You Have an Idea for Impact. What’s Next?
Q&A with Rana K. Gupta, Former Director of Faculty Entrepreneurship
Rana K. Gupta formerly served as director of faculty entrepreneurship at Boston University.
You are the [former] Director of Faculty Entrepreneurship, but I’ve heard you say that you don’t like to use the word entrepreneurship. Why is that?
I know from working with researchers for the last 20 years that the word entrepreneurship is a heavy word. It’s a weighty word. It’s another title. Our researchers already have titles. You’re a professor. Maybe you’re a PI. Maybe you’re a mother. You don’t need another title. I describe my role and my responsibility in a single line: I help BU researchers bring their ideas to market, or bring their ideas to impact. And then I help them think about how do they want to do it, given the constraints of their life.
How did you come to this work?
I always introduce myself as a businessman because nobody else does, and it makes people smile. I’ve done consulting work for the New York City government, I’ve worked in the pharmaceutical industry, I was in early stage venture capital for several years, and I’ve run a number of start-ups. Most of my work has been with scientists and engineers, helping them understand the functional value of their idea, and figuring out how it might fit into the marketplace. I’ve also been teaching since 2003 – entrepreneurial finance, technology commercialization, classes of that nature.
Let’s say I’m a faculty member and I have an idea that I’m excited about, and I want get this idea out in to the world. What are my options?
The very first question I always ask faculty is, “What is your objective?” Ninety-nine percent of them want to talk about their idea. I have to say, “No, no, no. Personally, in your heart. What is your objective?”
Yesterday I was talking to a researcher who wanted to help patients. That was his objective. Perfect. I have another researcher I’m working with who is interested in recognition in his field. Excellent objective. Somebody else may want to make a lot of money. Somebody else may want to fix something they see broken in the system. Okay. Each one of these is a different objective.
“People think there’s some great roadmap in the sky they have to follow. I am helping them understand that they build the road, based on their objective.”
The paths that we pursue are defined by that objective. There’s sponsored research, where you’re funded by a corporation to develop intellectual property. There’s licensing, where you license your technology or idea to a third party who will take it to market. There’s a start-up, where you start your own company to market your technology or idea. And then there’s good old fundamental research; a seminal paper can bring recognition and have a huge impact on how people think about a topic.
Those are the four big options, but within those four broad categories are truly an infinite myriad of pathways. So your objective is important as it helps us narrow the options for your life and work. Because of this weighty notion of entrepreneurship, people think there’s some great roadmap in the sky they have to follow. I am helping them understand that they build the road, based on their objective.
It sounds like the road you help faculty build could look pretty different from what they have in mind when they first step into your office.
Yes, it happens all the time. I was just recently working with a faculty member to determine what to do with a medical device he had developed. I learned that his objective was to see it in the marketplace – not necessarily to make a lot of money or even hold onto a lot of control. But before we identified a narrower objective, this researcher was assuming that he has to start a huge corporation, with big money, big everything. I was able to help him see that there were options for bringing his idea to market in a simpler way, perhaps through licensing, thus achieving his objective relative quickly and then moving on to his next idea. That simplified vision made his path forward more feasible.
So personal objective is important. What else should people be asking if they want to bring their research to market?
The second question I always ask is whether there’s a need for their idea. Yesterday I met with a student who said, “I would use this technology, and if I would use it, everybody would use it.” And I had to say, “Hold on. That may be true, but it may not be.”
Thinking about market need and customers in this way, applied to their ideas, it’s a new thing for many researchers. It can be uncomfortable. I get that. So in my conversations with faculty, we talk about how to get started. For example, we offer something called the Catalyst program, where we connect you with MBA students, who interview potential customers for the product you’re considering bringing to market. The process introduces you to your specific marketplace and customer needs in that space. We’ve also started a year-long, cohort-based program where BU postdocs and doctoral student learn how to interview customers for the technology they’re working on with their PIs. And then we have the NSF-funded Spark program, in which faculty learn how to interview customers directly.
These are programs that are designed to help researchers gather the information they need to make their next moves. The first step is almost never filling out a form or filing a patent – that’s a common misperception.
Have you seen any barriers when it comes to faculty engaging with your office?
