Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Sell, Sell, Sell, Sell

As I approach to finish the part time MBA program, it becomes clearer that running a lab is not much difference than running a small business. It requires substantial entrepreneurial skills and mentalities to become successful in running a lab.

For example, there are 4 key skills that anyone who wants to start a business needs to have. You don’t need to born with them, but rather acquiring these skills and/or knowing how to get the same results without having these skills will be the key to success.

1) be able to sell
2) be able to push to sell
3) be able to innovate / create product to sell
4) be able to organize

We can apply these skills to Science.

1) No matter what your research topic is, communicating to audiences is a key. You need to be able to sell your research ideas, results, grant proposals etc.
Selling good presentation = more recognition
Selling research ideas, results = more papers = easier to get grants
Selling grant proposals = more money

2) You need to be the driver to achieve the sales.
What do you need to do to be able to make the sales? That is the key question.

3) Now that you have sold the research idea, find ways to get more research ideas.

4) Once 1)-3) is in motions, you need to organize and keep track on all these activities.

This is just an example. You can modify/apply in anyways you like.
The backbone is
1) Sell,
2) Push to Sell
3) Make more product
4) Organize

In other words, Selling = More Money = More research