entrepreneurial academics: developing scientific careers in changing university settings

Entrepreneurial Academics:Developing ScientificCareers in ChangingUniversity SettingsJoanne Duberley, University of Birmingham, Laurie Cohen,Loughborough University, and Elspeth Leeson, University ofBirmingham

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of entrepreneurial initiatives within universi-ties on scientific careers. Based on the career accounts of university-basedbioscientists involved in a government-sponsored entrepreneurship traininginitiative, the paper explores the concept of academic entrepreneurialism.Threegroups were identified in the data. First, academic entrepreneurs, who tended tobe more experienced scientists and were now able to capitalise on their science.Second, those interested in technology transfer,who saw their career path takingthem away from science, and finally a group of younger scientists who weretrying to develop their career capital but were unsure what direction their careerwould take. The implications of these different groups for the management ofuniversities and the development of knowledge are considered.

Introduction

This paper reports on findings from a study into research scientists’move from public to private work settings. There is an emerging con-sensus that there is currently a ‘radical, irreversible, worldwide transfor-mation in the way that science is organised and performed’ (Ziman,1994, p. 7; Alonso, Fernandez and Sanz-Mendendez, 1999; Buhrer,1999; Jordan, 1999). For university scientists, such change has beendescribed as a move from discipline-based, curiosity-driven research toan emphasis on application, transdisciplinarity, networking and collabo-ration, and social accountability (Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons, 2001).However, while considerable research attention has focused on this

Higher Education Quarterly, 0951–5224Volume 61, No. 4, October 2007, pp 479–497

© 2007 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4, 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148,USA.

changing context and its implications for universities generally (Fuller,1999; Calas and Smircich, 2001b; Steier, 2003), to date, very little isknown about its implications for individuals’ careers.The aim here is toopen up debate into this under-researched area.

The paper is based on a study of scientists based in the UnitedKingdom whose careers, spanning the university and private sectors,could be seen to encapsulate the current context. The full study inves-tigates the experiences of university scientists who have made threedifferent types of career transition: to government-sponsored entrepre-neurship programmes; to young, entrepreneurial companies; and toR&D departments in established organisations. This paper reports onthe first of these groups, university-based bioscience researchers whowere participating in Galileo, a government-sponsored entrepreneurshiptraining initiative. Three different approaches towards developing acareer in this new university environment are examined and the chal-lenges associated with each are discussed.

Entrepreneurial science: principles and processes

In the United Kingdom as in other Western countries, the role played bythe university in the production of knowledge has come under increasingscrutiny. Commentators (Calas and Smircich, 2001a; House, 2001;Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons, 2001) point to tensions between knowl-edge for the sake of knowledge on the one hand, and market-orientedknowledge on the other, and between the public and the private sectorsas sites for knowledge production.

These tensions are likewise central to Delanty’s (2001) overview of‘the university today’. He identifies four key approaches to the issue ofthe role and purpose of the university in the age of postmodernity andglobalisation. First, what he describes as the entrenched liberal thesis, isbased on the view of the university as a vehicle for the reproduction ofculture, celebrating the notion of the ‘canon’, and its expression throughtraditional curricula. Second, the postmodern thesis represents a chal-lenge to this traditional, liberal view of knowledge as emancipatory,highlighting instead the impossibility of knowledge as codified throughset programmes, texts or syllabuses. In this view, the concept of theuniversity itself is an impossibility. Delanty refers to the third perspectiveas the reflexivity thesis, based on the emerging reciprocal relationshipbetween producers and users of knowledge. Within this perspective theuniversity is certainly losing its pre-eminence, and could potentially fadeinto obsolescence. Finally, from the globalisation thesis the university is

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depicted as eschewing academic freedom in favour of market values, andso playing a central role in the development and dissemination of globalcapitalism (Slaughter and Leslie, 1997, 2001). Delanty’s position, asours, is that together these perspectives can help us to understand theoften-conflicting dynamics currently at play within universities. Cer-tainly, his analysis provides a compelling conceptual framework fromwhich to examine the ways in which entrepreneurial academics accountfor their careers, and enact them on a daily basis.

