourself on wikipedia and include this line in it: “He has caught a tiger”.

The Kirznerian Entrepreneurial Method:
Figure out who has already caught a tiger but doesn’t need it.

The Schumpeterian Entrepreneurial Method:
Why catch a tiger? why not catch a siger? In fact, why not datch a siger? people may not understand what you’re doing at first and ridicule you, but persevere and pretty soon everybody will be datching sigers… later someone will show up and eatch a uiger…

The Knightian Entrepreneurial Method:
Take the risk and go up to the tiger and attempt to catch it. If you catch it then you’re done. If it catches you then you are not a successful entrepreneur. (Here you could possibly resort to the linguistic method and define the tiger as you and you as the tiger)

AIESEC is an international student organization (perhaps the largest such organization) that was first founded in 1948 and has now, after 59 years, reached Iran. The AIESEC in Iran website has some information on how this happened. Also check out the Building AIESEC in Iran weblog. I was invited to the AIESEC information meeting on September 26th at the University of Tehran, and this post is a summary of the meeting and my views on AIESEC in Iran.

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Neda Golshan was the main host of the show, and a person well chosen to demonstrate the ideal vision of an Iranian AIESECer, as they’re called. Her energetic yet assertive and powerful style of speech, which was delivered in almost fluent English, portrayed the image of the empowered Iranian university student with an international composure.

Neda started off by approaching the audience (mostly composed of undergraduate students, and a few grad students) with a simple question: “Who wants an AIESEC t-shirt?!” After an awkward pause, and some skeptical and curious looks, someone raised an arm. Neda simply walked up to her and gave her an AIESEC t-shirt for free. She then went on to make the point that sometimes ceasing an opportunity can be as easy as that, and you just have to step forward. This stepping forward, she said, was why the participants were attending this meeting. Quite an inspiring opening!

The History of AIESEC was then presented in a series of powerpoint slides with a nice musical soundtrack, after which Jonas Lilienthal explained the AIESEC vision (Jonas amazingly plans to stay in Iran for a full year as part of AIESEC Germany’s efforts to help the startup and development of AIESEC Iran). Having been established right after World War II, AIESEC’s core ideals have an international peace-seeking, friendship-building spirit. Read more about “The AIESEC way” here.

The next person to take the stage was Sepideh Pashami, who talked about the AIESEC experience. Despite the tinge of ambiguity in her explanations, three main advantages of being an AIESECer were clearly identified in her talk:

1. Various opportunities to practice and experience leadership,
2. the chance to take part in many international conferences, and
3. the prospect of gaining experience living and working in other countries

As an example of leadership experience, the opportunity that students had to organize and lead this meeting came to my mind. But other than that, from the speaker’s explanations, I did not get a clear picture of what exactly these leadership roles could be, and how they may be created.

The first question raised in the first Q&A session, was a witty remark by Hesam Torabi, a computer science whiz: “Can I have a t-shirt?!” In reply to which he received only a smile. In response to “What does AIESEC stand for?” Jonas stood up and uttered the exact French words, and made everybody blush and grin at their own lack of understanding of the French language. I could not hear most of the other questions since the inquirers did not have microphones.

After the Q&A and a short break Fahimeh Behboodi, a very energetic mechanical engineering major from the UofT who is one of the main founders of AIESEC in Iran, talked about her internship experience in Berlin and how she became familiar with AIESEC.

She described a session where everyone got to know the countries of other AIESEC interns through presentations given by each intern on his/her country. Fahimeh said her presentation about Iran was a great hit and everybody was extremely interested. This is not surprising considering the general lack of understanding in western countries about what Iran is really like.

Fahimeh got familiar with a group of AIESECers in germany who were interested in expanding AIESEC to Iran. And thus started the project to get AIESEC here with the help of the Germans and fellow Iranians such as Maziar Ebrahimi.

The next person to speak was Dr. Shekarchizade, assistant professor in the civil engineering dept of the UofT, and president of IAESTE in Iran. IAESTE is the International Association for the Exchange of Students for Technical Experience, but it is just that, and so differs from AIESEC which involves a broader range of activities.

Dr. Shekarchizade had found an audience of students who could speak English and were interested in international activity. So he took the opportunity to introduce IAESTE although his delivery was rather boring compared to the energy that the young host, Neda and other young speakers like Fahimeh had in their presentations. Nevertheless his talk included several interesting points:

• He called the UofT the most important university in Iran, while pointing out that it is not ranked among the top 1000 universities of the world. This is unfortunate considering the existing capacity of the professors and students and the labs etc.

