From the archive: How not to engage with industry

Four tips to take on board before talking with commercial counterparts

The tendency of public funders—and not only public funders—to increasingly favour and encourage economic impact and business engagement is certainly widespread and may even be universal around the world. While there are fewer academics today who have managed to advance their careers without much contact with business, there is still a cultural divide between academia and the commercial world that needs to be navigated.

Before entering journalism, James Brooks worked as a headhunter for the pharmaceutical and biotech industries and watched many researchers attempting to cross that divide. It gave him some insights that those looking to partner with the commercial world may find useful, which he related here, in this article first published in October 2019.