Turning to scientific knowledge and its organisation in particular,Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons discuss what they see as an uneasyconvergence of university, government and private sector scientificresearch establishments. In their view, universities play a somewhatambiguous role. In the United Kingdom as elsewhere, this ‘triple helix’of university-industry-government (Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons,2001, p. 107) has been associated with significant reductions in gov-ernment funding and an increased emphasis on adopting a more‘entrepreneurial’ approach. Typically this involves the generation ofresearch income, greater collaboration with industry and a strong focuson the outputs (often short-term) of scientific endeavour. Whereas inthe past university science departments were able to rely heavily onnon-output specific funding, financial support (where available) is nowmore focused and output driven, strictly geared to meeting nationalpriorities and more closely monitored (Cohen, Duberley and McAuley,1999).

The development of this entrepreneurial orientation can be seen asembodying aspects of Delanty’s reflexivity and globalisation theses, syn-thesising knowledge production and knowledge use through contexts ofapplication (and thereby blurring boundaries between private and publicsectors) and working in the interests of wealth creation. Etzkowitz (2003)reflects on this emerging phenomenon. In contrast to critics who see theentrepreneurial university as a rupture with the past, he argues that theattempt to articulate academic goals, and to translate these into ‘eco-nomic and social utility’ (Etzkowitz, 2003, p. 114) is entirely consistentwith the university’s original purpose and early development. As regardscharacteristics, these include what Etzkowitz terms ‘interface capabili-ties’, including liaison and technology transfer offices (Stevens andBagby, 2001) and facilities to manage and market the knowledge pro-duced at the university. In her study of biotechnologists, Oliver (2004)extends this analysis to the individual level through her identification ofthree types of entrepreneurial scientist: those who manage researchteams in conducting large-scale commissioned projects; academic scien-

Entrepreneurial Academics 481


tists who use their knowledge to set up or collaborate with commercialenterprises; and finally those scientists who realise the commercial valueof their work through patents and licenses. Likewise, Kloften and Jones-Evans (2000), in their comparison of academic entrepreneurship inSweden and Ireland, derive a similar typology of activities.They describeconsultancy and contract work as ‘soft’ and spin-outs, licensing andpatents as ‘hard’ activities. Interestingly, they argue that while the softactivities are much more popular amongst scientists and seem to be moreconsistent with their academic orientation, they are frequently neglectedby entrepreneurship support initiatives which tend to focus their energyon the higher profile hard ones.

Evaluating the implications of the entrepreneurial university,Etzkowitzraises a number of concerns. For example, there remain questions aboutthe role of the university in economic development, and about whoseinterests scientific research should be aiming to serve and promote. Aconsideration of how individual scientists resolve these questions inrelation to the development of their own research (including decisionsabout commercialisation and about establishing links with private indus-try) will provide useful insights into these thorny but very pertinentissues.

On a more conceptual level are questions about whether or notcommercial and academic perspectives represent oppositional (andconflicting) cultural orientations, or whether or not they could becomplimentary and compatible. The former position is in some waysreminiscent of Delanty’s concept of the entrenched liberal critique,noted above and its implicit assumption that there is an inevitable barrierbetween these orientations, that ‘the breaching of a barrier, whether ornot natural or moral, will lead to catastrophic results’ (Etzkowitz, 2003,p. 9). However, it may not be the case that business and academic doconstitute two separate and incompatible spheres of understanding andactivity. Indeed, previous research undertaken by the authors revealedthat some scientists experience these as mutually enriching (Cohen,Duberley and McAuley, 1999, 2001). Here Etzkowitz (2003) makes theinteresting observation that many of the values of entrepreneurial scienceare probably already embedded in the practices and processes of univer-sity science departments. Thus the problem is not the imposition of anew set of values from outside but, rather, that universities themselvesembrace meaning systems that are sometimes contradictory and whoseco-existence can be difficult to navigate.This idea of the university as anarena in which different, and sometimes oppositional sets of norms andvalues are contested and negotiated, echoes Delanty’s (2001, p. 152)



reflexivity thesis that the university is seen as polyphonic and ‘reflexivelyconnected with society’.

