Business & Innovation Q&A for Young Entrepreneurs & Others (February 3, 2021)

Stephen Wolfram answers questions from his viewers about business and innovation as part of an unscripted livestream series, also available on YouTube here: https://wolfr.am/youtube-sw-business-qa

Questions include: What's your hottake on the gamestop saga? - What's the most innovative prototype you've been shown that you're surprised didn't make it to market [or failed]...and do you know why? - What business concerns does the R&D process entail? What is the process of inventing your own algorithm from scratch? How many algorithms in Mathematica were just created in house by wolfram research? - Hi Dr. Wolfram, why does wealth inequality exist and is it necessary for a society to work well? Also will all this matter if we become immortal - Do you think your brain worked better when you were 20 or when you were 50? - Jason Fried always talks about getting good at the individual skill of making money. Can you tell us what you've learned about the skill of making money over the years? - What advice can you provide an entrepreneur who has lost their high tech business of 15 years due to bankruptcy. How can one overcome the emotional baggage of such a loss. - Hi Stephen! You are obviously a man who has created a way to dive into a specific subject with great depth. How do you recommend that people keep their focus when it's easy to be distracted? - I rarely finishes my projects. pls help me. Business sounds boring. I just want to do innovation and research. I think maybe business could be a consequence of a new innovative idea and successful project or something. Of course I could be a business person in the real world, since my projects/innovations are hobby and personal based. - Is the fact that a lot of companies are pre-revenue (and some large companies don't even have a viable revenue stream) indicate a tech bubble? - How did you deal with issues regarding scaling your systems as Wolfram grew? - What's your take on the emerging space industry? Would you encourage/advise enterprises in that field? - How to make someone fund for any company at ideation level? - I have heard silicon valley investor's opinion that the best businesses begin operations in areas in which they are the only ones or part of a few, but with an horizon of big growth. Do you think math is in this horizon of growth, or is commited to a limit that paces the rate of growth in math and numerical analysis tools and solutions? - You wrote on computational contracts some time ago. Is that on hold due to the physics project?