Instill the Entrepreneurial Mindset

As a long-time industrial researcher now turned academic, I believe that the careers of industrial researchers in nearly all areas of science and technology would benefit significantly from formal training in entrepreneurship. Even if these courses are taken at the undergraduate level, the entrepreneurial management perspective carries over and is critically important to the professional researcher. At first sight, new entrants to the industrial research workforce may find it puzzling that U.S. corporations in businesses that are being revolutionized, transformed, or at least regularly buffeted by worldwide trends in science and technology, are run by senior managements whose dominant background and skill sets are in non-scientific or technical areas. Consider just one 2004 study (1). it showed that: "The three most commonly held functions among S&P 500 CEOs are finance (26 percent), operations (24 percent), and marketing (24 percent), with finance being the most common among leading CEOs since 1997. It appears that despite engineering (10 percent) being the most commonly-received college degree, many end up working in other areas of the operations function in the early stages of their careers. " Not surprisingly, multi-functional management experience is increasingly required for the CEO position. According to the 2004 study: "Over the past five years, the percentage of top 100 S&P CEOs who have been in one function throughout their career has decreased from 25 percent to 9 percent. " Choosing a Career Path For the young industrial researcher who may harbor vague aspirations to contribute to, and perhaps eventually lead the corporation in areas beyond a narrow technical specialty and for whom the ability to influence corporate management will be important, these statistics on the backgrounds of CEOs might reasonably seem to imply the need for a career path that eventually includes rigorous instruction in finance and general management. However, at the start of a research career, the new recruit's first set of tasks is often to build on the areas of specialized knowledge and outlook developed in a university laboratory to embrace what is hoped will be a wide range of deeply rewarding topics and research challenges that are of direct interest to the corporation. Over the next decade, the recruit typically begins to acquire the depth of technical knowledge, experience in applications, and administrative and management skills that build the craft of industrial research. However, the wider issues of corporate strategy, finance and general management will almost certainly intrude on the practice of the craft if the researcher begins to consider the broader business impact of technical advance on corporate stability. Given that: "The average life span of a company in the S&P 500 declined from 35 years in 1975 to less than 20 years today" (2), it is very reasonable for the by now more experienced researcher working at the cutting edge of an emerging technical field to deeply ponder the question: "To what extent should my preferred role be to use my special technical expertise to directly support and implement the current business strategies of the corporation, or should I better apply the balance of my unique expertise in emerging technical fields to challenge the conventional business wisdom within the corporation, to search out where current products, processes, systems or services are potentially obsolete, and where emerging knowledge in my familiar fields might lead us to new opportunities that will replace existing income streams? " If the researcher chooses to challenge the existing business strategy, to chase after emerging technical opportunities, he or she typically runs into opposition. The limited credibility of the researcher in mainstream operations, the lack of hard numbers to back up the new approach being proposed, and the inability to simultaneously satisfy all the multiple corporate constituencies, often dooms these early discussions, however heartfelt on the part of the researcher. …