Toward the mid of my postgraduate studies (something around 1993 I think it was), a student who had done all her PhD research work at a prestigious university transferred to Monash University to essentially writing up her dissertation. I was wondering why she would want her degree from Monash University when she could have gotten one from the other more prestigious university and so I asked her! It turns out that her supervisor (or advisor in American terminology) was supervising another PhD student and she has been asked by her supervisor to help this other student. It reached a point where she could not take it anymore and decided to transfer out of that situation. She was saying that it is not that she does not want to help this other student and she would if she is in the position of strength. Just that at that point in time she has her own PhD dissertation to work on and is not in the position to supervise another person! This is actually a very valuable lesson I fail to learned in time.
There will be a fairly high profile Collaboration Agreement signing between an American and a German Fortune Global 500 company later this afternoon. The product/system at the heart of this agreement involve the usage of RFID technology in health care. The fundamental concept for the system that resulting in this high level collaboration between two multinational giants was first conceived in a "garage" - just the name of an office space used by a small team based in Cyberjaya. This is also a case of one team member helping another. What is disturbing about this is that, it was me who came up with the idea behind this system yet I am here typing this when everyone is now at the ceremony! I have not been invited nor recognized as the "inventor." My failure to learn about helping from a position of strength has resulted in my effort being taken advantage of.
2 comments:
In my humble opinion, this can be seen as a case of "glass half empty/half full". As long as we have friends, and work with people, "your ideas" is bound to be discussed or heard by others, sometimes even enhanced by others.
If "your idea/invention" is turned into a wonderful reality, then you should feel proud that "your idea/invention" actually holds water. This should give you an energy boost to evaluate some of your other ideas and turn them into reality, perhaps those are not bad either. I choose to see it this way. If you feel you were not as recognized this round, then perhaps this team is not your ideal team to work with on "other ideas/invention". But, please continue to work on your ideas/invention to turn them into reality, that's the bigger picture.
Well, you are right in that we work with others and are bound to have our ideas discussed and improved by others. Innovation is very much a team sports. And as we are not in control of other's action, how others behave and nor are we always in control of the team we work with, there are times where there is nothing much we can do. Even in the academic world, there are incidents where a postgraduate student would submit a writeup for a publication to his/her supervisor/advisor for review and the only change the supervisor/advisor made is the inclusion of their name as an author. Or this, which happened to me. Another person was added to a patent just for reviewing my writeup where no changes was made after I have left the company. There was even an attempt to have this person made the first author over me! Like that PhD student in the story, I believe it is important that we take steps to protect our own interest whenever and wherever possible.
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