CAREERS IN SCIENCE ENTERPRISE

Beatrice Leigh: It's very, very exciting. I remember on the first day I arrived and I was early, so I was the new chief executive officer, and the admin was here, Wendy, and so I walked in, there was nobody here, so I said to Wendy 'what should I do?' and she said, and she was doing the hoovering, so that was interesting, right, because it keeps the rent down we do our own cleaning. And so I said, 'should I put the kettle on?' She said, 'that's a good idea', so the first thing I did as the new boss was make the tea, and I thought, 'interesting'. And I thought this was absolutely fine and everybody else rolls up. And that's what's lovely about a small operation, we can have a team meeting in the morning and decide what to do and then we get on with it in the afternoon. Whereas in a big multinational the committee structure really stifles all of this stuff, because you're really fired up and you're really excited about it, but if it's got to go to a committee that's every quarter and then another committee, you really lose your enthusiasm and so the entrepreneurial spirit sort of withers away. So I think that's what's so refreshing about a small company. But the downside is there's never enough money. All little companies are always on a knife edge, so I worry a lot about where the pay checks are coming from – you never had to do that at GlaxoSmithKline. You could could sit around for a week in committee and not do anything and you'd still get paid. It's all those kind of differences. The freedom aspect is really exciting in a small organisation, but there is a downside, it is stressy in a different kind of way.

Cobi Smith: Hello and welcome to the SETwomen podcast, I'm Cobi Smith. And that was Beatrice Leigh, CEO of Cresset Biomolecular Discovery. In this episode we're going to look at careers in science, with a focus on enterprise.

Geraldine Rodgers: When I finished my PhD I had no thought about working in startup companies, it never entered my head. I got this job at research, research and technology at Tate and Lyle and it had never occurred to me that I might find myself working in a spinout company from there. But that's what did happen and actually I found that really enjoyable as well, you know. Because there I had the opportunity to take something that started in a shake flask to something that you put in a packet with a price attached to it that you could sell to somebody. And I had that opportunity to sort of see that whole process happen and actually be part of it and part of making it happen. And that was really, that I think is where I got interested in the commercialisation aspects, and it was pure chance, I'd never even though about it when I was doing my PhD, that that's what I might like to do. It's only when I actually had the experience of doing it I realised oh, you know, this is really good, you know, this is seeing something really useful come out of what I'm doing. So I'm very happy with what I do at the moment because although it isn't quite the same practical hands-on job I did then, it's still helping that process, you know, that process of developing the science into something that has value that somebody will buy and that is useful to somebody.

Cobi Smith:  That was Geraldine Rodgers from Cambridge Enterprise. Not all science enterprises are focused on lab research. There are also a lot that involve getting out into the community, like Kate Jackson, a zoologist, does.

Kate Jackson: Well I've always been interested in animals, that's always been one of my main sort of passions in life. And I looked at being a vet and all the sort of traditional careers and found that I was most interested in animal behaviour, so I actually went to university and studied psychology and zoology, joint Honours at Reading. And then after my degree, wanted to stay in that sort of sphere, but found it very difficult to find work and ended up working in zoos in the education department, and I spent three years working in two different zoos, and ended up as the head of education. From the zoos, at times, I'd gone out to sort of scout groups and things and had a bit of experience of going into other settings with the animals, and I did a bit of research on that online and found a few other people were doing it, but it certainly wasn't an area where I had an awful lot of competition and decided that yeah, it was worth a go,. Then wanted a sort of a challenge and to run a business where I could make sure that things were done the way I wanted to and to the sort of ethical standards that I felt where important.

Cobi Smith: And so how many animals do you have now?

Kate Jackson: It's, in terms of an actual head count, it's over 50. But then you know I've got twelve giant African land snails, I've got 18 Madagascan hissing cockroaches, so some of them live in quite big numbers.

Cobi Smith: The healthcare sector is becoming more entrepreneurial as well, as Moira Upton, a health screener, explains.

