When I arrived at Stanford University, I started meeting people across the university and in the broader IT and Bio-X community of Silicon Valley. My goal was simple: to share ideas, explore possible collaborations, and build a network of relationships so I would not feel isolated in a new environment.
Conversations started easily. But what stayed with me most was a question that kept coming back whatever idea was on the table:
How is this going to change the world?
At first, as an Italian, I almost heard that as a science-fiction question. It sounded too big, too ambitious, almost unreal. But slowly, I began to understand that it was actually a very concrete question.
It was not about rhetoric. It was not about pretending that every idea is revolutionary. It was about learning to look beyond the idea itself and asking what kind of difference it could truly make.
No matter who you are or what you are proposing, that question asks you to reflect on impact. What will change because of your work? Who will benefit from it? In what way? Can your effort generate social, economic, or cultural value? And can that value become real and sustainable enough to justify continued time, energy, and investment?
This is also very close to what we call the valorization of knowledge: the capacity to take knowledge beyond its original context and let it create value in society. It is not only about producing ideas, results, or discoveries. It is about helping them travel further. It is about asking whether what we know can become something that improves lives, supports decisions, opens opportunities, or inspires new ways of thinking.
That is why How is this going to change the world? is much more than a provocative question. It is a habit of mind. A way of positioning your work within a larger picture. In Silicon Valley, this mindset seemed to be everywhere. People were expected to be ready to answer it, whether their idea was small or large, at an early stage or already well developed.
There is also another reason why I find this way of thinking so powerful. It reminds me of a passage from Machiavelli’s The Prince: archers aim much higher than their intended target, not because they expect the arrow to go that high, but because by aiming higher they improve their chances of reaching the point they truly want to hit.
The same often happens in research, innovation, and professional life. Very often, reality gives us less than what we hoped for. Projects take longer. Obstacles emerge. Results are partial. If we begin by thinking too small, we risk falling short even of that. But if we train ourselves to think bigger, we increase the chances of achieving something meaningful.
This, to me, is the deeper meaning of that question.
Changing the world is not only about extraordinary ambition. It is first of all a state of mind. It means learning to connect what we do every day with a broader purpose. It means asking not only whether something is correct, elegant, or publishable, but also whether it matters outside our immediate circle.
For researchers, this shift is especially important. We are trained to be rigorous, careful, and precise. And rightly so. But rigor alone is not enough. Alongside rigor, we need vision. Alongside methods, we need meaning. Alongside results, we need the ability to explain why those results matter in human terms.
Because people rarely connect with knowledge only because it is technically sound. They connect with it when they understand what it changes. When they see how it can make something easier, better, safer, healthier, or more possible than before.
And perhaps that is why this question has stayed with me for so long. It is simple, but it asks a lot from us. It asks us to be ambitious without being naive. Practical without being narrow. Visionary without losing seriousness.
Above all, it reminds us that research is not only about advancing knowledge. It is also about imagining what that knowledge can become once it reaches the world.
And sometimes, that journey begins with a simple question:
How is this going to change the world?