Ryan Baidya

Biotechnology

From the above chart it is quite clear that researchers and biopreneurs are different in fundamental ways. You can recognize one thing clearly; if you are willing to become solely a researcher you may follow one path, inventing new things day in and day out. But if your goal is to become a successful businessman you will have a somewhat different pathway to take. If fortune is inviting you to become a biopreneur you must choose a special lifestyle— one where you must play both roles—researcher and businessman. Along with the characteristics that a researcher exhibits a biopreneur carries additional attributes which demand particular attention. For example, a researcher’s character-set insists on being ambitious. In contrast the character of a biopreneur requires ambition based on reality. That “reality” makes an ideal situation because in bioventure you must work to promote yourself along with your company’s brand. There is no place for airy ambition as you are required to make a profit for your investors. In the case of bioventure, you will be forced into certain obligations such as: competitive intelligence, task-management, finding investors and funding, tax concerns and monetary returns for your investors, marketing strategies, concrete branding—the future of your brand, reworking corporate structure etc. These things will prevent you from exploring new product-lines without ample concern for profit in the venture. Thus, still retaining characteristics of a researcher, which you truly are, you will also think and execute things like a businessman. That means not to embellish, so that you will become an ideal biopreneur.

Valuable opinions

Co-founder and Chairman of Responsys, Inc., Anand Jagannathan talked about the characteristics required to be an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs need to have determination and drive, the ability to face rejection, and they need to be risk takers. They must know their “value proposition” with respect to customer “pain points.” Most successful entrepreneurs, Jagannathan suggests, have a clear definition of their personal success that goes beyond reaching the IPO stage, an ability to listen and adapt to customer’s requirements, and the ability to recognize and seize opportunity. Though it may be easy to read or listen to this, it’s really very difficult to follow through. And, to materialize the whole concept is even harder.

Mr. Bipin Shah, a successful entrepreneur, now a V.C. in the Silicon Valley, once presented advice to the new entrepreneurs:

· Start only if you are committed for the long haul and prepared to go through the ups and downs.

· Start only if you have the deepest passion for what you are going to do.

· Start only if you are prepared to “fail” if things go “wrong” and they “do…”

· Start only if you are absolutely convinced that you are killing a real pain that exists in the market today.

Though an old familiar story but probably novel to new entrepreneurs—starting anything new always has risk factors, which could lead to failure. If you are inclined to stop at this point, or move on to other tangential visions, you may never return to your dream of establishing a real bio-venture and it will remain merely a fantasy. Whether it’s a new, or an established venture, risk is always an innate part of the game. But you have to stick to your original choice of acquiring success. Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande rejected thoughts of returning to his life as a professor and software engineer—Re: book titled From Financial Flop to Billionaire. After his first failure, Desphande stayed the course, always true to his original vision. Now a very successful entrepreneur, he relates: “A manager means doing things (the) ‘right way’ and a leader means doing the ‘right things.’” If it's something you really believe in, he asserts, "…you're going to make it happen."

Here, before you decide which role fits you best, you have to know exactly what right thing and exactly which right way… Reading theories and building a business plan, based on theory alone, is not very hard, maybe even a little too easy. Your planning must be based first on reality. After that you have to be prepared to pursue essential intermediate goals in order to achieve success. First and foremost, you must consider possible risk factors that you or your company may need to face. Risks have to be faced; not succumbing to your fears will make you an ultimate winner.

Leadership—It’s Expected

Outstanding leaders in business have the ability to convince others. You must have the ability to inspire your peers and to execute things at the right time. You have to motivate investors and partners to have faith in your abilities and concepts, so that they do not waver to invest or support your decisions.

It is particularly true that gaining something is frequently easier than retaining it.

Leadership is that same sort of thing. As a leader you may have to make decisions without having all the information at hand, but your decisions will have to be a strong enough so that no one will want to oppose you afterward. Though only real experience helps true leaders to make decisions effectively, nonetheless, many times intuition, based on personal and concrete understanding, is also a great and positive assist.

You have to stick to your decisions until a time when you find significant flaws in them. Here you will have to mindful that as a leader you must not play the part of a dictator. Good and generous leaders have their goals focused on their team’s goals. You have to be always ready to listen to your people because they may, in fact, have better ideas in mind than you. You must build a good team to execute what you think. Thus capable minds should surround you—their suggestions, comments and interpretations will always be helpful. You should try to remain the center-point of the team, and so your communicating skills will keep them in concert. You have to be strongly connected to your team-members, ready to listen to and talk to them as needed.