• One of the reasons for this low ranking is the neglect of international relationships. Because of the situation after the revolution Iran has been a country pretty much “outside” the international community and has not pursued international relationships. Naturally, higher education has suffered from this

• More than 60% of the offers for exchange that come from IAESTE to Iranian students are for engineering majors, with none of the other fields having any more than 17% of the share. Foreign students to come to Iran through IAESTE are few and Dr. Sehkarchizade described them as rather courageous considering what the world has been told about Iran.

• Like AIESEC, IAESTE used to exist in Iran before the Islamic revolution, but then ceased to exist afterwards until recently. IAESTE re-started in 2002, AIESEC re-started in 2006.

At this point Elham Tavassoli took the microphone and talked briefly about the international conferences part of the AIESEC experience. She described them as exciting events that will not bore you to sleep like many typical conferences. She talked about how she herself has found many nice and active friends in these events.

Maziar Ebrahimi, who is studying for an MBA at Sharif University of Technology, currently plays the role of leader for the AIESEC in Iran team. Given the thirst of the Iranian job market for MBAs, specially graduates of Sharif, it is somewhat surprising to me that he has so much time to devote to AIESEC. He took the stage to speak about leadership.

He summarized the AIESEC experience as “activating leadership”. I specially enjoyed his definition of the term. He said “Leadership is making mistakes”, this instantly reminded me of an inspiring speech which I will get to at the end of this post. Maziar continued “Leadership is making mistakes and not making the same mistakes again. AIESEC is an international platform for making mistakes! And there are a lot of people to help you learn from those mistakes.”

Overall my opinion about AIESEC for Iranian students is that AIESEC seems to be a great place to hang around with great people and be an active and contributing person. It’s the classiest student organization in town, with its English-speaking flair and international prominence, making it an excellent option for those aiming to have an international presence. But I’m not sure if AIESEC can find many Iranian students with these aspirations who are proficient in English and are willing to spend their time doing voluntary work at AIESEC rather than pursuing paid employment or entrepreneurship opportunities outside of AIESEC.

The process of establishing AIESEC was carried out quite professionally, at least for an organization run by students. I personally observed many of the Gantt charts and project management methods that were utilized during this process and was impressed. They again showed a high level of professionalism in organizing this event. The Q&A segment at the end was particularly notable and was designed better than most Q&A sessions I have seen. The team of young, motivated, energetic, and passionate students who started AIESEC in Iran has done a great and impressive job, and I believe being in the company of such people will influence future members of AIESEC Iran in very positive ways, regardless of anything else they do there.

By the end of the meeting one audience member described AIESEC as involving “So much passion and excitement”, another mentioned “communicating with different countries” and there was lots of positive energy to go around. But I am still skeptical as to whether AIESEC addresses the primary needs of Iranian students, and whether it’s the right place for them to spend all that energy, specially if they are already motivated and passionate enough with clear plans for their future. Nonetheless, AIESEC has finally reached Iran, and I’m sure this can only mean good things for its current and future Iranian members and for the Iranian society as a whole.

In the end, I would like to end this post with a beginning. With the start of the new academic year and the start of AIESEC activities in Iran, and the new foundation of the School of Entrepreneurship at the University of Tehran, I would like to present the following quote from the second episode of the TV series “Jack and Bobby” to all my old and new friends at the School of Entrepreneurship and AIESEC, and of course, the readers of this blog. In the spirit of beginnings, I present to you Grace McCallister’s Moonlight Address to the students of Plains State University:

Good evening. I want to welcome you tonight to… a renaissance.

For some of you this night marks a return to your college life, for some of you a new beginning. And so, upon the eve of the tremendous journey upon which you are all embarking, I’d like to offer you a thought to take with you.

Listen carefully: you will fail here. All of you. College is not the culmination of your high school career. It is the beginning of your adult life. Only it is a slow sweet beginning that feels nothing like what life and all the attending obligations will eventually bring. So fail here… This is your chance.

Do things you know you can’t do, or think you can’t do but hope in your deepest most secret hidden heart that you can.

Be bad at things. Be embarrassed. Be vulnerable. Go out on a limb. Or two. Or twelve.

The harder you fall, the farther you’ll rise. And the louder you fail, the clearer the distant bell of your future will ring. Failure is a gift. Welcome it. There are people who spend their lives wondering how they became the people they became, how certain chances passed them by and why they didn’t take the road less traveled. Those people are not you.

