Persistence and Resilience
In entrepreneurship, there’s a fine line between vision and delusion. How do successful entrepreneurs realize their vision without giving in to the nay-sayers? It can be difficult to keep moving forward in the face of criticism and doubts.
We’ve been learning from successful entrepreneurs and scientific leaders through the Academic Drug Discovery Consortium’s webinar series on “Things I Wish I Knew”. For this series, ADDC has invited experienced leaders in academic and industrial positions to discuss their struggles and successes. While the topics in this series range widely, recent panelists have all touched on the role of persistence and resilience in their success.
July’s event on Cell Therapy entrepreneurship featured Michel Sadelain (Memorial Sloan Kettering) and Bob Deans (Synthego). Progress in cell-based therapies has been slow and hard-fought. Seemingly insurmountable technical and manufacturing challenges blocked progress for many years. More recently, new gene editing technologies are helping to reduce time manufacturing costs. The field is also expanding beyond the rare disease niche with the advent of CAR-T approaches. Michel and Bob attribute successes in this field to the ability to identify key bottlenecks early and maintain persistent attention to solving them (e.g., manufacturing).
In May’s discussion on Cell-Based Imaging, Anne Carpenter (Broad Institute) and Chris Gibson (Recursion) spoke about their experiences in the early days of Recursion. Both Anne and Chris acknowledged the desire to make an impact on the world as a driver keeping them moving forward. Luck and ignorance were mentioned as keys to success. Was it luck or strategy that led to securing SBIR funding to support validation of the platform prior to external financing? Using non-dilutive funds to reduce investment risk is always a good strategy. Grant funding awards, which are small, force a focus on mission critical experiments. Sorting out “must-haves” from “nice-to-haves” answers is an important skill honed by limited resources.
Pilar Ruiz-Lozano (Regencor) and Dave Morris (Precision Biosciences) in June’s panel discussion on Navigating Transitions described their experiences moving successfully between academics and industry. Much of their advice related to strategies that build resilience. Both emphasized the importance of keeping up academic networks. Doing so facilitates early awareness of new approaches and technologies that will be needed to solve tomorrow’s problems. In industry, time is a luxury and there is a need to fail fast when resources are limited. Broad networks facilitate rapid access to key experts outside your field. Pilar and Dave also pointed to the need for continuous learning. Keeping and growing a diverse skill set promotes nimbleness and facilitates the ability to pivot when needed.
Successful entrepreneurship requires persistence and resilience. Knowing when to persist requires facing up to weaknesses but also prioritizing issues to be solved. Listen to the critics, but carefully vet their feedback. Keeping up academic connections, building awareness of new technologies and adding new skills gives new entrepreneurs the tools to manage setbacks and overcome barriers.
Photo by Banff Sunshine Village on Unsplash.
