Spinout dilemma: scientist vs. entrepreneur
August 6th, 2008 by Benjamin KuoI’ve been sitting in a few meetings lately where the dilemma of the local universities of getting technology developed there into industry has surfaced a few times: finding entrepreneurs. There’s an amazing amount of research happening at local universities — Caltech, USC, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UCSD, UC Irvine, etc. — but there’s not a corresponding huge number of startups being created from those universities. The crux of the problem: most professors, not to mention Ph.D. students, are not entrepreneurs.
Some folks argue that anyone can become an entrepreneur, and that professors and other Ph.D.’s have the brainpower and smarts to become an entrepreneur. However, in my experience, although that’s true, there are very, very few in the academic world who are likely to cross into the world of entrepreneurship.
Why is this? Some of this, in my opinion, is a personality trait — the traits that make you a good student/researcher/professor, tend not to be the personality traits that spur people to become entrepreneurs. Among those traits: patience – researchers/Ph.D.’s are usually very, very patient, as it takes a lot of time work on science and research; on the other hand, I find lots of entrepreneurs who are impatient; it seems to be that you become an entrepreneur because you are impatient for technology to advance, impatient to see things go to market, and not happy with things just plodding along.
Another trait is tolerance for risk. The entire university/academic system is geared against risk; the goal of professors is tenure — the system which gives professors pretty much iron-tight job security. Entrepreneurs are at the opposite of such a position, offering little — or no — job security.
The extreme specialization that researchers have — in order to become a Ph.D., you essentially have to prove yourself and devote yourself to a very, very, very specific academic niche — is almost polar opposite of many entrepreneurs — which are extreme generalists — a mix of business, engineering or science, marketing, sales, business development, finance, operations, what have you. Not something you get much of in an academic lab.
There are probably more, but the crux of the problem is that universities–although they have a huge abundance of ground breaking research and technology–don’t have entrepreneurs ready to take that research and technology, and convert it to market-ready products.
August 8th, 2008 at 5:58 am
Several years ago I was on a task force in Research Triangle Park, NC, to identify marketable innovations at the major universities there. The professors presented compelling results from their research and testing that could become great products.
Unfortunately, when we asked them what was needed to help them commercialize their inventions, all of them told us they had no interest in taking their projects to the next step. Instead, they said they were moving on to their next research project.
Everyone on the task force, which included IP attorneys and VCs, was dismayed that none of the great potential products could be brought to market.