You have the front-row seat to your own transformation. And in transforming yourself, you might just transform the world. Believe that, and embrace the new person you’re becoming. This is your moment. Now. Not ten minutes from now, not tomorrow, really now. Know that, truly in your bones, and wake up each morning remembering it. And then keep going.

The only academic work I have found which relates both to my field (entrepreneurship) and to my research interest in attention economics is a study of “The Allocation of Limited Entrepreneurial Attention” by professor Sharon Gifford of Rutgers University.

The core of the book is a mathematical model of the allocation of entrepreneurial attention that is presented in chapter 3. In this post I will write about some of the more significant things I learned and thought about during the first 2 chapters and why I’m sad to know I can’t get through the third chapter just yet.

Attention and the Rose

It might seem trivial that the allocation of attention depends on the value of activities. Gifford also points out that “the value of current activities depends on the allocation of attention to them”. Although by that she seems only to mean that the more you pay attention to a project, the more it is likely to be profitable, I like to think of a more sentimental interpretation. This interpretation is perhaps most beautifully phrased in the words of the fox to the little prince:

It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important.

- Antoine de Saint Exupery, The Little Prince (1943)

The Governing Mechanism of Attention Allocation

Another important observation of Gifford is that a crucial problem is the determination of the “habits of thought which help draw our attention to the most important targets.”

This “habits of thought” concept is very important and represents the governing mechanism of attention allocation. In their book “The Politics of Attention”, Jones and Baumgartner point to “emotion” as playing the role of this governing mechanism.

The importance of Trust in the Attention Economy

Gifford observes that information processing “requires time and the value of any particular source of information cannot be known until this investment of time has taken place.”

I think it’s better to replace the word “source” with “piece” in the above quote, because people develop attitudes towards sources of information over time. If they have frequently received high quality valuable information from a certain source in the past, they gain trust in that source. Depending on the amount of trust they have for a source, they may be able to assign probabilities to some aspects of the value of future information from that source.

The importance of trust in an attention economy is a theme I will be writing about again.

Limited Attention and Organization Theory

Some of the most interesting work that Gifford reviews is related to the implications of limited attention for organization theory. The main idea here is that the limits of attention can explain many things about how organizations are designed and how they work. For example delegation of power, and distributed decision making can be seen as mechanisms that help overcome limits of attention in the organization.

Again, more on this later…

The impossible Chapter 3

Before getting to chapter 3 where the mathematical model is presented, I was naively confident that my undergraduate mathematics education would be sufficient for me to understand the math in this chapter. It was not. The model uses sophisticated dynamic programming methods that I think are usually taught at graduate level. And it doesn’t help that the model is presented very densely, with very little guidance in the required background mathematics. So now I have to find a way to gain the necessary background before I can get through this chapter.

Mathematical models almost always involve simplifications of reality, and therefore we cannot expect Gifford’s model to be completely and accurately illustrative of real life attention allocation behavior. It will be interesting for me to spot some of these simplifications in her model because these may be opportunities to develop it further.

After some planning, and a few little trials and variations, I think I’m finally ready to start serious blogging in English. I have prepared an About Me page for the potential reader to get to know me and the kind of things I will be writing about. But since the topics mentioned in that page are quite general, In this post I will mention the more specific things that will be on my mind in the next few months.

Like it says in the About Me page, I’m currently a Masters student, so much of my preoccupations will be related to my courses and research on topics in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship. In the courses I have left for the final year of my degree, there is a special focus on matters of public policy relevant to innovation and entrepreneurship. The first working paper I have put on this site is an example of these preoccupations.

But what I may be writing about most is another topic: Attention Economics. This derives from my fascination with the effects of information abundance on human society, and the opportunity to help develop a totally new discipline with an interdisciplinary approach to understanding attention as a limited resource. For this purpose I am preparing a wiki (to become public very soon), and am also preparing my thesis proposal in this area.

I created this blog mainly because I think I’m ready to start collaborating with the international community on my quest for knowledge. It is part of my efforts to build a universal online presence for my identity and make myself more meaningful by connecting with more people. In the next few months the possible readers of this blog will be joining me on my quest for gaining knowledge, helping to develop the discipline of attention economics, getting a Masters degree from Iran, and applying for a PhD program somewhere outside of Iran. Wish me luck!