By and large, the extant literature has considered the concept of theentrepreneurial university from a strategic level (Slaughter and Leslie,1997, 2001; Ibarra-Colado, 2001; Muller and Subotzky, 2001), depict-ing numerous examples of infrastructural reform and innovationand debating their implications. It is a fragmented, highly charged andrapidly changing picture, with implications for the constitution andenactment of scientific careers. However, to date there has been verylittle consideration of the career dimension in discussions of the entre-preneurial university. Given the capacity of the career concept to illumi-nate the relationship between individuals and their social worlds(Duberley, Cohen and Mallon, 2006), a consideration of how scientistswho have been charged with promoting entrepreneurial values andbehaviours, make sense of this in the context of their unfolding careers,will make a valuable contribution to existing understandings. Thus theresearch reported here aims to shed light on two key research questions:

• What are the implications of academic entrepreneurship for individualscientists’ conceptions of their careers?

• What does entrepreneurialism mean to the scientists in this study? Towhat extent is it reconcilable with their scientific aspirations?

Background to study

Part of a larger Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC)-fundedstudy, as noted earlier, this paper is based on qualitative interviews with23 fellows on the first two phases of a government-funded entrepreneur-ship programme (Galileo), working across five UK universities. Theparticipants all worked in the field of biotechnology and ranged fromresearch associate to professor. An interpretative and qualitative stancewas taken. Interviews were in-depth and open-ended (Kvale, 1996).Interviewees were invited to reflect back on their careers, highlightingreasons for embarking on the programme, expectations and experiencesof the programme, and career expectations as their fellowships came toan end. All interviews were taped and transcribed verbatim to addressissues of credibility and confirmability. Data analysis was ongoingthroughout the project. This iterative process led to the emergence of acoding template for analysis of the data into inductively generated cat-egories (King, 1994).

At this stage it would be useful to give a brief description of the Galileoprogramme. Funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for



England (HEFCE), this initiative, conducted in the initial stages at fiveEnglish universities, seeks to foster a spirit of entrepreneurship in biotech-nology.Two-year fellowships were awarded to researchers and academicsthrough a competitive selection process.Fellows were given entrepreneur-ial and business training, equipping them in the process of exploitingresearch, science and technology in a commercial context.The aim was forfellows to have the skills and knowledge needed to spin out companies andfor them to work with others in their departments to embed a culturechange by championing enterprise and entrepreneurship.

Table 1 outlines the sample of interviewees. The fellows are split intotwo groups. One group is 100 per cent funded by the Galileo pro-gramme, which means that in addition to working on their own spin-outthey take on a consultancy type role in their departments, conductingtechnology audits and helping others to commercialise projects. Theseare often people who have either just finished their doctorates or havedone one or two postdoctoral research projects. The other group is 50per cent funded.These fellows tend to be established academics and herethe emphasis is on buying out some of the time they would usually spendon teaching and administration to allow them time to spin out their owncompanies.There is a mix of male and female fellows and the majority offellows have some previous experience of industry.

Data analysis began by trying to categorise the careers and aspirationsof the fellows. Three core categories were developed to reflect these, ashighlighted in Table 2. Entrepreneurialism was seen by all three groupsto be making a significant impact on university science and the ways inwhich scientists built their careers. Group 1, the largest, was mainlymade up of established academics who maintained a desire to stay in theuniversity but with more spin-out activity. Group 2 comprised those whosaw themselves developing a new kind of career as technology-transferprofessionals, assisting others in commercial endeavours.The majority ofthese thought they would stay in the university; however, two preferreda move to the private sector. Finally, the scientists in Group 3 were usingGalileo to build the career capital necessary to take advantage of diverseopportunities in both sectors. That said, at the time of interview, mostanticipated a move to the private sector where they saw more attractivecareer prospects.

Group 1: Entrepreneurial academics

Most of these individuals tended to see themselves as dedicated scientistswho belong in academia.The respondents in this group felt that excellent



science could be done in a commercially sensitive way and sought topursue work that was at once ground-breaking and marketable. Thisissue is returned to below. Respondents in this group had followed whatis seen as the traditional academic career path. In most cases, they hadbuilt their reputations on their fundamental scientific work, and had onlylatterly begun to develop their commercial activities. For example Inter-viewee 16 commented:

TABLE 1The sample

Gallileofellow(interviewee)

