"Don't tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results." - George Patton

Acadinnet's mentoring program essentially follows General Patton's advice. Acadinnet will not solve problems nor create inventions. In fact, Acadinnet will not do anything under the mentoring program that would legally entitle its members to become a coauthor or a joint-inventor with a mentee's intellectual output. Acadinnet will help mentees learn the business of solving a problem or inventing; it will not solve or invent for them. It will help mentees appreciate that failure is a stepping stone to success and that the path to success is usually a trail of tears, not a bed of roses, no matter how talented they are. It will help them learn that questioning conventional wisdom is a powerful tool for creative people in solving problems.

Acadinnet's mentoring program is both directed and particular. Directed in the sense that it helps mentees to focus on innovative technology, business model or service that may actually change society. Particular in the sense that we ask, in the context of the client's business: (1) Is it worth doing (impact and significance)? (2) Can the mentee do it? (3) Does the client have patience to let the mentee succeed?

At the end of the mentoring program, it is expected that the mentee will have a higher probability of coming up with inventions of importance to the client. In terms of impact, with increasing statistical probability, the mentee may come up with disruptive, radical, or incremental inventions. We hope our best mentees will find the courage and perseverance to work in novel and uncrowded areas where the risks are higher but the rewards for success are amazingly higher. It is in the process of studying a new system that something original almost certainly shows up. Meticulousness and perseverance eventually pay off.

Acadinnet offers two other abbreviated mentoring programs called Super-internship and Mentoring Students for PhD Admission each with its specific focus.

In the Super-internship program, Acadinnet takes university students who wish to focus on the mathematical modeling of complex systems, products and processes. We interpret systems in a broad sense; it includes systems from the engineering, biological, ecological, business, etc. disciplines.

In the Mentoring Students for PhD Admission program Acadinnet mentors candidates seeking admission to PhD programs in top 100 universities in the world.

Acadinnet will not provide mentoring services to organizations and individuals that violate legal principles related to patent protection or accepted standards and conventions of authorship of research publications. Mentees who violate their employer's employment policy of confidentiality by exposing employer-confidential information to Acadinnet will be expelled from the mentoring program.

Acadinnet does not try to "sell" the mentoring program. If we believe that the client company does not have mentees we can mentor, we will forthrightly say so.

Acadinnet does not have a standard identification process (nor does anyone else) for identifying free-thinking, curiosity-driven individuals with potential for innovation (our preferred mentees). Clients can nominate and at its discretion Acadinnet may agree to mentor the nominee. Acadinnet's preferred approach is to identify potential mentees in the client's organization, present their names to the client, and let the client choose from that list. Acadinnet's identification process includes a mix of activities that includes giving a short series of lectures drawn from its Insights in Science lectures series at a location chosen by the client for the client's employees, observing and assessing individual employee responses during the lecture series to the lectures, one-on-one discussions with employees, discussions with probable mentees' managers, areas where the client is willing to support innovative activities and invest risk capital, gut feelings about each probable mentee of the Acadinnet mentors, comfort level matrix of potential mentees with potential mentors from Acadinnet, etc. The process is not quantifiable, is subjective and is dependent on the experience of Acadinnet's mentors. Trust among all parties involved in the process is crucial. It is an exercise in picking needles out of a haystack. The Insights in Science lectures provide us with the first inkling whether the haystack (client organization) has enough needles (mentees) to be found.

Mentee related information deemed confidential by the client will not be shared with others by Acadinnet unless required by law or approved by the client. Acadinnet assumes that a client (mentee's employer) has taken adequate steps to retain the mentee, without prejudice to the mentee's constitutional right to employment, once the mentoring program for the mentee is concluded or terminated.

We expect the employer to have a reasonable idea as to where the mentee is likely to fit in its strategic business plan (line of business, market, customers and competition) once the mentoring program is successfully completed. This is particularly true if the business plan is taking the business in a whole new direction and the mentee is expected to explore unchartered territories. We expect the employer has business intelligence tools in place that empowers and enables employees to stretch themselves to their potential, because employees now inevitably find themselves in an increasingly instrumented, interconnected, and intelligent environment. The influence of the Internet and social networks has an enormous influence on how people think and communicate.