| | | Unfortunately Colleges and Grad Schools tend to discourage students from combining a core of chemistry, physics and biology - with finance, economics and law as I did - and that has to change.
But an increasing number of people need that combination to manage technology driven businesses like the oil and gas business, bank structuring, real estate development and biotech development - all of which I helped manage over the past 40 years. A chemist sitting next to a banker in the same office doesn't get you the same results.
Probably like you, I always felt like the boy from the future, so on an investment board it seemed natural 20 years ago to choose the handle 'Elroy Jetson'.
My Dad, a self-styled "real estate developer" who's 'a constantly angry Republican' was on a rant one day and asked me, "Why do you know how much a bridge across that creek to connect those two properties cost because of codes ? !" Having structured developments at Pardee Construction I guessed, "About $680 thousand?" He harrumphed with disgust, "Well you're pretty close."
I didn't embarrass him by asking how much he had thought it was going to cost, but knowing my Dad, I'd say he probably assumed he was going to go the lumber yard and put a together a solution for 10% of that cost intended to bear the weight of cars and trucks.
And that's the problem for a lot of people as the world gets more complex.
When I left Chevron after five years I had been promoted five times to a management level my Dad had previously achieved after working there 24 years. So even when the world was less complex 60 years ago he wasn't the star manager, but today the horizons for someone like him are even more limited.
When my Dad's mother graduated from USC in 1918 in English she had become prolific in reciting poetry, bird calls, piano playing and knowing some Latin and Greek to read the classics - which was very educated for that time - but would all be largely useless skills today. |
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