Agegroup

Gender Full-time/part-time

University Experience ofprivate sector

1 20–30 F Full-time A None2 30–40 M Full-time B UG placement research

project collaboration3 20–30 M Full-time B None4 30–40 M Full-time C UG placement5 30–40 F Full-time D None6 30–40 M Full-time C None7 20–30 F Full-time C None8 20–30 F Full-time A None9 20–30 F Full-time B Research project

collaboration10 40–50 F Full-time C None11 30–40 M Full-time A UG placement12 20–30 M Full-time A None13 30–40 M Part-time E Employment14 20–30 F Part-time D Research project

collaboration15 20–30 M Part-time C Employment16 30–40 F Part-time D UG placement17 20–30 M Part-time B Spin-out18 30–40 M Part-time A Spin-out19 40–50 F Part-time E Spin-out20 20–30 F Part-time A Research project

collaboration21 20–30 M Part-time D Consultancy Research

project collaboration22 40–50 M Part-time C UG placement

Consultancy23 40–50 M Part-time B Research project

collaboration

F, female; M, male; UG, undergraduate.



TABLE 2The categories

Fellow(interviewee)

Career stage Career aspiration

Group 1: Entrepreneurial academics14 Academic Stay in university as academic

with spin-out16 Senior academic Stay in university as academic

with spin-out17 Academic Stay in university as academic

with spin-out18 Long-term postdoctoral Stay in university as academic





with spin-outGroup 2: Technology transfer professionals

2 Long-term postdoctoral Technology transfer in university20 Long-term postdoctoral Technology transfer in university5 Writing up PhD Technology transfer in university13 Returned from industry Technology transfer in university10 Recently completed PhD Technology transfer in university4 Recently completed PhD Technology transfer in private

sector15 Returned from industry Technology transfer in private

sectorGroup 3: Career capital builders

1 Writing up PhD Not sure but probably in privatesector

6 Postdoctoral researcher Not sure but probably in privatesector

7 Recently completed PhD Not sure but probably in privatesector

8 Recently completed PhD Not sure9 Postdoctoral Not sure3 Recently completed PhD Not sure12 Recently completed PhD Not sure11 Recently completed PhD Not sure



I will always be an academic . . . The idea will be that I will still stay inacademia, but the business will be going on, kind of thing, in parallel.

Similarly, Interviewee 19 explained:

The most I would do is take a sabbatical to help the commercial concern, butat the end of the day I’d come back to being what I am, which is a universityscientist. Yes, more than anything else, but at the same time I want thiscommercial concern to succeed and if it was majorly successful, again I stillwould not give up being an academic . . . that’s what I’m best at doing.

These scientists were very interested in the practical application of theirresearch. They did not point to a fundamental distinction betweenapplied and basic science, but rather felt that most science could ulti-mately be put to practical use, and were motivated by this prospect. Inthe earlier discussion of academic entrepreneurship Etzkowitz’s (2003)concerns about the potential for ethical conflict as academic science andcommercial application become ever closer were noted. However, formany of the scientists in this group, spinning out was a means ofensuring that people and society actually benefited from their inventions,as this comment by Interviewee 17 suggests:

I’m motivated by the fact that certainly it’ll save the NHS about 80 per centof its budget for haematological testing for, you know, leukaemia, whichwould be quite nice. It could be used in the developing world, which I thinkit’d be quite nice as well because there’s a lot of, sort of, generic anti-cancerdrugs being made in India and China, but then, of course, they haven’t got themeans to test the population to use the drugs. So I can see how it could beused there, which I suppose is fairly altruistic.

To the majority of respondents in Group 1, commercialisation wasentirely compatible with their scientific and social interests. Notably,respondents made the point that this commercial imperative was nothingnew but that, formerly, it would have been ‘taken to market’ by someoneelse; probably a large company, in which case the individual scientistwould invariably lose all control over the process. That said, they didraise concerns about possible ethical tensions between academicresearch and spin-out activity and operational difficulties accomplishingthe needs of both the spin-out and their academic career simultaneously.