Moira Upton: I am chair of a group called the nursing entrepreneur network group, and that's for nurses who either have started their own businesses or are thinking of setting themselves up outside of the NHS, and then if you want to you can provide your services back to the NHS and they will pay you for these services. We had a publication that we call 'turning initiative into independence' that nurses can use, and that's available from the RCN, you can download it. A lot of the healthcare is coming out of hospitals, they're trying to have just people who really need to be in hospital in those hospital beds. And then the majority of care taking place outside, either in the home, or in the locality. To do that you need to have lots of different structures in place and they think that one of the ways forward is for nurses to be able to work not just in the health service but outside it as well, and maybe move backwards and forwards between the two.

Cobi Smith: But we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves. I'm going to assume that not everyone listening are established scientists. What if you're just starting out?

Sue Bedford: I think this is the hardest part, you know, is the thinking 'oh I want to do this, but I've got to go through all those years of experience and training. But again, it's having your eyes focused on what you want to achieve, and that will always change during the process, but really you've got to have, to be taken seriously you have to have that experience, and also to feel confident that you're doing the right thing. And I think today, whatever you start off and whatever you study at university it doesn't, what you actually end up being, it could be something completely different, and I think that's one good thing about living today, is that there's such a variety that you can do, and yeah, the world is your oyster as they say.

Cobi Smith: That was Sue Bedford, who runs another health screening company.

Fiona Marston: Don't worry about what people expect you to do, do what – take the advice, listen to people, ask questions, but at the end of it all when you make your judgement about what you're going to do, do it because you want to do it and you know that you're going to be happy doing it. So don't become a doctor or a lawyer because your mum and dad want you to do it, or because your mum and dad are it. That isn't the reason for doing something and if you really in your heart don't want to do it you're going to be unhappy.

Cobi Smith: And that was Fiona Marston, CEO of Novacta Biosystems.

Berenice Mann: You can't make people be interested in something they're not interested in. But if you're interested in physics and that's what you want to study then go ahead and study it, and don't be put off by the fact that you might be, you know, there are more women in physics now anyway, but don't be put off be the fact that you might be one of a few women in that area – you might be shining, you know, above everybody else. I think if that's what you want to study, then you should study it. I'm actually a big believer that if there's something that really interested you then you'll be much better at studying that than you know, being told by someone 'oh, you should do law, or you should do something else',  that you're not quite that interested in. This is something you might end up doing for a long, long time, so you want to make sure, when you start off, that you're on the right track if you can.

Kate Mingay: It's going to be far easier, from my viewpoint, to have your scientific background, you know, you have your base, you have your knowledge, but if you want to work on the commercial side of things then, you know, get your science grounding first and then it's far easier, you know, to do the commercial things. But it's difficult because on the whole, people that go for science are the kind of people that want to do science. They want to work in a lab, they want to work in research. And then when they make the, if they are, do eventually take the step onto the commercial side of things, then sometimes they do find it quite hard, you know with the confidence. Whereas you know, someone people would say if you get a really good salesman they can sell anything, whether it's pencils, double glazing, toilet rolls, or chemicals. But you still have to have, you know, the right kind of brain to understand it. Because we're a small organisation, you know you can find yourself talking to anybody from the people who are in the lab testing new products, developing new products, to a purchasing manager who purchases everything from paperclips to raw materials, or you can find yourself presenting to engineering people, people who are running chemical plants, and even, you know, the owners of other companies. So you have to be flexible, you have to be adaptable. So I would say, you know I find people who pick subjects, pick degree subjects because they don't really know what they want to do. And they'll do it and you say, 'well what do you think you might like to do with it?' 'well, I don't know', or, 'well, what could you do with it?', 'well, I don't know that either'. So I would say pick something you enjoy doing that interests you, because if you're not interested in it, you're going to have a pretty boring time throughout university or further education or apprenticeship, or whatever, you know, route you choose in order to move on into the workforce. So it has to be something that interests you and something that you enjoy. And that's probably six steps out of ten towards getting where you want to be.

