REPORTS AND ARTICLES: NSS/MIC Workshop on "Basic Science and Entrepreneurship"

Basic science does not usually have immediate benefits for industry or the economic world in general, and delays in return are often incompatible with the short-term expectations of market driven activities. In the course of the last decade, the employment generated by start-up companies has more than compensated for the unemployment produced by the layoffs resulting from the restructuring of multi-national companies. Since the early 70’s, universities and their incubators, particularly in the USA, have been supporting young entrepreneurs in the start-up phase of their entrepreneurial endeavours. More recently, a culture of entrepreneurship has developed in major R&D laboratories worldwide, and start-up companies resulting from these activities are flourishing.

The “Basic Science and Entrepreneurship” workshop was organised by François Bourgeois, CERN; Alan Jeavons, Oxford Positron Systems (UK); Yves Jongen, Ion Beam Applications (Belgium) and Gert Muehllehner, UGM (USA). It was held last October during the IEEE Nuclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference in Lyon, France. It aimed to highlight the factors necessary for success in entrepreneurship and the best practices to be adopted in the specific environment of R&D laboratories. The workshop was structured as two half-day sessions, each with oral contributions followed by a panel discussion.

During the morning session entitled “The do’s and the don’ts of entrepreneurship”, five founders of spin-off companies reported on the problems they faced when developing their businesses. In addition to the well-known problems of entrepreneurship (establishment of a business plan, funding, marketing and growth) the panel discussion gave useful indications on issues of particular relevance to scientist-entrepreneurs. These are: the need to match a high-tech product with market and customer needs, the need to team up with third parties knowledgeable in business and administration (e.g. local business schools) and the need to know how to produce a business plan. As Muehllehner said: “… to succeed, the scientist-entrepreneur needs to have a finished product, an established market, a team of people (finance, marketing and sales) and, a source of money. Failing to have one of these, the chance of success drops to 80%, failing to have two, it is only 25% and, don’t even start if you are missing more than two.”

During the afternoon session entitled “How to turn a scientist into an entrepreneur”, contributions were made by five representatives of major R&D laboratories and European institutes where they presented the most recent actions they have taken aimed at promoting a change of culture, following their development of more pro-active technology transfer policies. The oral presentations gave special attention to training actions, support given to entrepreneurs (identification of nascent technologies, intellectual property, seed capital and funding), and measures aimed at fostering a more entrepreneurial spirit.

The panel discussion assembled all the speakers of the day and included members of the audience. It identified the best practices to be adopted and the consequent actions to be taken. It was agreed that there was substantial value in the direct exploitation of technology as compared to licensing. The need to foster an entrepreneurial spirit amongst scientists and their evident willingness to transfer technology was discussed. The raising of their awareness of the value of intellectual property and of exploiting its worth, together with the need for networking with other entrepreneurs and venture capitalists were seen as key measures likely to foster a necessary change of culture, at least in Europe.

Workshop records to be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.cern.ch/CERN/Technology/NSS2000/entrepreneurship.

This report of the workshop was prepared by François Bourgeois, M26900, LHC Division, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland; Phone +41 22 767 20 41; Fax: +41 22 767 62 30; E-mail: francois.bourgeois@cern.ch.

Return to Contents