It's the first day of class on a postgraduate program in engineering management, and the students, mainly engineers and life scientists, are looking anxious—mostly because the class has started with a metaphor: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Alice is an appropriate role model because her journey is similar to that experienced by scientists moving from the safe waters of the laboratory to the uncharted waters of the business world. Alice left a safe and familiar environment and set off down a rabbit hole on a journey full of ambiguities, complexities, and only later, realization. She survived her ordeal because she was willing to change perspectives when faced with new ideas or situations. In other words, she adapted—just what budding bioentrepreneurs must do.
How can an academic scientst make this transition into the world of entrepreneurship? Rochelle Young, a professor of management engineering at the University of Colorado give advice in her article, "Adventures in Wonderland," published recently in Bioentrepreneur.
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