[Book] Edge

Laura Huang is the author of the book <Edge>. It starts with a very interesting personal episode. She met Elan Musk a long time ago and faced an odd, unfavorable, and uncomfortable situation. Clearly, at first, it sounded like Elan didn’t want to spend a second with her. But she turned it into a positive meeting and got what she wanted. What was the secret? She calls it edge.

Edge is the perceived competence and strength that you have. Gaining an edge is critical as it transforms your disadvantages into unique assets, turns adversity into advantage, and converts your headwinds into tailwinds.

Edge stems from basic goods that you or your product must have. But what are my basic goods? I created a list of things I value and I’m good at. But, I wan’t sure. So I looked at my peer feedback from a year ago, which was collected anonymously from 6 to 8 colleagues and my manager. My basic goods (in the feedback) are 1/ competent in my areas, 2/ scientist-minded (creative, curious, envisioning long-term goals), 3/ practical, and 4/ having leadership (infectiously passionate, collaborative, having good mentorship, open-minded, responsible and helping teammates).

This book also discusses gut feel. Gut feel doesn’t always yield better results in every situation. In fact, it often produces the opposite outcome, especially when dealing with normal, routine, or conventional decision-making. However, when making an abnormalous and idiosyncratic decision, gut feel is invaluable. When facing a new problem with high uncertainty, you should rely on your gut feel.

Finally, this book discusses how to leverage your edge for creativity and success. One strategy that caught my attention was to begin with an innovative and unique solution and consider what problems it can solve. Essentially, reverse your thought process to find something creative and unique. This is the opposite of Amazon’s approach. which focuses on starting with customer’s problems and working backwards to find solutions and deliver results. I find the former approach intriguing. In fact, when conducting ML research, I often come up with proposal idea from my readings of the latest papers and articles. When I have a chance, I’m going to try this approach on other problems.