My colleague John Doyle once said to me, “The gap between theory and practice is a lot bigger in practice than in theory.” In this column, I will share my journey across this gap through entrepreneurship, especially the mistakes I have made, in response to Thomas Parisini’s invitation to share personal experiences on how control theory impacts applications. I do not conduct research to create start-ups. However, I’m excited when some of our research has the potential to make an impact in practice. I’m not interested in initiating just any start-up but, rather, a high-tech start-up that translates our own research into the marketplace. There are many kinds of entrepreneurial models, and my experience is limited to a particular type of entrepreneurship, one with an extra risk. Unfortunately, for an academic like myself who is interested in research impact (not start-ups per se), this risk is almost unavoidable and must be managed. Before I elaborate, let me first clarify my view on practice, research, and theory research.

中文翻译：

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理论与实践的创业差距【院长寄语】


我的同事约翰·道尔（John Doyle）曾经对我说：“理论与实践之间的差距在实践中比在理论中要大得多。”在本专栏中，我将分享我通过创业跨越这一鸿沟的旅程，特别是我所犯的错误，以回应 Thomas Parisini 分享控制理论如何影响应用的个人经验的邀请。我进行研究并不是为了创建初创企业。然而，当我们的一些研究有可能在实践中产生影响时，我感到很兴奋。我无意创办任何一家初创企业，而是创办一家将我们自己的研究成果转化为市场的高科技初创企业。创业模式有很多种，我的经验仅限于一种特定类型的创业，一种具有额外风险的创业模式。不幸的是，对于像我这样对研究影响（而不是初创企业本身）感兴趣的学者来说，这种风险几乎是不可避免的，必须加以管理。在阐述之前，我先澄清一下我对实践、研究和理论研究的看法。