Stanford Technology Ventures Program
Tina Seelig is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program where she is responsible for the management, operations, and dissemination efforts of STVP. In addition, Tina is the Director of the Stanford Entrepreneurship Network and the co-Director of the Mayfield Fellows Program. Tina also teaches a course in the Department of Management Science & Engineering on Creativity and Innovation.
Prior to joining STVP, Tina worked as an entrepreneur, management consultant, author, and scientist. Tina received her Ph.D. from Stanford University Medical School in 1985 where she studied Neuroscience.
Tina has worked as management consultant for Booz, Allen, and Hamilton, has written several popular science books and has designed a series of educational games. Her books include The Epicurean Laboratory, Incredible Edible Science, and a series called Games for Your Brain.
After Tina's first book was published in 1991, she became interested in how books are marketed. This led her to start a company designed to help match books with buyers. The product was a multimedia system for bookstore customers, called BookBrowser. BookBrowser was a kiosk-based system that allowed customers to identify books of interest. With the help of a team of engineers and graphic designers, Tina built the business and sold the company in 1993.
After selling her business, Tina worked as a Multimedia Producer for Compaq Computer Corporation. In this position Tina led a team of engineers, artists, scriptwriters, and education specialists through the design and implementation of a series of multimedia titles.
Tina's current position as Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program takes advantage of her technical background, in addition to her experiences as a manager, entrepreneur, and educator.
Related Links: stvp.stanford.edu
Last Updated: Fri, Jul 8, 2011
Seelig often makes her students write failure resumes as a way to recognize the mistakes that they have made as well as the lessons they have learned from those mistakes.
According to Seelig, if you are not failing sometimes, then you are not taking enough risks. Silicon Valley supports a culture of risk taking and embraces failure. She encourages everyone to take risks and not to get daunted by the fear of failure.
Seelig believes that while working in a team it is important to make everyone else on your team successful.
Tina Seelig, Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program, believes that every problem is an opportunity for a creative solution. The way you view any problem depends on your attitude.
Seelig believes that it is important to build relationships and network with the people you meet everyday. It is a small world and as you go through life you are going to meet the same people again and again, she adds.
Seelig talks about the importance of figuring out and balancing priorities. She believes it is necessary to reassess your priorities frequently, selecting a few things to focus on.
In response to a question from STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig, HarperCollins CEO Brian Murray explains how his early engineering background continues to serve him as leader of a major publishing company. Murray believes engineers are solvers of complicated problems by training, and that, "a publishing company, any company, is one big, complex problem" needing to be solved.
What's the secret sauce of Silicon Valley? Failure, reports Tina Seelig, Executive Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. To develop more successes, she urges, entrepreneurs have got to take a risk, and this is the notion behind every deal in the entire ecosystem. Venture capitalists fund risk and, by association, failure, in order to find the "hits" in the haystack. Failure is a perfectly acceptable part of the entrepreneurial process, provided that the smart entrepreneur learns from their errors along the way.
Seelig advices that just as entrepreneurs empower themselves, you too should not wait for someone to tell you that you are empowered to take on a new responsibility. Just do it, she adds.
According to Brian Murray, CEO and president of HarperCollins, the publishing industry has traditionally functioned using a business-to-business model, eschewing direct relationships with consumers. In conversation with STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig, Murray explains why his company puts its authors forward as the brand.
Brian Murray explains why publishing companies function much like venture capitalists, investing millions of dollars a year into developing new products in a culture business. Here the CEO and president of HarperCollins also articulates how the company leverages their understanding of the marketplace when placing bets on authors and projects.
"The harder I work, the luckier I get", says Seelig. Get out there and put yourself in a position to make yourself lucky, she adds.
As a powerful distribution channel and a growing competitor in publishing, Amazon plays a disruptive role in the publishing industry. HarperCollins CEO and President Brian Murray describes the "complicated relationship" publishers have with Amazon, who is a partner they work with and compete against. "The term 'frenemy' is a great term to capture what business is like today," says Murray, here in conversation with STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig.
Don't think of a job as just getting a desk and a job description. Tina Seelig, Executive Director of Stanford Technology Ventures Program, points out that landing a job means getting a key to the building. And what that key unlocks is entirely up to you. The endless possibilities of creating work, new projects, and developing ideas that cater to your passions are available to any employee in any office. Seelig urges entrepreneurial thinking in the workplace, and tells students that they should build the ladder below themselves, rather than waiting for someone else to put it before them.
Seelig says that it is best to find the intersection between your passion, your skills, and the market. Passion is necessary, but passion alone is not sufficient to pursue a career, she adds.
Tina Seelig, Executive Director of Stanford Technology Ventures Program, speaks about the lesson that is the crux of entrepreneurship: All problems are opportunities, and the larger the problem, the grander the opportunity. Furthermore, she talks about the challenges that arise in the methods for teaching these concepts, and the necessity to get people out of their comfort zone in order to encourage creative problem-solving. This clip also includes a video quote from Vinod Khosla. 
STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig explains the difference between convergent and divergent thinking, and identifies how the latter allows individuals to create an infinite number of answers to a problem. As a real world example, Seelig tells the story of the legendary one-word admission examination used by All Souls College at the University of Oxford. 
According to Seelig, never miss an opportunity to be fabulous! She encourages everyone to embrace this idea and to help make the world a better place.
Former U.S. Undersecretary for Energy Dr. Kristina Johnson articulates the advantages of various sectors to make impact on critical issues and to drive innovation. Interviewer Dr. Tina Seelig also provides background on the Epicenter, the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation, that seeks to bring entrepreneurship and innovation skills into undergraduate engineering education.
STVP Executive Director Tina Seelig discusses how reframing problems can open new approaches to finding solutions. Narrow definition of problems is a danger, says Seelig, and reframing can be a valuable tool in the process of creative thinking. In this clip, Seelig encourages the audience to come up with a new type of nametag, but by reframing the problem to address the real underlying need.