04 - Say YES to learning about Business & Entrepreneurship as a PhD Student
Hi all,
I recently took part in a great competition developed to raise awareness of the commercialisation of ideas among PhD students and Postdoctoral researchers. In this post, I decided to share this experience with you because it could be very beneficial to you or your friends doing a PhD or Postdoc in the UK. This training is called YES for Young Entrepreneur Scheme (now you get the title of the article, right? ^^).
To summarise the whole experience in one sentence: YES is a unique opportunity to experience the start-up creation process and see how an idea can be transformed into a business!
But why would an engineering PhD student learn about business? Well, although PhD programmes are mainly designed to prepare for research and academic roles, not all PhD students want or can pursue a career in academia. Firstly, the academic world doesn’t suit everyone (due for example to the lack of application of the work done). Secondly, there are too many PhD students for too few academics jobs (see this article). Hence, a large number of PhD graduates will pursue a non-academic career (e.g. managerial career in industry, entrepreneurship, finance consulting, etc.).
Bearing this in mind, YES is a great opportunity for voluntary academics to stimulate themselves and broaden their career aspirations. The complementary skills developed through YES are also useful for those who decide to stay in academia as collaborations with industry remain important in academia.
I personally applied for YES for several reasons. In a nutshell, I was very enthusiastic about the opportunity to learn about the business context of research, develop skills relevant to entrepreneurship, and meet like-minded PhD students.
An abstract representation of YES (taken from http://www.yescompetitions.co.uk/ )
The idea of YES is to make
participants "prepare a business plan for a company based on a
hypothetical but plausible idea, based on real markets and financial
data." The competition involves a three-day workshop where
participants learn about all aspects of business administration. On the
third day, the participants make a "formal oral presentation of their
business plan before a panel comprised of business, financial and
academic representatives taking the role of equity investors" (much like the shows Shark Tank and Dragon's Den ^^).
I took part in the 2018 Engineering YES held in Nottingham in October 2018. Prior to that, I was assigned a team of five for the competition. My team was composed of Tolu, Sam, Lola, Mario (who’s also in SMARTI – check his blog here), and I. We were all students at the University of Nottingham at different stages of our PhDs working in different fields of engineering such as Bioengineering, Transport engineering, and 3D printing.
To
prepare the competition, we met a few times around September to discuss
ideas, business strategy, and choose our roles within the team. As you
can imagine, many ideas flowed and were discussed... but we finally
ended up with an idea that we all felt promising: developing a
toothbrush that can monitor your teeth health (e.g. decay and cavities)!
This later led to our company InnoDent and the BrushBudy targeted to
kids.
All
in all, it was fun to experience the process of finding an idea, making
market research, and designing a business approach accordingly.
However, the best was yet to come: the three days of the workshop!
 |
| InnoDent at the 2018 YES Engineering |
The YES Engineering workshop ran from 3 October to 5 October 2018. The competition welcomed around 40 PhD students and postdocs from all around the UK.
In the morning of the first two days, all participants attended lectures from professionals on all aspects of knowledge exchange and the commercialisation of ideas. The presentations were very interesting and included talks from patent & trademarks attorneys (Potter Clarkson), business development experts (PharmaConsulting) and entrepreneurs (e.g. Mike Lawton from Oxford Space Systems who does very cool stuff ^^)... One of my favourite talks was from Andrew Jenkins - a former YES participant - who is developing his business (Kinewell Energy) based on his PhD research. I really enjoyed meeting Andrew because I could identify with him since on top of being a former YES participant his area of research is not that far from mine (i.e. networked infrastructures optimisation).
In the afternoons, we were given time to use the knowledge gained from the morning sessions to refine our business plans. In these sessions, our plans were also challenged by the experts who presented in the morning. And well, we ended up completely modifying our business strategy on the second day thanks to some of the feedback given!
Finally, on friday - after staying up until 2 or 3 pm to prepare our presentation 😣 -, we presented our business idea, business strategy, and financial projections to the panel.
Unfortunately, my team didn't win the engineering competition (that offered a ticket to the YES final held in London were the winners of the Engineering, Biotechnology, and Environment YES all compete against each other). However, we learned a lot, and the whole experience was amazing. It was also very enriching to meet the other participants and see their presentations. I am thankful to the YES organising team, the founders of YES, and everyone who helped us with our idea.
Finally, if you want to know more about YES, here is their website: www.yescompetitions.co.uk , they also run a facebook page and a twitter account.
In the morning of the first two days, all participants attended lectures from professionals on all aspects of knowledge exchange and the commercialisation of ideas. The presentations were very interesting and included talks from patent & trademarks attorneys (Potter Clarkson), business development experts (PharmaConsulting) and entrepreneurs (e.g. Mike Lawton from Oxford Space Systems who does very cool stuff ^^)... One of my favourite talks was from Andrew Jenkins - a former YES participant - who is developing his business (Kinewell Energy) based on his PhD research. I really enjoyed meeting Andrew because I could identify with him since on top of being a former YES participant his area of research is not that far from mine (i.e. networked infrastructures optimisation).
In the afternoons, we were given time to use the knowledge gained from the morning sessions to refine our business plans. In these sessions, our plans were also challenged by the experts who presented in the morning. And well, we ended up completely modifying our business strategy on the second day thanks to some of the feedback given!
Finally, on friday - after staying up until 2 or 3 pm to prepare our presentation 😣 -, we presented our business idea, business strategy, and financial projections to the panel.
Unfortunately, my team didn't win the engineering competition (that offered a ticket to the YES final held in London were the winners of the Engineering, Biotechnology, and Environment YES all compete against each other). However, we learned a lot, and the whole experience was amazing. It was also very enriching to meet the other participants and see their presentations. I am thankful to the YES organising team, the founders of YES, and everyone who helped us with our idea.
Finally, if you want to know more about YES, here is their website: www.yescompetitions.co.uk , they also run a facebook page and a twitter account.
That's all for today,
See you all,
Philippe S, ESR9
See you all,
Philippe S, ESR9
PS: I am now in Seville (Spain) where I am doing a secondment as part of my research project. For this reason, I don't think that I will be writing new posts very soon. However, I will eventually go back to blogging in a few months - meanwhile, you can remain updated about the project through twitter @smartietn or @p_sohouenou