Career Advice: Lab to Business

[BK]

Hi All,

 

I am new to the group and I was hoping to hear some of your opinions about career paths.  I have a degree in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and although I do have laboratory experience (both academic and industry), my career thus far has been on the project management path (contracts, timelines, budgets, etc.) within biotech/pharma.  I am considering options to pursue my MBA or a Master in Biotechnology Enterprise, and am curious if any of you are doing the same.  It can be worrisome at times when I feel like I am not on the conventional research associate - PhD path, but in my eyes the business route better suits my skills and leadership qualities. 

 

Looking forward to hearing your opinions.

 

 

[Nathan McCorkle]

Your opinion of your likes and desires is pretty important, you don't
want to get stuck in some PhD lab pipetting stuff when you'd be doing
more effective work in a management position.

Personally I started in Biotech, added Bioinformatics as a minor (I'd
already been programming for years at that point), and eventually got
sucked into semiconductor fabrication and electrical engineering
stuff. These days I write software dealing with hardware at a
semiconductor company. In my off-time I work on semiconductor fab
stuff, mostly software to interface with and automate some equipment,
and analog electronics... all for application to the biotech sector.

If I wouldn't have had mentors at my university who knew the value of
interdisciplinary knowledge, I would have been much less confident
that pursuing my interests would pay off. Experts are great, but they
sometimes can't talk to each other, so there is a need for other
people to bridge that gap. This is what it seems like you are talking
about wanting to do. Have the foundation in science, and learn how to
manage your peers in that field so they can be more effective as a
team. You will certainly have a much different experience than a
business undergrad who got an MBA afterwards... you might even be the
saving voice of reason in some meeting ('no people, that won't work,
it WILL cost us more money in the long run' i.e. in response to some
business execs reading Make magazine on some DIY fumehood for $35 and
trying to scale that up to high-throughput lab work). If sitting in
some board (boring) meeting is overall more productive for the team
than you sitting at some lab bench, either you're helping everyone be
more efficient, or you need to stop messing up the lab experiments :)
(the last bit was a joke)


If you don't find much excitement about your ideas among your current
peers or academics, boss, etc... well, keep posting here... maybe you
can try managing some of the project conversations that never seem to
make it past the idea phase?


Overall sounds like a good plan, especially if you think it's
something that is a better fit for you.

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--
-Nathan