For example, all respondents discussed the potential conflict of inter-ests between the business and the university, not because of the natureof the activities themselves, but rather resulting from financialarrangements. In particular, ethical difficulties arose over issues concern-ing who was to benefit financially from the business, as well as roles andrelationships between business partners, and between academics and



their customers. Interviewee 18, who worked with a senior professor toset up a spin-out company, saw the role issue as a major problem:

There’s a big tension between the company and the university staff, a bigtension because I’m so far in breach of contract. Professor [X] who is theChairman of the Board for the company, is also the Director of the School, sowhen it comes to pulling strings, he’s got a handle on some fairly large onesand can smooth the way.You know, as far as he’s concerned it benefits himand the university to have me doing more time on the company versus theuniversity so that’s a very big tension because I disagree with him on allcounts, but what do I do . . . I think he’s got a huge conflict of interests thathe has not declared to the Board of the company, nor has he declared it to theuniversity, so I think he’s in an exceedingly bad position.

It must be stressed that the corruption described here was not typical inthe accounts. However, the potential for a conflict of interests betweenthe university and the fledgling businesses they were trying to supportwas certainly seen by those involved in spin-outs as a sensitive problemwith no obvious solution.

Operationally, the process of spinning out was also seen as difficultand complex. Amongst the fellows interviewed there was considerablecriticism regarding the level of support offered by the universities anddepartments.They spoke about the tension they experienced in trying tomaintain a world-class scientific base and conduct commercial activitiesas well as undertake departmental administration and teach. Interviewee19 described her experience of this conflict:

Obviously my main raison d’etre as far as the university is concerned, I shouldpoint out that it should have been research, but teaching is also a majorelement of it now, but at the same time it’s commercialisation, and one thingthat I’m not at all concerned about saying with utter frankness, if you like, theconflicting messages we get from our administration in respect of what is themost important aspect of our role as lecturers, as university employeesbecause it seems to vary from, I don’t know, week to week or whatever. So wehave conflicting requests for excellence in research and that basically is thecriterion by which we appoint . . . But at the same time we have a strongcommitment to providing the best quality teaching that we can, and since, youknow, the responsibilities that we have in respect of students are so great, thatthat has to take a major, major priority. But of course progress within thesystem is actually on the basis of research output and not our teaching, and,of course, commercialisation is a very, very poor third to all of that.

In sum, Group 1 consisted of what might be considered ‘entrepreneurialacademics’.These are individuals who planned to stay in a university butalso spent time working in spin-out companies. They had experienced anumber of operational difficulties in trying to develop this new careertype and many felt that although the government and universities said



they want them to work like this, they had been slow to adjust their ownpolicies and procedures to take account of this change.

Group 2:Technology-transfer professionals

Group 2 included those individuals who were in the process of develop-ing a new kind of career as technology-transfer professionals. Notablythey were younger than those in the first group, and more junior withintheir departments. The majority wished to stay working in a universitycontext but did not see themselves staying at the laboratory bench.Having experienced the Galileo programme they saw their futuresinstead as enabling active scientists to commercialise their products.Here it is worth mentioning that neither this group nor the previous onetalked much about what Kloften and Jones-Evans (2000) described as‘soft’ activities, such as consultancy and contract research. Rather, theseappeared to be taken for granted as an integral part of academic work,rather than a consequence of the current emphasis on commercialisationand entrepreneurial activity.

Two driving forces appeared to motivate the individuals in this group.First is a strong desire to get out of the laboratory. Having spent years,as doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers, on what theydescribed as routine and often extremely tedious experimental work,they sought opportunities for greater variety. As Interviewee 13 explains:

I don’t want to be doing lots of lab[oratory] work so it was that that made methink, ‘Oh, there’s no way I want a career where you’re repeating things againand again day in and day out’.

Second, whereas the respondents in Group 1 saw themselves as scientistsand oriented to traditional academic career structures and opportunities,those in Group 2 described themselves as both scientists and businesspeople, and saw these roles as entirely compatible, and mutuallyenriching. That said, the majority nevertheless anticipated that theircareers would unfold within university settings. In the main this was dueto the lifestyle, most especially the freedom and flexibility, characteristicof this context. Furthermore, although they were keen to get away fromthe bench, these respondents had no wish to leave science behind.Theyexpected that pursuing technology transfer on a university campuswould enable them to stay close to science, as Interviewee 4 pointed out:

Realistically it’s the only way to keep abreast of different technologies to staywithin an academic environment and I do like the fact that I get to be in



contact with the academics. It’s not fully commercially driven. It is still drivenby the wonderful research that they just do because they feel like it or it’sexciting for them.