It may appear to be the job of managers but you also must learn how to separate your inner being—compartmentalizing yourself as required for a group venture. You must know how to gain the qualities needed to accomplish the duties of full leadership. You have to sanction yourself with powers like ego-power, self-power and agency-power. And it is your soul-power—the power of your spirit—that will keep you totally responsive to all appropriate feedback. That power will never lead you to feel-on-top of anyone, nor beneath anyone either. Also ego, if used positively, can make you self-aware; it can increase positive values in your life. But remember, your ego-power must not become tactless egotism—self-centered selfishness—optimally it should lightly touch egoism, i.e. self-interest. That difference subtlety prevents you from losing your humanity.

Biopreneur

As Deepak Chopra has shared, you as a leader have to have the ability to look and listen—not normal looking, and listening—you must not be blinded to observing reality. For the best possible future of your business, you must not be deaf to free-flowing ideas and advice from your partners and your subordinates.

Interestingly, this vision is not only for you, but also for the sake of social justice and environmental responsibility. After all you must be responsible for any harm caused to ambient surroundings if it’s caused by your bioventure. So you ought to cultivate a sense of consciousness, and social-environmental awareness. Consciousness differentiates tangled hierarchies. Consciousness is necessary to virtually connect with reality. And so, it is a sense of consciousness, and awareness, that every human being, whether in business or any field or job, must possess, for the betterment of society and the environment in general.

A Simple Philosophy

Business is a service for the society and money is the by-product of that service. Every time, as you think of building a new venture, you ought to remind yourself of that statement. The by-product of the business is your profit and it is the living blood of your company, but the service you provide to society must not be any less than oxygen. That might be considered yet another responsibility, but as a leader you have to be prepared for such concepts.

Leadership is dependent on time and circumstances. You must be prepared to prove your abilities every time you are faced with requisite circumstances. You have to create a wholly positive environment for ongoing projects. As a leader you have to have understand synchronicity—a sense of co-ordination, and a sense of harmony within several jobs. A leader feels, visualizes, takes a risk, and accomplishes a commitment to pick up broken pieces, as he or she moves along to meet various goals. A leader never loses the winning spirit.

Nearing the end of this section, I would like to recap and philosophize. It’s not wrong to say that leaders, and followers, co-create each other. Leaders, followers and environments co-arise within the same space and time. It is rule itself that differentiates the ruler from others. Although there are several points or characteristics that may help an entrepreneur to manage the role of the ruler, there is nothing that is fixed in any business. Rules work for business, but business is never for the sake of rules. Rules or basic guidelines to prepare your business are conceived from previous business experiences.

As a leader you will have to make your own rules. Time will allow such opportunities. Then why talk about not-making-rules or avoiding it? Why listen to other people? It is for a breakthrough or to invent new or better rules, when you will reach new vantage points of understanding—newer positions of understanding, thus modifying older rules.

Knowledge is only a stairway that leads you to a level of success—you have to become successful first, by devising your own strategy. When your strategy is proven, you will establish your own rules in which to rule your business, as you see fit. This tipping point will be perceived as the birth of a real industry leader. …Hats off!

Now you know or at least have a vague notion of what a biopreneur is, a hint of the managerial aspects of the job, as well as the role and the ways of a leader. Now let’s take a brief journey through the mind of a biopreneur. What they hold in their minds makes them different from other researchers, as it also makes them known to the world! What is the inspiring source of such strong will-power! According to Mr. Olaf Isachson, the author of Joining the Entrepreneurial Elite, the ten most traits of entrepreneurs, including biopreneurs possess, are:

Paths to success

We always like to know and teach, especially when we know a lot about business, leadership, etc., or about a formula that may bring success. I do not think there is any generalized formula or equation that can be used to define success. However, this does not prevent us from exploring and finding a cluster of formulas, or sets of characteristics, that may give us a foreseeable indication of a pathway to success. In bioventure this information is quite valuable. It is actually based on experience as well as the experiments of others who might inform us about possible, though not 100% flawless, paths to success. One thing might be applicable to X, though it may not equally be applicable to Z, and so on. A group of scholars at MIT’s Sloan School of Management did research on this subject for five years. According to their studies here is their model for success:

· Success takes a balance of forces. Technology is not always necessary and is almost never sufficient.

