Scientists are inherently entrepreneurs, as Ada Yee learned when comparing the two during a business school talk.

Contributor Ada Yee

I slipped into a chair at the “Reserved for Latecomers” table, and poured a coffee. I was at a talk by Stanford business school alum Amy Wilkinson on her book “The Creator’s Code”– describing six traits that make entrepreneurs successful. I felt out of place. As a dyed-in-the-wool academic, I’d never counted myself in on the Silicon Valley buzz, but a lab mate had given me his ticket. It was 7am, and I’m a 10am-to-10pm-type grad student—but a grad student nevertheless—and so not one to turn down free eggs and bacon.

My school prides itself on being an innovation incubator, a campus that spawned the founders of Google, Cisco, and Yahoo. Nevertheless, there remains in me a feeling that science and business don’t mix. The majority of academic science still operates on an apprenticeship model, where “losing” students to companies is to lose them from the academic pantheon and kill your own lineage. Growing up in the Silicon Valley, I read headlines on the conflict of interest held by professor-scientists with industry ties in the post Bayh-Dole era (the 1980 decree that paved the way for tech transfer). At a party recently, a student-turned-startup member told me,  “academic scientists like to dig really deep into a problem. That doesn’t work in industry. It’s too slow.” Continue reading →