Hal Varian: belief

Transcript context

…Last question. Let’s say a very smart 18-year-old comes up to you and says they want to have a career in both economics and tech, but they’re not exactly sure what they want to be. And they want advice from you. Other than the obvious, “Work hard. Go to a good school” — or whatever — what would you tell that person? They say, “I want to be the next Hal Varian.” In some manner. I would say get the basic skills down. Maybe that’s obvious. Get the coding down. Get the design down. Get the basic economics down. But then you really want to exercise your creativity. That is, don’t just take the first way of looking at something or the conventional way of looking at something, but try to step back and see what the bigger picture is. Now, most of the time that’ll be a big flop. But every now and then, you’ll hit something that’s new and exciting and novel, and, of course, that’s a great feeling to be able to do that. Hal Varian, thank you very much.…

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