He always talks about his dreams and ideas and what the future has in him for the world. When you meet him, you’ll realize he has weaved a unique personality around himself, filled with the colors of his intelligence, wisdom, and creativity. Jeff Eiben, an expert in cloud computing technology and a successful entrepreneur, believes he is an ‘accidental innovator’, and he has got plenty of reasons for that.
“I trained as an electrical engineer in the days when engineering was the path into technology, but I’ve always been somewhat of an odd-man-out in the field. My mind naturally focuses on big-picture concepts over complex details. I’ve also had an atypical career, in which my natural tendency to observe and my specific experiences in the field led me to be an accidental innovator,” says Jeff while sharing why he calls himself an accidental innovator.
Starting from his childhood, he always had the thirst for learning about things that interested him. That included science and mathematics. However, his inclination toward the business world never let him consider a career as a technologist. His mother, though, had some different thoughts.
“Apart from my interests in science and technology, the reason I chose engineering school over business school was my mother and his convincing thoughts. She had been my support system all along the way after divorce between my parents. She believed that engineering offered the most flexibility and upside in the job market at that time. I wanted a job in business, but I didn’t go against my mother’s ambitions and used my unique skill set in engineering, and guess what – it worked big time!” says Jeff.
It worked because not only did he complete his graduation in electrical engineering with flying colors but also opened his own business, a cloud service provider, River Point Technology.
His colleagues believe Jeff to be the smartest guy they have ever met. Many suggested that he would rather learn the whole topic by discussing it with colleagues than reading textbook after textbook. “His rule was catching the concept – that’s it. No need to go into the complex details, but let the complex details come to you by understanding the core concepts. That’s how he used to simplify things, and no wonder it worked for him, and at many points, for us as well,” one of his university colleagues recalled.
Jeff has rarely been seen sitting idle. If there is an itch, he will not rest until he finds a solution for it. Failing is not a big deal for him. “I learn as much or maybe more from wrong decisions and failures as I do from my success,” is what he says about failures.
And then, when he finally succeeds after failing a few times, that solution he comes up with often becomes a trendsetter. That’s what he applied during his graduation years, and that is exactly what he did when River Point Technology came to standstill when companies didn’t show any interest in adopting cloud technology. But as expected, Jeff came up with a model called Value Creation Technology that outrightly resolved the issue.
Accidental innovator? That, he is, for sure. Genius? You bet!
