Dmytro Podolskky, PhD student in Nanotechnology at TU Delft
"In the spring of 2010 I followed the course Orientation in Technopreneurship (OoT) at Leiden University. The course covered many aspects of starting up and developing a technology based company and gave a lot of inspiration to think about making a step into business. I found it it very useful and would definitely recommend it to those who want to do something practical out of their research by creating a successful product and start up a company."
“As many young researchers, I became more and more convinced that starting a company would bring much more satisfaction and experience then any other work. It is an exciting career to work on developing something useful and follow your own ideas. My MSc studies and work as a PhD student at TU Delft has been in the area of nanotechnology and I strongly believe that nanotechnology can bring many breakthroughs in diverse areas of our lives in the nearest future. There is a lot of space for innovations, science and inventive thinking and many important discoveries are being made. Many of those discoveries can be converted into great products that will change or improve people’s life. This makes it very exciting to start a company that would develop hi-tech products based on nanoscience and nanotechnology.
One of the obstacles to start a company being a scientist is the fact that while studying for a science or technology degree we hardly come across any information about business, company development, entrepreneurship and investments. The OoT course was a very good and in depth introduction to entrepreneurship because it looked at all most important issues in starting up a company: from identifying and developing a business idea and finding a business model to basic financial procedures, like estimating finances of the company, and negotiating with investors. The Business Planning part gave more hands-on experience in preparing a business plan for a new company and that was a great synergy of theory and practice.
A very important and interesting part of the course were the interviews with real entrepreneurs who started their companies in lifescience-related fields in the Netherlands. Most of them had a science background and started a business of their own inventions. And for most of them the life changed drastically by switching from academy to business. They talked about their experiences in diverse businesses and hearing those different stories of success was very inspiring. Plus they had a lot of practical advices for those who want to start a business.
As to my own experience in the course, I can say that I learned a lot, not only about how to start up a company, finances and investments but also about myself: it made me look differently on how science and business should interact, stimulated me to think about what I really want to do in life and even helped to generate some practical ideas for my future company. And even though I am still not sure what career I will follow after my PhD, I am sure the knowledge acquired in the OoT course will be vey useful for me.”
The Orientation on Technopreneurship, Entrepremeurial Management and Business Planning courses will become a part of the Principles of Research Based Business courses per September 2010.