Interestingly, this respondent notes a difference between academic andcommercial orientations, in particular the potential for discovery-basedresearch within the university (in her view unavailable in a more com-mercial setting). However, this is cast not as an ethical difference (asidentified by Etzkowitz, 2003) but as personal satisfaction. This issue ofwhat scientists’ work really means to them and what they want out oftheir work and careers is important but is frequently overlooked in theliterature, which tends to take a more strategic, macro orientation.

On this personal level, for the postdoctoral researchers in the sample,building a career thus far had involved a series of temporary positionsand ongoing grant applications. The young scientists in Group 2 recog-nised that government policy and university funding meant that a posi-tion in the emerging field of technology transfer is likely to be a moresecure career option for them than continual short-term postdoctoralcontracts. As Interviewee 2 highlights:

The great thing about Galileo is it’s come along just at the right time becausethere aren’t many people who are trained to do this type of work to dotechnology transfer work and the funding councils and HEFCE have put amuch bigger emphasis now on doing technology transfer. I think, this June,there’s certainly money coming so there’s probably going to be whole host ofjobs available for technology-transfer work and there are not going to beenough people to fill the vacancies . . . So for me it’s great because it meansthat by the end of this summer there should be a whole range of jobs that I canapply to.

Two people within the group, however, saw technology transfer in theprivate sector as the route for them. Both of these individuals had workedin the private sector previously and it seemed that this made them awareof the possibilities available. This is an interesting finding and relates tothe authors’ previous research (Cohen, Duberley and McAuley, 2001),which showed that those who had prior experience of the private sectorhad much more positive perceptions of the opportunities it presentedthan those who had never left the university setting.

Group 3: Career capital builders

Finally, Group 3 was made up of younger people who have eitherrecently completed their PhD or have been employed on postdoctoralresearch contracts. Most seemed unsure where their future direction lay



and were using the Galileo programme to develop the knowledge, skillsand resources that they saw as vital to the development of a successfulcareer. Drawing on Bourdieu (1991), career theorists Iellatchitch,Mayrhofer and Meyer (2003) use the term career capital to describe thepersonal and social resources that individuals deploy to negotiate andnavigate within and between diverse career contexts (e.g. disciplines,organisations, sectors). Mayrhofer et al. (2004) utilise Bourdieu’sconcept of capital to differentiate between four forms of career capital:economic capital – this is the most efficient form of capital as it can beconverted into money; social capital involves relationships of mutualrecognition and acquaintance; cultural/informational capital representsthe accumulated result of educational and cultural effort; and finally,symbolic capital is the capital which is perceived and socially recognisedas legitimate: the rules valid within particular social fields specify whichcombination of basic forms of capital will be authorised as symboliccapital (Iellatchitch, Mayrhofer and Meyer, 2003).They argue that everyindividual has a unique portfolio of these, which enables them to operatewith varying degrees of success within particular career field.

The scientists in the third group were well aware of the traditionalscientific career path and its status but saw it as largely unavailable; arelic of the past that was now only offered to the lucky few.Their aim wasto find, or develop, a career path that would allow them to use theirscience, provide opportunities for growth, and offer a degree of securityunavailable to the large numbers of postdoctoral scientists who findthemselves in a seemingly endless spiral of short-term contracts. Themajority of these respondents saw their options as open and quitediverse.They may stay in the university or go into the private sector, andthrough Galileo are developing the career capital that is perceived asvaluable and legitimate in both. For example, Interviewee 9 commented:

Well, I think there are more and more doors open out there now. I don’t knowwhat exactly I’ll do, but as I’ve said, I think the skills that I’ve gained from hereI’m hoping that they’ll be of use to a number of professions . . . where I canuse my science basis, but sort of work more at the business side of things.

