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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
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FROM SCIENCE
TO BUSINESS

Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for
Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship

Summary of a Workshop

 

Catherine Jay Didion, Rita S. Guenther, and Victoria Gunderson, Rapporteurs

Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine

Policy and Global Affairs

NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL
                                 OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

 

 

NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS
Washington, D.C.
www.nap.edu

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES PRESS     500 Fifth Street, N.W.     Washington, DC 20001

NOTICE: The project that is the subject of this report was approved by the Governing Board of the National Research Council, whose members are drawn from the councils of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The members of the committee responsible for the report were chosen for their special competences and with regard for appropriate balance.

This study was supported by the National Academy of Sciences. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the organizations or agencies that provided support for the project.

International Standard Book Number-13: 978-0-309-25609-4
International Standard Book Number-10: 0-309-25609-7

Additional copies of this report are available from the National Academies Press, 500 Fifth Street, N.W., Keck 360, Washington, DC 20001; (800) 624-6242 or (202) 334-3313 Internet, http://www.nap.edu

Copyright 2012 by the National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES

Advisers to the Nation on Science, Engineering, and Medicine

The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit, self-perpetuating society of distinguished scholars engaged in scientific and engineering research, dedicated to the furtherance of science and technology and to their use for the general welfare. Upon the authority of the charter granted to it by the Congress in 1863, the Academy has a mandate that requires it to advise the federal government on scientific and technical matters. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone is president of the National Academy of Sciences.

The National Academy of Engineering was established in 1964, under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences, as a parallel organization of outstanding engineers. It is autonomous in its administration and in the selection of its members, sharing with the National Academy of Sciences the responsibility for advising the federal government. The National Academy of Engineering also sponsors engineering programs aimed at meeting national needs, encourages education and research, and recognizes the superior achievements of engineers. Dr. Charles M. Vest is president of the National Academy of Engineering.

The Institute of Medicine was established in 1970 by the National Academy of Sciences to secure the services of eminent members of appropriate professions in the examination of policy matters pertaining to the health of the public. The Institute acts under the responsibility given to the National Academy of Sciences by its congressional charter to be an adviser to the federal government and, upon its own initiative, to identify issues of medical care, research, and education. Dr. Harvey V. Fineberg is president of the Institute of Medicine.

The National Research Council was organized by the National Academy of Sciences in 1916 to associate the broad community of science and technology with the Academy’s purposes of furthering knowledge and advising the federal government. Functioning in accordance with general policies determined by the Academy, the Council has become the principal operating agency of both the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering in providing services to the government, the public, and the scientific and engineering communities. The Council is administered jointly by both Academies and the Institute of Medicine. Dr. Ralph J. Cicerone and Dr. Charles M. Vest are chair and vice chair, respectively, of the National Research Council.

www.national-academies.org

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×

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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×

COMMITTEE FOR FROM SCIENCE TO BUSINESS: PREPARING FEMALE SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS FOR SUCESSFUL TRANSITIONS INTO ENTREPRENEURSHIP WORKSHOP

LILIAN WU, Chair, Program Executive, IBM Corporation

ALICE AGOGINO (NAE),* Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley

ALLAN FISHER, Senior Vice President, Laureate Education, Inc.

SHELDON SCHUSTER, President, Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Science

LYDIA VILLA-KOMAROFF, Chief Scientific Officer, Cytonome/ST, LLC

SUSAN WESSLER (NAS),* Distinguished Professor of Genetics, University of California, Riverside

STAFF

CATHERINE DIDION, Director

RITA S. GUENTHER, Program Officer

WEI JING, Research Associate

*Denotes members of the National Academy of Science (NAS), National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and Institute of Medicine (IOM).

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×

COMMITTEE ON WOMEN IN SCIENCE, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE

POLICY AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL

RITA R. COLWELL (NAS),*Chair, Distinguished Professor, University of Maryland, College Park and Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University

ALICE AGOGINO (NAE),* Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering, University of California, Berkeley

JOAN W. BENNETT (NAS),* Professor of Plant Biology and Pathology, Rutgers University

JEREMY M. BERG (IOM), Associate Senior Vice Chancellor for Science, University of Pittsburgh

VIVIAN PINN (IOM),* Director for Research on Women’s Health, National Institutes of Health, Emeritus

PATRICIA TABOADA-SERRANO, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Rochester Institute of Technology

LYDIA VILLA-KOMAROFF, Chief Scientific Officer, Cytonome/ST, LLC

SUSAN WESSLER (NAS),* Distinguished Professor of Genetics, University of California, Riverside

 

STAFF

CATHERINE DIDION, Director

RITA S. GUENTHER, Program Officer

WEI JING, Research Associate

*Denotes members of the National Academy of Science (NAS), National Academy of Engineering (NAE), and Institute of Medicine (IOM).

