Gothenburg · Wednesday, July 22
Jan Bosch

Jan Bosch

Accelerating the adoption of digital — software, data and AI — technologies in industry and society.
reflection

Who are you, really?

During most of my life, I was actively projecting a public self that matched what, in my view, people wanted to see me as. When I became a full professor at the ridiculously young age of 30, I projected the young, successful academic. When I joined Nokia Research to lead their software and application technologies lab, I was the executive who understood the power of software in a company that was mostly focused on mechanics and electronics. When I moved to Silicon Valley to join Intuit, it was all about entrepreneurship and highly impactful innovation. The problem was that I adopted this public image, internalized it and increasingly identified with it. But it was never the real me. It was a part of me. One view of me. A slice of me. But I am much more than that and inhabit so many roles, including a professor, a board member, an angel investor, a consultant, but also a gym instructor, an aspiring hunter as well as a father, a friend, a husband, a son and a fellow human being who simply is trying to figure things out as I go along. It is so easy to pigeonhole yourself into some predefined classification with associated norms, values and behaviors. But if you do that, you limit yourself and never really get to be who you truly are. So, who are you, really?

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