Dr. Jason Dou (postdoc, Dept. of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School) describes advice he received from the founding department chair, Dr. Zach: for researchers wanting to move from academia to founding/leading startups, first take an industry chief scientist or research scientist role to observe company operations, then transition to CEO. He also credits the Harvard Innovation Lab (HBS) and advisors (Phil Green, Peter Jose) and recommends their workshops (B2B, B2C, fundraising) for this transition.
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Hello everyone, I'm Dr. Jason Dao. Today's short video is about how to transit from postdoc research fellow to founder, chairman and CEO. Suggestion from Harvard Department Chair. So as we know, I have been a postdoc fellow in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School. So last year I got the opportunity to attend a science day of the department and and met the founding department chair, Dr. Zach. So I got asked, so Zach is very nice. He said, hi Jason, so what do you want to do after your postdoc? So I answer without hesitation. I want to be a founder, chairman and CEO. So Zach replied with a little bit surprise and also enthusiasm. He said, oh sure, who won't want, who don't want to be a founder, chairman and CEO? So my suggestion for you is that you can first become a chief scientist of a startup company to observe how does the CBO operate the company. Then you become the CEO. So basically the suggestion from the Harvard Department Chair is that for people who want to transition from academic to industry is that especially for people with a strong research background is to first become a chief scientist upon a research scientist position in industry, then become the CEO. I do realize there's a huge gap being a researcher to a CEO. But fortunately the Harvard Innovation Lab at the Harvard Business School help a lot in this transition process like a wonderful workshop like a B2B workshop, B2C workshop and how to fundraising. These wonderful advisors like Phil Green, Peter Jose, so they help tremendously for people like me want to transit from postdoc to CEO position. So I highly recommend Harvard Innovation Lab to people who are interested in startup and thank you so much.
