King’s College London
| The Academic Entrepreneur
Career advice
Developing your career
• Don’t make advancement your top priority
– Performance comes first!
• Volunteer for special roles/projects
• Ask about study options as well as pure advancement
– Offer your own resources - time/money
• Think flexibly about where to go within and outside your
current organisation
– Don’t focus on too narrow a set of roles
– Always leave on good terms
– It is quite possible to move out and back
• Being an entrepreneur
is the new “cool” thing.
What’s an entrepreneur?
• One who organises resources to create an enterprise
(=undertaking OF entrepreneur) to make some benefit (read
money).
• Intrapraneurship is applying entrepreneurial skills inside an
existing enterprise / organisation.
– Leverages corporate scale
– Captive ‘market’
– Includes transforming social structures
Where are you most comfortable?
Entrepreneur
Intrapreneur
Administrator
Fundamental
motivation
Realising a
dream
Making a
difference
Pay and
promotion
Risk exposure
Upside and
downside
Corporate collar
Low
Freedom to act
Limited by the
individual
Limited by the
organisation
Low
Who’s boss?
Customers,
shareholders
Many, many
people
Line manager
Skillset
Broad and
detailed
Broad
Detailed
Reward
Fame, fortune
and freedom
Fame, salary and
freedom
Salary
Two types of Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship
IDE
(Innovation-Driven
Entrepreneurship)
Global Markets
SME
(Small Medium Enterprise)
Regional Markets
Restaurants
Dry Cleaners
Services
•
•
•
Δt is short
Linear growth
Less investment required
Products for Export
Sustainable Competitive Advantage at
Core
•
•
•
Δt is long
Exponential growth
A lot of investment required
Typical new enterprises
• Are not at all unique
• Are small
• Are in mature ‘industries’
Find something
to do
much better
than others
Many dentists run small businesses
Success – from your point of view
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What are your goals?
Sustainability?
What does it cost to achieve?
Which obstacles to implementation have been overcome?
Good stories from customers?
Imitation by others, perhaps?
What would you do differently?
Innovation
• Innovation is the successful application of an idea, knowledge
or practice to create a social and/or economic benefit.
• The goal of innovation is positive change, to make someone
or something better.
• Innovation is change; that change can be destructive of
existing orders.
• Innovation ≠ invention
• Innovation ≠ Entrepreneurship
• Skills
• Attitudes
Innovation on your project
Are you really an inventor ?
• It’s not sufficient to just be involved in the work leading to an invention
• You must be instrumental in developing the very basis of the invention
Do you really have claim to ownership of the patent ?
• The inventor of a patented invention may not be its legal owner !
• Creator vs. employer
New companies formed
King’s College London
started >25 companies
since 1991
But, now >25 x more
companies started by
students and recent
graduates
Random tips
• Recognise the gaps in your experience and look for ways
to fill them
• Spot the people you can learn from
• Do you want to be a specialist or do you operate best
across specialisms?