When the rain came down, came down yesterday I was en route from the Faculty of Medical Sciences buildings to the Business School and I was drenched down to the skin inside my soggy socks inside my squelching shoes.  My jacket’s arms, my trouser legs, my knees were wet but my hair was dry because I had been wearing a hat.  I left a trail of wet footprints across the foyer on the shiny floor downstairs and, though I felt uncomfortable, I was warm enough because I had been on the move.  Half an hour later, writing up my meeting with Martin Cox, I felt the cold start to creep up my legs.

Martin is the Head of Enterprise for the FMS.  I had met the business development managers who work with him last week.  They have each and every one of them deep and intense experience in industry, patent writing and filing, and IP development into products.  They are based in the Medical Sciences building and are, like Richy Hetherington and his team, in the right place.

I gave him the results of my interviews thus far.  These are that Postdocs are time poor and they they feel it would disadvantage them to be too interested in business studies, or to do this at the expense of research time, or to seem to want to leave the fold and not pursue the golden high road or defect to the dark side.  It was when I mentioned that I want to get non-traditional business in to talk, that Martin got excited.  He says that if there is a talk on patents or business skills that it seems like just more work.  If the talk were more unexpected or wacky he said that researchers are more likely to come and listen.

I don’t call it that, i.e wacky, because… because I not sure why not.  I call them crossover people, like people who study economics and then start-up a beer brewing company (I am trying to contact James Watt of brewdog).  And I like the plan that says that, even when I get an absolutely core bio-tech person in to talk, the focus can be on the less traditional part of the person’s life.  That these are then memorable bits of narrative that make me remember the rest of the business story.

For instance, at a talk the other morning – very very early – it was Women on Board – Jane Atkinson of Sembcorp spoke about her experience starting in and progressing through the male dominated steel business.  She told a story about being stalked quite soon after starting work in a steel plant when she was 22 years old.  Because of this, very unexpected, story I remember every other related detail of her business history.  She packed a lot of story into the time that she had available, but she could have given me a lot more detail – I would have remembered it all.  All the other speakers have faded from my mind.  If I went online and checked a bit of their histories it would all come flooding back, but none are as fresh as this.

I waited for the sheeting driving crowds of raindrops whipping past my office window to slacken. And stop.Then it was time to get home get all my wet things off and get dry.