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Scientists, engineers, and medical professionals play a vital role in building the 21st century science and technology enterprises that will create solutions and jobs critical to solving the large, complex, and interdisciplinary problems faced by society—problems in energy, sustainability, the environment, water, food, disease, and healthcare. As a growing percentage of the scientific and technological workforce, women need to participate fully not just in finding solutions to technical problems, but also in building the organizations responsible for the job creation that will bring these solutions to market and to bear on pressing issues. To accomplish this, it is important that more women in science and engineering become entrepreneurs in order to start new companies; create business units inside established organizations, mature companies, and the government; and/or function as social entrepreneurs focused on societal issues.

Entrepreneurship represents a vital source of change in all facets of society, empowering individuals to seek opportunity where others see insurmountable problems. Technology entrepreneurship as a style of business leadership involves identifying high-potential, technology-intensive commercial opportunities, gathering resources such as talent and capital, and managing rapid growth and significant risks using principled decision-making skills.

There is concern among experts that women are not adequately applying their technical training to entrepreneurship, certainly not at the same rate as men. We should be aware that in addition to educating women scientists and engineers in rigorous problem solving, it is equally important to provide exposure and training to impart the skills that will enable more women to move from the role of expert to that of leader in dynamic new business enterprises. As one workshop participant noted, women-owned businesses accounted for 40 percent of all privately-owned businesses in 2008, contributing $3 trillion to the U.S. economy.1 Women scientists and engineers are also needed to organize, create, and manage ventures in the not-for-profit world to effect social change. “Social entrepreneurship” creates ventures that interweave money-generation with the furtherance of social and environmental goals.

In August 2009, the Committee on Women in Science, Engineering, and Medicine (CWSEM), convened a workshop entitled, “From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship” to assess the current status of women undertaking entrepreneurial activity in technical fields, to better understand the nature of the barriers they encounter, and to identify what it takes for women scientists and engineers to succeed as entrepreneurs. The workshop focused on women’s career transitions from academic science and engineering to entrepreneurship, with a goal of identifying knowledge gaps in women’s skills as well as experiences crucial to future success in business and critical for achieving leadership positions in entrepreneurial organizations. More than two-thirds of workshop participants were from academia, with the remainder from industry, non-

image

1 Susan Windham Bannister. “Bridging the Gaps: Entrepreneurship, Science, and Gender.” Presented at the workshop, August 31, 2009.

Page viii Cite
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×

profit organizations, independent consulting, and elsewhere. Among the academics, over 60 percent of the participants identified themselves as graduate students or postdoctoral researchers.

This topic is a continuation of an earlier CWSEM workshop titled “From Doctorate to Dean or Director: Sustaining Women through Critical Transition Points in Science, Engineering, and Medicine,” which examined critical transition points in both academia and industry, and how to strengthen women’s participation and advancement during the process. CWSEM serves as a focal point on gender for the three academies: National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. This workshop was an impetus for CWSEM to determine in 2011 that one of its focal points should be on innovation, job creation and the role of entrepreneurship in developing scientific career pathways.

Over the course of the workshop that began on August 31, 2009, a wide variety of studies, panels, and reports demonstrated that the problem of preparing women scientists and engineers for successful transitions into entrepreneurship is multi-faceted. Technical entrepreneurship is of interest to women—and particularly young researchers—but access to entrepreneurial training and information resources is often lacking in home institutions.

This summary provides an overview of the individual presentations and panel discussions at the workshop, in the order in which they were presented. It has been prepared by the workshop rapporteurs as a factual summary of what occurred at the workshop. The planning committee’s role was limited to planning and convening the workshop. The statements made in this summary are those of the rapporteurs or individual workshop participants and do not necessarily represent the views of all of the workshop participants, the planning committee, CWSEM, or the National Academies.

This report has been reviewed in draft form by individuals chosen for their diverse perspectives and technical expertise, in accordance with procedures approved by the National Academies’ Report Review Committee. The purpose of this independent review is to provide candid and critical comments that will assist the institution in making its published report as sound as possible and to ensure that the report meets institutional standards for objectivity, evidence, and responsiveness to the study charge. The review comments and draft manuscript remain confidential to protect the integrity of the process.

