Start-up fever has swept across universities all over the world, with fewer students nowadays reporting enthusiasm for traditional careers in big corporate firms; instead, they want to set up their own ventures. According to recent figures reported by Horizons, around 10% of Swiss students have already founded or are in the process of founding a start-up. This rises to 25% of students in countries such as the UK, according to Santander, showing there’s even more room for this field to grow. But founding a successful company takes a lot more than just enthusiasm, and the question remains how to best teach nascent entrepreneurs the skills they need to make it in the wider industry.
 
It was in this context that we spoke to Philippe Renaud, emeritus professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL), scientific adviser and start-up mentor, about how academic institutions can nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs – and why we must break down silos between academia and industry to encourage innovation.

The start-up boom has fundamentally changed the way industry works

As Philippe outlined, innovation pathways in the life sciences used to look very different: traditionally, they were long and dominated by established companies with specific goals in mind. In his words: ‘If I look back to the beginning of my academic career, which was over 30 years ago, I remember there being a lot of internal innovation in big enterprises, which would go off and look for a specific molecule or a solution to a particular problem, and then ask an academic research centre to validate what they found. The start-up landscape as we know it now certainly didn’t exist.’

This all changed with the rise of start-ups a couple of decades ago: a wave of new technologies, models and ideas flooded onto the scene, revolutionising how we conceive of both innovation and industry itself. As Philippe noted: ‘Entrepreneurs generally run very lean, agile operations that can evolve quickly, and they often need to have (or else recruit) a mix of academic talent and market know-how. This helps to break down boundaries between these traditionally separate disciplines. Start-ups have put a completely different spin on what it means to work in the life sciences.’

As such, start-up ventures have become very attractive to people studying life sciences. Philippe affirmed that many of his students ‘dream of starting their own ventures, because they’ve seen many success stories over the years and want to make an impact’. Nonetheless, he also stressed that ‘people don’t always realise what it takes to run a start-up – the life sciences market is tough (and crowded, in certain areas), you don’t get quick wins and there are significant regulatory constraints to consider’.

The recipe for start-up success: All the stars must align

In this competitive landscape, a few different factors need to fall into place for your venture to succeed. We asked Philippe to run through them with us.

He advised: ‘First and foremost, you need a really strong network, so that you get an overview of the market and gauge where your product fits. After all, you need to stress-test your path to market, which is always difficult if you come from an academic background and you’re fascinated by theory or drug design. But in this case, you need to move away from theory and instead seek practical feedback from experts and validate your business plan by presenting it to investors.’

Which leads onto the next point: in Philippe’s estimation, ‘every entrepreneur needs money to get off the ground, but a bit of financial uncertainty can actually inspire and motivate you’. In fact, he contended that entrepreneurs who are also postdocs or research scientists with regular monthly salaries can get ‘too comfortable’. He continued: ‘Similarly, if your company has access to public funding (of which there is quite a lot in Switzerland), you have no incentive to get to market quickly – and you end up with a subsidised company that just coasts for years.’ In essence, his recommendation to entrepreneurs is: ‘Get your product out into the public domain as soon you can to garner advice, investment or actual business. Otherwise, the field will have moved on before you even launch – and your technology could be obsolete. You have to strike while the iron’s hot.’

On the flip side, Philippe also described cases where start-ups have jumped the gun, entering the market before completing their due diligence and firming up their business plans. As he put it, ‘you have to get the timing just right – and this is where your network and community comes back in. You need the right people at the right time’. In this, he pointed to innovation ecosystems (like the one at Biopôle), where members can not only ask each other for advice as they go through similar processes, but even ‘recycle’ key employees. For example, at the very start of the founding journey, a company might need talented, specialised engineers, but a few months later they might instead need a team of market advisers and regulatory experts. As Philippe identified, ‘every month, a growing company might have to hire certain employees and fire others to fit the needs of the business, but within the wider life sciences ecosystem, there will always be a plethora of new opportunities to embrace – you become part of a talented, flexible, collective pool. I would like to see academic communities, like EPFL, embrace this model.’

The role of academia in nurturing entrepreneurs

On this note, we also discussed how institutions and research centres might better support current entrepreneurs and help to form the next generation of entrepreneurs.

In Philippe’s view, this requires a shift in academics’ attitude towards industry versus academia, so that they accept more candidates with different profiles and different aspirations. In his own words: ‘I’m trying to convince my colleagues at EPFL that we shouldn’t just accept students who are academically impressive, especially at Master’s level and above. We need more people who have real initiative and drive to make an impact in the wider world, not just as a professor or researcher. After all, despite academia’s focus on producing academics, less than 10% of PhD students globally stay in academia. We should stop presenting this as a failure and instead champion alternative trajectories.’

Indeed, when describing the graduate students he has encountered in his career, Philippe was full of praise for those who forged their own paths and juggled external projects alongside an academic career: ‘I’ve had a number of PhD candidates in my lab who worked on their own side projects or start-ups for 10–20% of the time. I didn’t mind at all, as long as their thesis projects were also progressing and they didn’t interfere with other work in the lab. What’s more, in my experience, these nascent entrepreneurs were strong, independent people who were even more efficient when it came to tackling their academic work – and they weren’t afraid of failure, which is a huge asset. I always say to my students, “I don’t want to narrow your horizons: I want you to take risks and I hope you fail – and thereby learn to fail well.”’

Moreover, Philippe stressed that it’s the responsibility of the institution to hone this attitude among its students. He emphasised what he sees as academia’s primary goal: to ‘provide young people with the skills they’ll need in the future and thereby to create a well-functioning society’. As he put it: ‘The research is, in many ways, a by-product of higher education’s mission. We’re fundamentally trying to train motivated students and generate capacity, not produce new breakthroughs. Frankly, for the first couple of years in their academic careers, most students will make countless mistakes – but this teaches them how to handle and solve problems.’

How academic institutions can lean into opportunities to collaborate with industry

Philippe believes academia should focus on its central purpose and not try to be something else (such as an incubator explicitly designed to produce new industry collaborations). Nonetheless, he did cite opportunities for academics to work with industry to further innovation. ‘At any academic institution,’ he said, ‘there is a huge talent pool and specialised instruments/machines that don’t exist elsewhere – of course this has value to companies. It makes sense for industry players to have early access to these cutting-edge methods and brilliant minds – and on the flip side for students to get a taste for how the industry works.’

Further to this, Philippe suggested introducing ‘entrepreneurs in residence’ at academic labs to foster exchange and innovation. Speaking anecdotally, he described how he invited a successful entrepreneur who had just sold his company to come into his lab once a week and chat to the students. ‘It was a win-win’, Philippe contended, ‘as he could refresh his mind and keep an eye in, while the students got exposure to a successful industry player. And in turn, this arrangement generated a new start-up: the entrepreneur was put in an office with one PhD candidate and one Master’s student, and he got so interested in their research that he ended up saying “OK, let’s start a new venture – I’ll put in the first million and then we’ll see.”’

This is, in many ways, the dream scenario, whereby a collaborative venture develops organically. But, circling back to the start of our conversation, Philippe also stressed that there are many innovation routes. As he reminded us, just as only 10% of PhD students end up working in academia, only about 10% of start-ups succeed in the long run. As a result, he reflected that it’s worth looking at multiple different options to publicise your ideas, from presenting to established industry players to getting involved in radical shared lab projects or collaborating on high-impact papers. ‘We just need to find ways to infuse and valorise all the different aspects of working in the life sciences’, he said. ‘Only by meshing together all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle can we make progress. I see it as my responsibility as a professor and mentor to supervise well and give my students the methodology they need – and then to let them fly.’