A couple things. The first is a misunderstanding. I’ll hear people say, “Anything I do is owned by the University, so why should I tell you anything?” This whole notion that BU, upon filing a patent, is going to go out and market your technology to other parties is just not true. The Technology Development office exists to formalize your intellectual property as an asset so we can license it back to you. We want nothing more than for you to go off and get your idea into the hands of the people who can use what you’ve created. But this misperception of BU’s role and intention is a very large impediment.
Second, I would say this notion of entrepreneurship is a barrier because people think, well, now I’ve gotta go start a company because that’s the only way to do it. There’s an idea that the plunge has to be headfirst into a start-up, which is daunting and frankly unnecessary. It can be less burdensome than you think. We can help you make a plan to launch a company if that’s what you really want, but commercialization can also take other forms, and fit into the life you have right now.
You manage BU’s Ignition Award program. Who are Ignition Awards for?
Ignition Awards are for any BU faculty with an idea that could have a big impact, by way of the marketplace. We provide winners with $75,000 to set you up on a path towards commercialization, increase the value of your idea, and decrease the risk of your idea. You would apply for an Ignition Award to learn how to express your idea, how to present your idea and, ultimately, determine your next project milestone. We also ask winners to figure out their next funding mechanism so we can begin working together towards that, so when you leave the program you have some real momentum.
This program has been through a big transition in the past year and half, and it’s work I’m really proud of. First, we moved from a very academic, grant-like set of criteria to criteria that are really driven by the reality of the marketplace. This is the beginning of a hands-on education that’s baked into the award, because now faculty have to think, gee, who is the customer? What is the market need? How is this going to work in people’s hands? How big is the market?
And then the second improvement we’ve made is we’ve asked our review committees to provide extensive feedback to applicants after the proposal and presentation stages of the process – whether or not they advance to the next stage or receive funding. Faculty get feedback on their proposals and, if they’re invited to move forward, their presentations. We’ve introduced a proposal writing workshop and a presentation pitch workshop, both open to anyone at BU who’s interested, and then folks in the Ignition Award pipeline also have the opportunity to participate in one-on-one tutoring sessions with consultants.
The proposals and pitches this year were an improvement over last year, but the bigger accomplishment is that we’ve built a rigorous program that allows everyone to take their project to the next level, whether or not they win the financial award.
Can you share one or two of the ideas that BU faculty are working on bringing to market right now?
I can’t help but be excited about an idea coming out of Malay Mazumder’s lab, in the College of Engineering. He won an Ignition Award in 2019, which resulted in a company called Sol Clarity led by his two doctoral students Annie Bernard and Ryan Erickson. Their product is a thin film that laminates to solar panels and with the flip of a switch the solar panel becomes self-cleaning. Solar panels tend to be in hot and arid places, so they become less efficient over time from dust and dirt. Unfortunately one of the primary methods of cleaning today is water. Now we have water being pumped in to clean photovoltaic cells in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and Arizona in the middle of July. So this product is poised to have an enormous global impact.
A second is a Parkinson’s disease therapeutic from Victoria Bolotina of the School of Medicine. Currently, there is no disease-modifying therapy to treat Parkinson’s Disease. Dr. Bolotina is working to change that. Her passion to bring this therapeutic to market is contagious and inspiring. She also won an Ignition Award in 2019, it so happens, and now she’s at the stage where she’s building a team, looking for advisors, and wants to find venture funding. She’s set a path based on her end goal, and what she thinks it’s going to take for this product to get off the ground. Dr. Bolotina considers herself a pure researcher, but at this point she has done the work to head into this venture with her eyes wide open.
You’ve been in your role for two years. What have you learned in that time?
I’ve been teaching at BU since 2006 as an adjunct, so I had some sense of BU. But in my new role I get to speak with faculty every day, and what I’ve learned is that BU has a deep culture of problem-solving. Most faculty don’t think of themselves as entrepreneurs, sure, but they are out in the world, researching questions that matter now, and coming up with solutions to help. So what I see in front of us is an enormous opportunity. Our faculty are hungry for resources and education to help them get their breakthroughs out there. And that’s where I can help.
Thank you, Rana!