We wish to thank the following individuals for their review of this report: Joanne McGrath Cohoon, National Center for Women and Information Technology; Baat Enosh, University of Colorado; Mary Juhas, Ohio State University; Karla Shepard Rubinger, Rosalind Franklin Society; and Carolyn Vallas, University of Virginia. Although the reviewers listed above have provided many constructive comments and suggestions, they were not asked to endorse the content of the report, nor did they see the final draft before its release. Responsibility for the final content of this report rests entirely with the rapporteurs and the institution.

Lilian Wu, Chair
Committee on Science to Business: Preparing Female
Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into
Entrepreneurship

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×

CONTENTS

1 Entrepreneurial Careers of Women

E. J. Reedy, Manager, Research and Policy, Kauffman Foundation

2 Panel I: From Bench to Business: Career Paths for Ph.D.s

Laurel Smith-Doerr, Associate Professor of Sociology, Boston University

Lydia Villa-Komaroff, Chief Scientific Officer, Cytonome/ST, LLC

Susan Windham-Bannister, President and CEO, Massachusetts Life Science Center

3 Panel II: Aspects of Leadership in Biotechnology Careers

Judy Heyboer, Human Resources Consultant, Former Senior Vice President, Genentech, Inc.

Barbara Wallner, President and CEO, Chymic Therapeutics, Inc.

Lydia Villa-Komaroff, Chief Scientific Officer, Cytonome/ST, LLC

4 Panel III: Education to Prepare for Entrepreneurial Careers

Sheldon M. Schuster, President, Keck Graduate Institute of Applied Life Sciences

Gail Naughton, Dean, College of Business, San Diego State University and Founder, Advance Tissue Science, Inc.

Michael Teitelbaum, Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Jessica Townsend, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Olin College

5 Studies on Entrepreneurship

Caroline Simard, Director of Research and Executive Programs, Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology

Manwai (Candy) Ku, Researcher, Stanford University

6 Panel IV: Alternative Forms of Entrepreneurships in Sustainable Technologies: Intrapreneurship in Corporations and Government, Social Entrepreneurship, and Traditional Entrepreneurship

Sharon Nunes, Vice President, IBM Green Innovations

Maxine L. Savitz, General Manager for Technology Partnerships, Honeywell Inc. (retired) and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Conservation, U.S. Department of Energy

Judith Giordan, Senior Advisor, National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Alliance

Lucinda Sanders, CEO and Co-founder, National Center for Women & Information Technology

7 Themes from the Workshop and Closing Remarks

Appendix A Workshop Agenda

Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
Page R7
Page viii Cite
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
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Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
Page R9
Suggested Citation:"Front Matter." National Research Council. 2012. From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship: Summary of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13392.
×
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Scientists, engineers, and medical professionals play a vital role in building the 21st- century science and technology enterprises that will create solutions and jobs critical to solving the large, complex, and interdisciplinary problems faced by society: problems in energy, sustainability, the environment, water, food, disease, and healthcare. As a growing percentage of the scientific and technological workforce, women need to participate fully not just in finding solutions to technical problems, but also in building the organizations responsible for the job creation that will bring these solutions to market and to bear on pressing issues. To accomplish this, it is important that more women in science and engineering become entrepreneurs in order to start new companies; create business units inside established organizations, mature companies, and the government; and/or function as social entrepreneurs focused on societal issues. Entrepreneurship represents a vital source of change in all facets of society, empowering individuals to seek opportunity where others see insurmountable problems.

From Science to Business: Preparing Female Scientists and Engineers for Successful Transitions into Entrepreneurship is the summary of an August 2009 workshop that assesses the current status of women undertaking entrepreneurial activity in technical fields, to better understand the nature of the barriers they encounter, and to identify what it takes for women scientists and engineers to succeed as entrepreneurs. This report focuses on women's career transitions from academic science and engineering to entrepreneurship, with a goal of identifying knowledge gaps in women's skills as well as experiences crucial to future success in business and critical for achieving leadership positions in entrepreneurial organizations.

From Science to Business makes the case that in addition to educating women scientists and engineers in rigorous problem solving, it is equally important to provide exposure and training to impart the skills that will enable more women to move from the role of expert to that of leader in dynamic new business enterprises. This book will be of interest to professionals in both academia and industry, graduate and post-graduate students, and organizations that advocate for a stronger economy.

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