Speaker 1: Hello all, this is Dr. Dave Maslach talking to you about Reciprocity.com, the E is written with a three, and in this particular video, I'm going to talk to you about choosing between doing research or consulting, and which one you should maybe choose if you're an academic. So if you don't know me, I'm an Associate Professor of Innovation Strategy and Entrepreneurship, and I created this whole reciprocity project to give back as much as I possibly can. There were so many people that helped me out that are wanting to pay the favor forward and help you out. All right, so lots of people sort of think about faculty doing or professors doing consulting or research, or they could do a lot of those particular things, but I think a lot of people are sort of misled in terms of what they mean and what you're trying to do. So I wanted to sort of clarify some of this stuff and help you make that decision if you're going through that at this moment, you're sort of thinking about it, whether you're a PhD student, a graduate student, or you're just kind of trying to do this, you're sort of full time in the career already, and you're trying to figure out which one you should do. So I'm going to define what is the difference between doing research and consulting, and then give you some things just to think about with this. So what is research? Well, this is where you just sort of think about a particular research problem, and then you publish the results of some findings in the academic literature for others to read openly. And this could be very broad in terms of what you're thinking about, and it's just publishing in an open sense, right? So having lots of people read your particular work, well, some people read it, lots of people don't. Anyways, and then what is consulting? So it's very similar to what you actually do for research. However, you're providing advice or recommendations to a specific individual or company or agency or something like that. Right. And, you know, that's the key thing is that the research component of it, you're sort of publishing it freely and openly and then consulting, you're getting paid for some particular advice or recommendations that you have. And they overlap very strongly in a lot of different ways. You know, for example, you're going to be doing the exact same activities, writing, reading and arithmetic, except for one is going to be for pay specifically for a particular individual. And that's really the only difference between research and consulting. And even if you go to a management consulting firm, that's really the big difference. There's not a lot of difference between them. And so there's lots of overlap and lots of people or some people sort of go in between those particular things. But you might want to think about when you're choosing one or the other with your current career and what you're thinking of doing in terms of maybe you're thinking of doing a doctorate, for example, or you're a current professor and you're sort of making this tradeoff in your mind and trying to figure out what you should do. But the first thing I want you to think about in terms of making this this tradeoff is think in terms of the long term and short term gains. There is a classic problem, a lot of people have talked about, it's called exploration and exploitation. And the idea of it is that there's some activities that you choose that provide immediate gains and they're sure gains that you can see what those particular outcomes are. And those are called sort of exploitive tasks. Those are things that you can see immediately that there's some sort of return for your particular activities. And then there's explorative tasks. These are things where you don't necessarily see what the returns are. They can happen. The returns can happen much longer in the future, but they tend to be much larger. But you just don't know when they're going to happen. And so this is the tradeoff that you often make with consulting versus doing research. So consulting, you get paid very quickly. You see the immediate returns for your particular efforts. But then in the long run, there is only so much you could do. And you can maybe build up an entire consulting firm, which some people have done. BCG, for example, Boston Consulting Group, that's really all it was. It was a bunch of, I believe it was a couple of academics that got together and created this huge firm. And that's what you can possibly do. And the returns are going to be large. But then there's also the research component where you can also have very large returns if you focus on that particular path as well, because you can you can get some discoveries and breakthroughs that if you focus on that particular task, you can you can definitely get there. Right. So it really depends on what you're thinking about. But generally, for most of us doing consulting because there's immediate returns, you usually get paid very quickly and you see you see the fruits of your labors very quickly that that tends to be a little bit more exploitive than the research task, which just takes a long time in terms of actually seeing sort of net benefit of the thing that you're doing. And then once you're there, 30 years in the making, then you see the net benefits of the thing that you're doing. And then you have a very, you know, you can see that the stuff that you did in your 20s and 30s and 40s actually had benefit for you and society. And it's not necessarily clear when you're younger whether those particular benefits are. So that's why I want you to think about is the sort of tradeoffs that you have to make in terms of choosing going and doing consulting or going in doing building up your academic career. And so you have to think about which activity is going to be sort of best for your career at this current moment and what you're trying to do. So it tends tends to be that early on, you know, exploratory, exploratory, exploratory exploit. When you explore those particular activities tend to to provide a little bit more net benefit at the beginning. And the reason is that the returns happen far into the future. Right. And so as you age and develop as a scholar, as a as a researcher or, you know, you go along this PhD journey, then you might want to transition into more of the exploitive tasks. And this is just you know, this is this is sort of broad in a lot of ways. So you do see a lot of academics are making that transition overall as they get older in terms of doing more consulting activities. They get pulled in different directions because they get all these sort of activities given to them. Lots of people start knowing them. Their their students actually go out in the workforce. They they work there for 10 years. They come back and then they want some advice from their professors or they say that their professors have some great advice. And so they get paid that you can get paid for doing that. And so the research component or the consulting component can go in sort of multiple ways. You can do sort of a lecture circuit, for example, or you can do you know, you can actually do research and work for them. And that's that's I think most people end up doing that as an academic doing that versus that sort of speaking circuit at different, you know, institution or different firms or companies and stuff. So that's what I want you to think about is, you know, how can you leverage a sort of stage of your life and the things that you're working on in terms of getting the most net benefit? So it turns out early on, you know, if you want to explore, that's that's going to work out really well in terms of your career. And there is there's not really a good time in terms of understanding when you should transition. And then the other thing is thinking about, you know, once you've built up the particular path that you've built up, that you should try to leverage that particular path. And so we can create what is called, you know, competencies in a particular direction. So