Notably, they constructed a clear distinction between university andindustry and offered fairly stereotypical views of the advantages anddisadvantages associated with each. In particular, respondents in thisgroup spent a great deal of time talking about the problems of life as auniversity scientist, with little security and meagre financial rewards, andthe relative advantages of industrial science. Significantly, whereas theindividuals in the other two groups were excited by career options that



integrate science and entrepreneurialism (either by staying in academiabut operating in a more commercially sensitive way or by moving intotechnology transfer), these individuals still seemed to see science andbusiness activity as distinct and typically saw their futures as doing eitherone or the other. For example Interviewee 8 comments:

I would like to have some experience of private industry before possiblylong-term moving back, but I think that particularly for the next few years Iwant to get out and experience sort of research in an industrial context, whichhopefully will either give me some ideas and make me want to come back andbe an academic, or I can just wave it goodbye for good.

What is interesting here is that while these respondents reported that theGalileo programme had widened their career opportunities by givingthem other transferable skills, they adhered to highly polarised ideasabout what constitutes a legitimate scientific career, in contrast to sci-entists in the other two groups. One reason for this rigidity could be seenas a notable lack of individual autonomy in the accounts of these youngscientists. Although they described their proactivity with respect to thebuilding of career capital and identified diverse routes along which thiscapital could be deployed, they articulated little confidence in deviatingfrom these paths, or creating alternatives.

Academic and commercial interests: coexistence,conflicts and careers

As Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons (2003) and other critics have argued,the nature of scientific research and the process of knowledge productionare being transformed, with an emphasis on: ‘(1) the “steering” ofresearch priorities, (2) the commercialisation of research, and (3) theaccountability of science’ (pp. 179, 184).This paper has investigated theimplications of such transformation for careers in research science.Focusing on the accounts of fellows on the Galileo entrepreneurshipprogramme, it has examined scientists’ career aspirations in light ofincreased commercialisation, and critically explored their perceptions ofthe relationship between academic and commercial science: a relation-ship, which it has been suggested, is up for grabs (Calas and Smircich,2003; Nowotny, Scott and Gibbons, 2003).

Based on empirical findings, this research makes two related contri-butions to existing understandings of the management of science andscientific careers within universities. First, it highlights the dangers ofintroducing new policies into this arena without examining the extent to



which they fit with traditional policies and practice. Amongst our respon-dents, particularly several of the more senior academics in Group 1,there was a view that spin-outs in particular raise very distinct challengesfor the individuals involved and, in the long-term, for universities, includ-ing potential conflict of interests related to power, contractual obliga-tions and financial matters. Permeating the data set was a strong sensethat universities were imposing too many conflicting demands on peopleand were not attending to crucial career issues (like long-term contractsand pay).

An important insight, thus, relates to conflicts, noted by Etzkowitz(2003), in the overlap between academic and commercial activities, andthe broader question of whose interests science ultimately serves. Therespondents in this study, like the American scientists in Cassierand Gaudilliere’s (2000) study, viewed commercialisation as a possibleway of realising the potential of their particular science. Science andcommerce were viewed as neither necessarily incompatible, norcomplementary. Rather, the important issue was how they weremanaged, with what resources, and to what aims.

If Delanty’s (2001) conceptual framework is considered, it appearsthat an uneasy synthesis is occurring between a traditional, liberal modelthat expects academics to take on teaching, administrative and researchresponsibilities, a more reflexive model in which academics are chargedwith developing different sorts of relationships with the users of theirproducts (be they pedagogic or scientific) and a more global, market-oriented model in which wealth creation through the commercialisationof science is seen as the priority. Some of the scientists experiencedtension resulting not from an ontological difference between commercialand academic science, but from having to do too many things with toofew resources.

The second contribution relates to the diverse ways in which policyshifts impact on university-based scientific careers and the extent towhich resulting changes in career decision making can have unantici-pated (and sometimes undesirable) consequences for universities. Somerespondents (notably the entrepreneurial academics and the technology-transfer professionals) seemed to experience greater levels of control overtheir situations and choices than the more junior career capital builders.Through their accounts these interviewees spoke of how they found waysof overcoming constraints and using opportunities to achieve theiraspirations. The scientists in the first group were experienced and mostwere senior academics. They had amassed a good deal of career capital,which seemed to enable them to negotiate with existing structures so as



to develop their science and their careers as they saw fit. For thesescientists, the Gallileo programme was a useful tool to give them timeand some additional business skills and contacts to develop their spin-out company. Although they felt under pressure and, as mentioned,complained about the many demands on their time, they were beingenabled to develop their science in a desirable way. However, respon-dents did express their concern that this current emphasis on spinningout could potentially result in a brain drain from university departmentsas the best academics sought to develop their research interests and reapgreater financial rewards working for themselves. Interestingly, althoughthis concern about potential brain drain was put forward by a number ofrespondents, none of the senior academics in our sample expressed adesire to leave the university setting.

