Yorkshire Forward Bioscience Awards

Prof. Heinz Woolf spoke after dinner and made a number of good points. According to Prof. Woolf, people who generate ideas may not be the best ones to sort the good from the bad (from a commercialisation perspective). What they need is input from a good 'editor' - someone who understands science and business, and has the scars to prove it! This involvement may be quite limited, but key to choosing the good ideas and driving them in a commercial direction. Once a proof of concept is achieved, someone then has to run with the idea and dot the i's and cross the t's. Again this may need someone else who is more operationally orientated: a details person. Rarely is one person good at doing all three (or interested in them). Indeed, it may be a mistake to try to make academics into entrepreneurs by asking them to cross over from being a generator of ideas to a running a business. Food for thought! The dinner was good also.