BUS 714 · Peer Learning Discussion 2
Scott Lawson
An innovator who runs on curiosity.
software & robotics engineerrelentless builderformer AbCellera teammate
Presented by Gordon Wu
Who he is
Builds software, electronics, optics & mechanical systems — usually all at once.
Software & robotics engineer in Vancouver · BASc Engineering Physics, UBC · my former AbCellera teammate.
Juno←Apera AI←AbCellera←Zaber←Parsable
2.8k★His audio-reactive LED strip on GitHub — featured on Hackaday, used in a nightclub, extended by others.
The pattern
He moves toward the things he can’t yet do.
Across hobbies, side projects and jobs, the same instinct repeats: pick the unfamiliar, then figure it out. It’s why I ranked curiosity his #1 strength.
Signature story · Resilience #3 · Resourcefulness #2
Three days vs. a locked camera
- Bought a second-hand camera; the seller had lost the password.
- Each method failed, he moved to the next — network control, the hidden service port, then a script he wrote himself.
“I began begging the seller for the password; I ended telling him what it was.”
Greatest strength · Curiosity #1
“How does it work?” — taken to the limit
01
Microchip teardown
Curiosity about a chip’s insides set off a hazmat call in a UBC lab.
02
Grape plasma
Microwaved a grape to make plasma — on a grocery-store shift.
03
Sensor circuit board
“I work with cameras but had no idea how the circuit was designed” — so he built one.
The same drive, unchecked, caused more than one mishap.
His Eng-Phys director, afterwards: “I can’t blame you for being curious.”
Imagination #5 · Opportunity recognition #10
Builds what the market gets wrong
“I started it because nothing on the market was good enough.” He made LED lights react to music by spacing sound the way the human ear hears — so the whole strip lights up, not just a few LEDs.
But he passed on commercializing it — too niche. More builder than entrepreneur, so far.
The honest gap · Empathy #12 · Tolerance of ambiguity #11
His curiosity has a blind spot
At Juno he can’t inhabit a soldier’s world — “it’s hard to know what to make when you don’t know the problems.” The unknown genuinely unsettles him.
He offsets it with people — “a translator between the user and the technology.”
What he’d tell a team
“No amount of criticism, objection, or risk identification will ever, by itself, create value.”
Build an idea up before tearing it down — explore the upside first, then stress-test the risk.
From his essay, “Shooting Down Ideas Is Not a Skill.”
All 12, ranked
- 1Curiosity · moves toward the unknown
- 2Resourcefulness · any tool on hand
- 3Resilience · 3 days, no quit
- 4Growth mindset · learns each new domain
- 5Imagination · fixes what the market misses
- 6Personal agency · if it doesn’t exist, builds it
- 7Work ethic · ships and documents
- 8Ownership · takes it the last mile
- 9Collaboration · translator, user ↔ tech
- 10Opportunity recog. · spots gaps, rarely sells
- 11Tolerance of ambiguity · pushes through, uneasy
- 12Empathy · can’t yet inhabit the user