The Twenty-Year Plan

After becoming a PhD student in biophysics and facing numerous institutional hurdles barring his desire to study the neural cortex, Jeff Hawkins, Founder of Numenta, decided to think long-term. He put a career plan in place that has lasted over twenty years. Rather than pursuing his passions through academia, he decided instead to focus on making institutional change, adding credibility to his name, earning substantial financial revenues to fund his own pet projects, and helping the neuroscience community mature from the inside. Two decades later, arguably, he's accomplished all of these tasks, and he's still expanding their boundaries.