Those interviewees who were in Group 2, who aspired to careers intechnology transfer, are significant in that by aspiring to be technology-transfer professionals, they were opting out of the academic career struc-ture, the Research Assessment Exercises imperative and the conflictingpressures implicit in this context. These fellows saw real benefits to begained from linking academic and commercial science, and envisagedtheir careers as straddling the two. It could be argued that scientists inthis group may have had less traditional academic career capital and sowere less able to work within existing career structures. With regard tothe management of science, though, the accounts of individuals in thisgroup were interesting because they described participation in activitiesthat would ultimately transform existing career structures by developinga new career path in a new occupation. Through synthesising theirinterest in science with their newly acquired business acumen, they sawthemselves as at the forefront of developing a new type of career: pro-fessional technology-transfer specialists. The current environment madethem very optimistic that they had the skills and knowledge to makethem very attractive to prospective employers, particularly universitieswho were generally perceived to be lacking in this area.

Those in Group 3, however, seemed less equipped to benefit from theGalileo experience. This group contained individuals who felt margina-lised by their university departments. They did not see the traditionalacademic career as open to them and were hunting for alternatives.Theydid not seem to have clear career aspirations, and perhaps as a result,their response to the entrepreneurial imperative was less easily discerned.Unlike those in Groups 1 and 2, they did not appear to have theconceptual career scaffolding on which to hang the Galileo experience.Thus, they presented themselves as attempting to acquire the career



capital needed to move between university and industry but, somewhatparadoxically, with little sense of control over the outcome. The aspira-tion, then, was ‘a career’ and this career could take a variety of (estab-lished and codified) forms, in a range of public or private sectororganisations.

Across all three groups there were calls for new approaches to themanagement of careers within universities and a consensus that thecurrent university environment posed significant career challenges.Group 3, in particular, focused on the lack of security and the short-termorientation shown in the funding of research posts. Many of the inter-viewees who fitted into this category were using Galileo as a means oftrying to escape that uncertainty. Respondents in Group 1 felt thatuniversities (and the government) operated contradictory policies: onone hand encouraging commercial activity yet on the other retainingtraditional yardsticks of academic success when considering reward andpromotion decisions. Finally, respondents in Group 2 wanted to developas technology-transfer professionals and felt that universities should bethe ideal place to do this, yet they talked in very negative terms about theexisting technology-transfer departments and were unsure that theirskills would be recognised.

Conclusion

Permeating our findings is a strong sense that as a result of institutionalchanges, the nature of what it means to be an academic is beingreconfigured. However, while this was widely recognised at the level ofthe individual, there was a shared view amongst our interviewees thatuniversity managers and policy makers have thus far failed to acknowl-edge this transformation. This research suggests that there is an urgentneed for universities to consider career management and reward systemsin the light of current policy initiatives. At present, universities risk losingsome of their strongest scientists at a point in their career when they aremost able to have an impact as leaders of research teams and in providingguidance and training for less experienced researchers. Furthermore,they risk losing younger scientists who opt for alternative career routes,such as technology transfer, rather than face the uncertainty of short-term postdoctoral research contracts.

The data reported in this paper illuminate the considerable challengesuniversities face in their attempt to manage the careers of increasinglydiverse groups of scientists. It also raises fundamental questions con-cerning the development of ‘blue-skies’ research. Although the respon-



dents had an applied orientation to research, they expressed concernabout the lack of emphasis placed on the development of fundamentalresearch and raised questions concerning the fundamental purpose ofuniversities. Clearly this is too large a question to be debated here but itis an important issue that requires consideration.

Finally, it should be remembered that this is an emerging situation. Asindividuals such as the Galileo fellows are encouraged to forge newcareer paths, their actions will impact back upon existing work settings inperhaps unexpected ways, suggesting further dynamism, and furthercontestation in the conduct of science and the development of scientificcareers.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the support of ESRC, grantreference: RES-000-22-0571.

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