Cobi Smith: Physicist-turned-consultant Berenice Mann there, followed by Kate Mingay, who runs a chemical supply company. Kate mentioned that moving from doing science to working in science enterprise can be a big step. Deciding to get into enterprise often means hanging up your labcoat and developing other skills to compliment your scientific knowledge. Here's Beatrice Leigh again:

Beatrice Leigh: As the chief executive officer I gave up science a long time ago. I understand what we're doing, if we were to give a scientific presentation I would not do it. So I don't do what we would call proper science. I do more strategy, I worry about the budgets, I worry about the rent and what collaborations we're making, and I do the business deals, working with Sally, who is business development. So I don't do any real science, no. I read the papers and give opinions on science but I don't do any real science.

Annabel Sedgwick: I say I'm not a scientist but I've got a reasonably good scientific grounding from what I did at school, and I think I'd be a little bit lost where I am now if I didn't have that. So I think science is really important at school, I actually find it much more fascinating now than I necessarily did when I was in school because it's brought to life and the applications in real life are so fascinating. Having said that though, I'm, you know, my expertise is really in marketing, not in science, and just bringing the two together in the office is great because we've got the expertise from everyone else. So if you wanted to get into science communications, arm yourself with decent science at school, but then you know, maybe either keep going down the science route, or think about a bit of marketing. One thing we have found though, two of our account managers are PhD scientists, and we've found it a lot easier to teach marketing to scientists than it is to teach science to marketers. So if you do want, if you do enjoy science and you want to get into science marketing communications then maybe continue down that science route at degree level, perhaps not do a PhD, but then sort of make the switch and go down, you know, the route of learning both.

Geraldine Rodgers: Go with the big company with the international reputation and get experience there. Because they are usually pretty good organisations at training, developing you, and you see how a big company operates. You see what's important to them. And then, if you still want to be an entrepreneur after that, do it then, when you've got the big company experience. Because at the end of the day if you're a little company in science, you ultimately will have to deal with the big companies. And knowing how they work, what they need, what's important to them, will give you a much better feel for what's likely to work as a little company. So I think my experience would be, you know, cycle yourself through at least one if not two big multinationals if you can, if you get the opportunity, then do the entrepreneurial bit. Hopefully it won't have been beaten out of you (laughs) by that point. I think in life science opportunities, particularly biomedical opportunities, the normal sort of life cycle for a small is you know, you get it going, you get some funding, you try and do a deal with a big company. And if you know how these big companies operate, what's important to them, then positioning yourself to do that deal will be a little easier. It's never easy, but will be a little easier than if you know nothing about how big companies operate and work. So I think that experience is really valuable.

That was Annabel Sedgwick who runs a science communication agency, followed by Geraldine Rodgers from Cambridge Enterprise. Once you've got your experience, you might want to get into consulting, like physicist Berenice Mann did.

Berenice Mann: As you go on, you know, the things that make you employable as a consultant are twofold: there's knowledge of your area, whatever it is you're going to consult in, and there's experience. And I think it would be very difficult to set up if you didn't have those two things behind you, because people would have no faith, no reason basically, to use you. When I'm going in to talk to people if I was pitching myself, I'm saying, you know, I've got a PhD and years of experience researching, and I've got business skills, and I have marketing experience going back a number of years, and I can show, that you know I have satisfied customers as well, and that I've held down responsible jobs and carried them out well. I think if you're, you know, I don't know whether I would have been able to do that, I certainly couldn't have done it straight after my postdoc, I had really, very few commercial skills still at that point. So I certainly, as well as not having, or feeling I had the right skills I certainly wouldn't have had the confidence, I don't think, to suddenly say right, well I'm going to work for myself, and it never really occurred to me at the time either, to do something like that.

Kate Jackson: The funny thing is, on everything I've done, all the enterprise meetings – I was 25 when I set up the business and I'm now 28 – and actually I never meet anybody my age. I meet teenagers and young people, who are sort of 18, 19, and are being encouraged to set up in business, and I meet lots of women who have families and children who are 35 plus. But I have yet to actually meet anybody else who is in the 25 to 30 category on any of these networking events I've been on. Female – men that age, but no women that age. Because there seems to be this thing of, you know, flexibility's important when you've got a family but actually, flexibility's just as important if you're single, because actually I want to do the things I want to do now because I don't want to be, you know, ten years down the line and say 'well, I wish I'd done that, and now I've got a family and I can't do that now', and you know, I want to be able to go out and do the things I want to do now.

Back to podcasts