2022-02-22

3 views of Theranos and Elizabeth Holmes.

The 'failure is not a crime' view from corporate tools (Source: Forbes) -

Healthcare consumers need to be able to trust their test results, while venture capital investors know (or certainly should know) they’re taking on a lot of risk by investing in a company. In general, VC investing is highly speculative and roughly 90% of startups fail. At the same time, a few will compensate with spectacular results. Startups aren’t blue chips, and anyone taking the plunge should know the risks and sniff out the difference between ambitious claims and unsubstantiated nonsense. This is the reason terms like "accredited investor" and "due diligence" exist.

What crap.

This isn't about failure, and never was - that's a very libertarian view of how crapitalists operate.

At it's core, 'fake it 'til you make it' is not about delusion, but deception. And doing so for the purpose of taking anyone's money is what's called fraud.

 

Next up is the quality management system view (Source: some guy selling a service on LinkedIn) -

A fatal flaw in her business strategy was never fully vetting the innovative idea with an established “Proof of Concept” study, also known as Proof of Principle. You know, a study that would prove the concept. That it would work and provide the foundation to move forward with investors and product development engineers. Instead, the company misled investors, another fatal flaw, and the government with fancy words, innovative theories, clever photoshoots, and unproven promises.

All valid, but it comes off more as marketing for a service, which itself I find questionably ethical in that they don't share any specific examples on how to do this. They just say, 'Here's the problem, we can sell you the solution."


Finally, there's the view that one must never let the creativity and any subsequent hype overcome the discovery of reality (Source: HyperAllergic) -

Another student (who also asked to remain anonymous) complicates this picture, saying, “the necessity to ‘fake it till you make it’” is a way to get a foot in the door, particularly for BIPOC and women designers who already feel more invisible in the industry. She asks, “How might design faculty help students better navigate the disjuncture between honesty and employability?” This request falls squarely at the feet of academic leadership, not on the student seeking equitable career opportunities, to challenge an education-industrial complex that requires emerging professionals to exaggerate their qualifications in order to be employable.

Why that matters is visible in the example of Holmes who, like the innovation design students earning MFA degrees, seems to have internalized the value of presenting optimism over reality. The ideas students are investigating, prototyping, and grappling with are often inspired. The challenge is not to impede their creativity but to ensure that the process explicitly mandates checks on reality and honest criticality when anything begins to look a little too good to be true

I tend to find myself more in line here. There has to be a balance between creativity and reality.

 

 


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