this is kind of business stuff that we would talk about. And once you sort of build the competency in that particular direction, then you should leverage that particular thing. So early on, if you start building consulting, right, then it makes sense for you to keep building and gaining gains and getting gains from building up the consulting firms. Right. That's why there is the BCGs, for example, it's because they've built them up over time and people work at them. But then if you're doing the research component and you focus on that, and if you've done that early on, that makes sense to continue with building that particular research component and getting graduate students and, you know, continuously working on that particular pathway until you actually have built something that's really wonderful. And so it actually it makes a really big difference early on in terms of what you should choose to do because of this sort of development that you get right in and becomes really difficult to sort of make the transition from one to the next because of that. So if you do want to make transitions, for example, between doing one or the other consulting or research, you want to think about sort of opportunities or alternatives that you can sort of have a lot of overlap and you can leverage those particular things. Right. So if you're going into consulting or you find a consulting activity, then you want to do it in the very specific activity that you're doing it. Don't do it in something that you're doing research in. Right. So you can come up with different sort of insights that you wouldn't have thought about before. Right. So you're consulting, maybe you're doing stuff on city planning. Well, then if you do consulting for a particular city, you might get some insights that you wouldn't have done before and been able to see before. And that's how people sort of do that. It does take a lot of effort and takes you away from doing research. It always is. Right. So the things that you do in life, there's always tradeoffs in the stuff that you're actually doing. So if you do one, you got to not do the other. And you can try to create as much overlaps as you possibly can. But it still doesn't work out that way. So some people have been able to do that in their research careers and sort of leverage consulting and get insights and stuff like that. But it tends to come off as a tradeoff. And you do get sometimes it's just like in teaching. Sometimes you get sort of a breakthrough on a particular idea because you've been talking to two people that are actually doing this. And so sometimes it is worthwhile for you to do that. But it's up for you to make that choice in terms of making that that consulting choice and which one you should do. You know, you should also think about the ways that you can maybe compartmentalize the different activities as much as you possibly can as well. So not only thinking about how to lay overlap, right, and thinking about ways that you could leverage and gain possible benefits from doing one or the other. Right. So an easy research way in that there is a huge push in government across most governments across the world are pushing towards this is for researchers to do more applied work. Right. So that they can they get some advice from a company and the company says, you know, we're looking for this particular problem. We can't solve it. So can you do some research on it? So you do a little bit of research on it and then you leverage that in the company solves that particular problem based on your advice. And then you get a couple of research publications out of it. And that's kind of, you know, that is sort of largely practiced in a lot of different domains. But then you. So the trade off of what you're making with that is that you're letting companies to dictate the particular pathway that you're actually doing. That's not necessarily a bad thing because it makes it a little bit more reliable, more valid in terms of the knowledge that you're generating, in terms of its generalizable to specific context and things like that. But the problem is, is that then you might not necessarily think of the bigger issues that you wouldn't have thought about if you sort of just contemplating these particular different pathways. And so it's up to you to make that choice. But in terms of compartmentalizing these, that's going to be a way for you to. And the reason why I'm recommending this is just in terms of intellectual property is to compartmentalize them so you don't kind of get abused in certain situations. Right. So and that's tends to that can happen a lot more if you're working with different companies. They might claim intellectual property of something that you're working on because you've done it for them. There also could be like Mission Creep, for example, where you're working on a project for them and they're going to give you some sort of, you know, they might say, well, we were expecting this and then you didn't get deliver that. So then we're going to get you to do this. And so pretty soon you're doing a tremendous amount of work for them. And so compartmentalizing and making sure that it's like in real big chunks that are, you know, once you're done, you're done. You don't have to go back to that particular company gain or, you know, continue on that relationship. That's going to be really important for you to think about whether you should do consulting. It's the same thing as teaching. If it's kind of like an open ended gig or some sort of research, you know, if it's if it's a relationship that's kind of open ended, then you're more likely to be abused in in the relationship. And that's just going to be what's happened. That's you know, that's how people have really bad merits is because the relationship is open ended and then you're really likely to be abused as different individuals. So you don't want to be in that situation when you're working with companies or it's a university, for example, a college or whatever you're working for. Or maybe it's a faculty member that you're working for that you just don't want it to be as open ended as it just continues on. You want to give sort of termination dates and make sure that it's compartmentalized as much as you can so you don't run into those particular problems because that can happen. And that's a really important thing for you to think about. So my advice in terms of thinking about which one you should choose to do in terms of doing research or consulting so early on, if you're drawn to, you kind of have to follow your heart. I think that's the biggest thing. Right. So if you are drawn, if you're doing a Ph.D. for consulting or, you know, if you are an MBA, then by all means, just do consulting. Right. Like that kind of makes sense if that's what you're drawn towards. If you're drawn towards research and you want to do that, then you should sort of leverage that and, you know, make sure that you keep investing in that particular pathway because that's going to gain you benefits. And so it's going to require you to turn different opportunities down as you are pursuing those particular opportunities. But it's really a choice up to you in terms of what you want to do. But you really need to follow this right here. That's the important thing is for you to sit there and think about what you actually want to do for the rest of your life. I know it's a big question, but I think it's going to guide you in terms of what sort of decisions you're going to make because there's tradeoffs with all of them. And if you get good at one, you're probably not going to get so good at the other. And so you have to make those tradeoffs and keep investing in the one that you really are passionate about and keep following that particular pathway. All right. So if you like this advice, give me a thumbs up. Do subscribe to the YouTube channel to join the movement of reciprocity of helping other people out. All right. Take care and have a wonderful day. Bye.