The Innovator’s Saga — An Interview with Alex Lazinica, CEO, Underline Science, Inc. Column Editor: Darrell W. Gunter (President & CEO, Gunter Media Group) <d.gunter@guntermediagroup.com> Column Editor’s Note: I am very pleased to be part of the ATG family with the introduction of my column titled, “The Innovator’s Saga.” I chose this title as the innovator’s work is never complete; it is truly a work in progress. — DG
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s technology evolves, the innovator must balance many choices to ensure that his/her business remains an ongoing concern. Our mission is to highlight those individuals and companies that “put it on the line” every day to improve the critical path of scholarly research. Our stories will include both the success stories and the “lessons learned” stories. I look forward to your feedback and comments, both good and constructive, as our goal is to provide you, our reader, with the best and latest information on the innovators. Our inaugural column focuses on a gentleman who has established the world’s largest open access book publishing house, IntechOpen (https://www.intechopen.com/). Now he has launched the world’s first streaming of livestream and virtual content repository for scientific conferences, Underline Science, Inc. (https://www.underline.io/). DG: Alex, can you share with our audience a little bit about your experience, knowledge, background and education, which is quite fascinating? AL: I graduated from an engineering school in Croatia. I’m of Croatian origin. After graduation, I went to do the Ph.D. studies at the Vienna University of Technology in Austria, and I worked there as a robotic and artificial intelligence researcher for six years or something. I spent some time at the EPFL, Lausanne. It’s a quite famous university. I was doing my specialization in multi-robot simulation software. The research I was doing was in the area of multi-robot systems for the manufacturing industry. But, as I was always kind of curious in biology as well, I was researching the behaviors of a flock of birds and a swarm of ants and how to replicate those behaviors in multi-robot systems. Robots were simple as a unit, but as a group they should perform intelligent behaviour. DG: Very Fascinating! AL: Yes, so I was kind of intrigued with engineering and biology as well. It was quite interesting. DG: After that, you decided to launch a company called IntechOpen, but it actually started because you wanted to find a way to communicate and collaborate with other researchers and scholars. Is that correct? AL: Yes. So, you need to understand, it was a quite different time back then. It was really hard for us, you know, to find the high-quality literature which we needed for our studies, for our research. Even though Vienna University of Technology is in Europe, their library has quite a big budget for subscriptions; but, they were struggling as well. And I remember, one time I wanted to get one book from one famous professor from Japan, and then I called my colleague in Tokyo, and then he was photocopying the book and sending it to me via post, you know. Those were the days. 72 Against the Grain / June 2020
So, that was one reason why we started to publish open access. We didn’t even know that it was called “Open Access” or that there was a movement. We just wanted to share our journals and books free of charge with the robotics community. The whole idea started as a hobby project. We were just Ph.D. students, so quite young, and we wanted to connect with our peers. You know? It was quite exciting to communicate with famous professors from MIT, Stanford, et cetera. That was the reason. And then the whole robotics community and artificial intelligence accepted our open access idea; so, I decided to leave academia and then to try, you know, entrepreneurial life. DG: Right, and that launched IntechOpen which is now the world’s largest open access book publisher. AL: Well, we didn’t start from a garage, but, yes, from a small office at the Robotics Institute at the university. Yes, it was 15 years ago. I was the book editor of our first book, and most of the chapters were written by my colleagues and my friends. At this moment IntechOpen has published almost 5,000 original book titles in all areas of science, technology, and medicine. Yes, it’s quite a successful story, I would say. DG: You have some Nobel Prize winners as authors and editors, correct? AL: Yes, actually, we have three Nobel Prize winners as our authors. Yes, quite exciting, other famous people as well from all over the world. We are strongest in technology, since that was our core discipline. Yes. But, medicine is quite a big field as well. Intech is in Europe, in Croatia, in the UK, in London, in China and has a presence in India and the U.S. It’s a global business and a global company. Most of our authors are from the U.S. and Asia, and that’s quite obvious since most of the research is done in those two parts of the world. DG: And as an entrepreneur, one of the key things that I’ve witnessed over the years, because I’ve gotten to know you since 2016, is that you’re able to hire really talented people to run your operation. What are the criteria that you use to select the people who do such a good job for you? AL: I mean, you need to make a lot of mistakes during this journey, you know. The saying is, as you grow, the more I practice, the luckier I get. So, I think that you need to be, I mean, at least that’s for myself, you need to be honest with your people, with your team. You need to inspire them. People need to see that you have honest goals and your vision, and they need to identify with that. It’s a daily job. The job I would say, it’s not easy; but, yes. DG: And at some point, you were publishing both books and journals; but, I think it was in 2017-18, or whatever, you decided to just focus on the book program. AL: I think it was in 2015. DG: Thank you for correcting it.
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