· Due to the power of open communication by the virtue of the Internet revolution, the business model of future company might be a huge corporation or it might be a very small enterprise.

· Decentralization is key phrase of the future. In order to be successful one must make decisions based on ones proximity to the knowledge of his or her customers.

· True activities, not the corporate organization charts, will become the primary building blocks in a business. Out-sourcing and alliances will eliminate the need for huge personnel, and becomes the enabler of the small businessperson intent on staying lean but growing into a big business.

· Companies large and small will be both global and local. They will need the local touch and all will face global competition.

· The most impacting discovery of this research is regarding the coming golden era of microenterprises—a vision that is saturated in the power of Internet. Given the low cost of communications, everyone can be well informed and thus will make good decisions. The highly motivated, the creative and innovative, the biopreneur, will convert imparted data and knowledge into business wisdom, and build successful companies to compete with gorilla-corporations.

As I already have mentioned these are possible ways; it depends upon you, as you are the sole responsible agent for the future of your company. It is useful and a wise decision for the time being to read these ideas to comprehend the right way before you make any hasty decisions. No one and nothing in particular will bring success unless you understand and decide what is good for you. It is well said that success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. Success comes from the ability to feel compassion.

Inderjit Singh, founder and CEO of Infiniti Solutions and also TIE Singapore, a member of parliament in Singapore, he has shared the story of his entrepreneurship. Acquiring a seat in government or joining a multinational company formerly defined success in Singapore. This might resonate with many of us who have known success in Japan, or have equated it to signing-up with a multinational organization, or gaining a government position. Singh climbed the ladder of success in Singapore through the same means. But then he attempted something a bit different; he was able to acquire venture funding from inside of Singapore, and from abroad. In doing this he ultimately realized his entrepreneurial dream by changing previously construed, or tacitly defined, limits.

He said, as a member of parliament he championed the cause of transforming Singapore from a corporate based economy into an entrepreneurial one by addressing all concerns, impediments, and challenges to entrepreneurship—his mission leaving: “no stone left unturned.” According to him the key characteristics required to be a successful entrepreneur are as follows:

1) Determination

2) Risk-taking

3) Leadership

4) Number one sales person and number one cheerleader

5) Problem solver

So you see the basic traits required to be a successful entrepreneur stay same. It is only the method of utilizing these traits that change. Over the course, methods change with things such as the mind, time, and circumstances.

Though not directly connected to bioventure let us share another important success story. A well circulated story, if not well known, is one in which Ireland was looking to become a major center for Microsoft and wanted a major server hub. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s investigation revealed that Ireland’s electronic infrastructure could not support it because it did not have enough resident bandwidth. So everything stopped. What to do now! There was no looking back and no crying tears of woe. Ireland took on the enterprise, implementing the required bandwidth building it to the latest specifications in a very short span of time. The rest is history, thus establishing Ireland as a global center of excellence in Internet activity. And that is how one should be prepared for any forthcoming or unforeseen, unexpected, problem. Now then two questions arise:

How would another country have dealt with such a challenge?

How are other countries prepared to participate in similar dynamic and global marketplaces?

The problem and its solution will remain at their places we just have to find them out. Now that we have enjoyed a little bit of success kind a thing, let us explore some new ways to attend success:

Ø Strong Will Power That Can Motivate Others.

Ø Early Contact With Successful Entrepreneurs.

Ø Exposure To Success Stories And Case Studies.

Ø Gain Practical, Real World Experience Before, During And After PhDs.

Ø Be Willing To Be Unusual/Unconventional.

Ø Agree To Embrace Risk, And Possibly Failure.

Ø Ready To Leave A Large Company.

Ø Great Idea To Start With.

Ø Excellent And Passionate Team - Near And Long Term Vision.

Ø Ability To Change Course Mid Stream.

Ø Execution, Execution And Execution!!

Ø Strategic And Marketing Brilliance.

Ø Frugality & Excellent Cash Management.

Ø Support Network - VCs, Board, Advisory Board And Other Value Add People.

Table 2: Success Factors in Bioventure

Though it may look like bringing the same old line in front again, I should like to remind you again that things are not to be followed strictly. Those are important yet very flexible rules. Those tools are for the sake of your business and your business is not there to prove their practicality. Every ruler creates his/her own rule but it’s only after you be sure of calling yourself a ruler in business.

Sum up