People also get over confident. Thinking the first time wasn't luck (or rather misinterpreting their success). Thinking about it, it might be a meta-skill. Problem selection/formulation combined with receptivity to identifying/abstracting newly possible approaches
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The question "How strong is your growth (and death) model for better (or worse) institutions seems like a fundamental institutional question, to me." The academic model is terrible, and there is absolutely _zero_ chance it will be changed internally, IMO (sorry, Cameron).
)Why can't two grad students with a good idea start a University in their garage? Or a grant agency? If their idea is genuinely better than existing models, they should grow to replace Harvard (or the NIH) in 10 years. But there is no growth model like this.
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It's why the system is so incredibly stagnant. I don't believe that stagnation is an accident: I think it's effectively a product of design; it's what universities effectively collectively want. The only chance of a change is from outside.
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Related: if things like Xerox PARC in the 1970s are so great - & I believe they were - then why didn't the NSF acquire them? It would have fit the NSF's supposed mission, and would have provided a growth model for a better way of doing things.
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The obvious answer is that the NSF effectively - not necessarily as the result of any individual choice or error - isn't really serious about its supposed mission. It's really about something else.
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So I’m going to say I think this is a myth. Primary reason. Two teenagers in a garage only works if their parents are rich enough to have a garage and they’ve got health insurance (at least in a US context, slightly different in the civilised world)+
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What do you mean a myth? I know people - more than 20 - for whom this is effectively true. They grew an org 1,000x or more because they had a better model, over < 10 years. Not true of starting a university or grant agency.
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