that their ideas have merit and are fundable from the very beginning of their career. Typically, a university position is not awarded until funding is secured by the candidate in one form or another. In the first few years, they must budget their funds to fill that lab space with research equipment and a work force to begin moving their ideas forward. Many professors have to spend their first few years still doing bench work while they work towards building a suitable research staff. During this time, they also begin searching for a new round of funding. Grants turn over every four to five years but many savvy professors stagger multiple cash infusions to occur every two years to provide a level of security. That means they are continuously writing grants and seeking funding throughout their career.
Funding agencies use grant applications like most investors might use a business plan to determine if the scientist can produce a healthy return on that investment. While the business world projects potential revenue streams to evaluate the return on investment, funding agencies primarily value knowledge generation and dissemination in the form of peer reviewed publications. Investors will evaluate several factors such as the market the core technology is addressing, as well as the quality of the management team.
Funding agencies for academic research are no different except the core technology and the team is one in the same. In a sense, the mind of the professor is the core technology that will generate the revenue of the lab in the form of new knowledge and publications. The funding agencies will evaluate the grant application based upon the CV of the lead researchers involved, the relevant publications produced by the team and a plan for addressing the specific goals of the work. The professor, to be successful, must keep their mind highly trained, current and recognized by other peers as high quality in order for it to establish a competitive advantage over other researchers seeking funding to address similar questions. This requires frequent appearences speaking at different conferences and universities and continually read the latest works of their peers, or as the business world would define them: competitors.
Unlike a CEO, the professor must do all of this while performing essentially a second profession: teaching. Preparing college level lectures is highly time consuming and does not involve a simple textbook and a worksheet that we were accustomed to seeing in today’s high schools. They are expected to perform above and beyond that level, yet they are not formally trained to do so. Graduate school does not offer any direct classroom management or lesson plan preparation courses. So during that first few years when a professor is scrambling to establish a regular source of funding, produce publications, and build their name in their field, they must also learn how to be an educator. Beyond the classroom, professors also are required to participate on departmental, graduate examination and even national funding review committees. Many professors will even do contract consulting on top of all this work to supplement their limited income. The phrase ‘stretched thin’ does not seem to cut it here.
It is asking too much of a professor to expect them to perform these essential tasks of their appointed academic position and conduct the necessary due diligence required to generate momentum for starting a company as well. Despite the difficulties of initiating a startup from a university lab, many still find ways to overcome these obstacles. The entrepreneurial nature of some professors drives them to design their research efforts to lead to a commercial product. The success stories of academic translational work typically involves a professor who either leaves their position at the university or hands off their ideas
