What does it mean to be an entrepreneur?

{credit}Eric Millette{/credit}

In this month’s Windback Wednesday series, we’re exploring entrepreneurship: how to brush up on your business skills, where to get venture capital funding and more. In this podcast, I speak to Steve Blank, an associate professor at Stanford University engineering school, a lecturer at UC Berkeley Haas Business School, Columbia Business School and the University of California in San Fransisco (UCSF). On top of all of that, he is also a thought leader of the Lean Start-up movement.

I met Steve last week at a SynBioBeta event at Imperial College London. He gave a very engaging key note speech on the Wednesday evening, giving us a flavour of what a Lean Start-up business is. He put several audience members on the spot, asking them to sell someone else’s “idea or concept”  to neighbours, who always (as per Steve’s instruction) said no thanks. They said no thanks, because of who was doing the selling. Steve was trying to make the point that if you, the scientist, have an idea or an invention that you think could be commercialised, then you, the scientist, need to go out and sell. You can’t hire a VP of sales or a marketing manager. YOU know your invention better than anyone else, YOU need to leave the lab and sell YOUR idea.

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