Science for Passion or Science for Profits?

What can modern scientists learn from the Wright brothers?

Whether you’re an academic researcher or an entrepreneur, you’ll often need to balance the financial and creative sides of science. With the right approach to managing your research, you can learn to harness your scientific passion to drive innovative discovery—and when that research takes off, the money will follow.

00:44     Introductions

Meet your hosts, Nick and Damien from Experimental Designs Consulting.

EDC website

01:30     Does profit really trump passion in scientific entrepreneurship?

Are we approaching the end of the technical founder era? Nick and Damien discuss a recent article that describes a new model of biotech product development, controlled more by venture capital interests than by the passion of individual founding scientists. How can entrepreneurs balance these two aspects of the biotech business to reduce financial risk without stifling scientific innovation? 

Article: The Founder is dead. Long live The Founding Investor, by Isaac Stoner

13:50     Beyond the budget in academic research

In this segment, your hosts explore an example of a major equipment purchase decision in which the immediate financial costs had to be weighed against the value and risk of a long-term investment in the lab’s research productivity. Reframing the dollars and cents of a research budget in ways that relate directly to advancing your overall research vision can help you make the right decisions about how to spend your hard-earned funds.

The story of Samuel Langley: 5 Lessons From the Wright Brothers and the Power of Purpose, by Aly Juma

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