In the previous installment, we discussed the importance of both planning for the strategic growth of your consultancy and soliciting solid legal counsel on potentially tricky situations. Never is this more critical than in the initial steps of the negotiation between your consultancy and your university. Because it pays your daily wages, the university has a strong interest in your dual role as ...
Over the past year, I made the decision to begin my own business as a consultant in sport science support and environmental ergonomics. On top of a booming research lab and a full teaching load, not to mention a growing young family, why would I take on this new venture? Simply put, the excitement of starting a new venture is too much fun to pass up and an excellent opportunity for personal growt...
After a highly charged period working on the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb, the famous Nobel physicist and teacher Richard Feynman faced a period of depression when he first joined Cornell University as a faculty member. He found that he seemed to be getting nowhere in his research until he realized how time-consuming good teaching could be: "I now understand it much better. First ...
One of the biggest joys and challenges of my first 3 years in academia has been the chance to hang out my own research shingle and build my research program from scratch. While I have continued to publish a steady stream of papers from my doctoral career, I spent the past few years deliberately avoiding new collaborative research with my former advisor and colleagues. This has permitted me to str...
When I interviewed at my present university, a major focus of my sales pitch was the geographical relevance of my field of environmental physiology and temperature regulation to Dalhousie University, located on the edge of the North Atlantic. I stressed how there was a driving need to incorporate the impact of environmental stressors into the department's research emphases and curriculum. Much to...
Recently, I served on a search committee for a new faculty member in our school, and it was an interesting opportunity to see how other people presented their academic credentials. In reviewing the applications, I found that it was fairly simple to get a feel for the applicants' research interests and background. It was also fairly easy to sift through the list of publications to get an idea of t...
If you have decided that your scientific expertise may be of value to the wider world outside academia, it is not enough to simply hang out a shingle and expect it to come to you. Any first-year MBA knows that the success or failure of a business usually hinges on the amount and quality of the thought that goes into planning its launch. As Part II of this series shows, developing a detailed strat...
Over the past year, I wrote a series for Next Wave on my experiences developing a consultancy business while maintaining my role as a university-based academic. In that series, I discussed some of my motivations for developing a consultancy and some of the challenges unique to academics wishing to take this route, such as steering clear of conflicts of interest with your home institution. My comp...
