Integrating science entrepreneurship into everything we do – Q+A with Pippy James

Our Chief Product Officer Pippy James recently spoke at Hello Tomorrow’s Global Summit about financing moonshots, and why the answer partly lies in embracing science entrepreneurship. In this Q+A, Pippy digs deeper into what that means, and why it’s central to our approach.?

We talk a lot about science entrepreneurship at ARIA, but what does this mean??

I guess it comes down to the idea of entrepreneurial drive advancing science in the way that it has advanced digital technology. Science entrepreneurship essentially refers to the process of taking scientific discoveries out of the lab and transforming them into practical applications that can be brought to the market.?

We’ve seen a rise in science entrepreneurs across the globe in recent years. Take the leading vaccinations developed for Covid-19, for example. They emerged from a highly entrepreneurial effort within academia and industry, specifically the work of two science-based startups - BioNTech and Moderna.

How has this idea of science entrepreneurship influenced your thinking so far??

We’re baking this idea of science entrepreneurship into our entire approach. If you look at our Programme Directors (PDs), ultimately we’re asking them to pursue a bold, singular vision with an embrace of experimentation and failure – something akin to what you might think of as an entrepreneurial endeavour.

This approach heavily informed how we selected our PDs, too. For example, we deliberately looked for qualities beyond scientific and technical expertise: creative independence of thought, adaptability, and an intrinsic motivation for impact.

It also plays out in the way we interact with the wider R&D ecosystem. We’re thinking about how we can best harness entrepreneurial drive to turn breakthroughs from our programmes into tangible impact for the UK, and are exploring mechanisms for what that looks like in practice.

What role can entrepreneurial drive play in translating early stage innovation into impact??

It’s something we’ve been thinking about since day one. Our mandate requires us to focus on super ambitious, highly speculative R&D at the earliest stage – the stage where people might question whether these ideas are even possible. It’s our job to unlock breakthroughs that show something is possible in a space –? to shoot up a flare and show there’s something of value here worth exploring.

But breakthroughs alone don’t automatically lead to impact. As a government funded agency, we must work to ensure the R&D we fund has the greatest chance of catalysing transformative technologies and industries with UK public benefit. We’ll need ambitious, risk-taking entrepreneurs, startups and capital sources integrated into everything we do to ensure our breakthroughs lead to wide-spread transformation.

What will this look like in practice for ARIA?

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been having a lot of conversations about what the best mechanisms are to help convert the R&D we fund into impact. To do this, we’ll need to trial a diverse mix of activities.?

This spring, we’re launching a call for partners to work with us to design, activate, and catalyse? bespoke science entrepreneurship activities across our opportunity spaces. This could be anything from identifying talent pipelines and the ways to empower them, to running a dedicated series of convenings, or establishing a moonshot R&D arm of their organisation.

We don’t want to set hard constraints on the type of organisation we will work with – they might be a nonprofit, a fellowship programme, a deeptech investor, an accelerator.

Who have you spoken to to inform ARIA’s thinking on this?

We've been engaging with a broad set of organisations and individuals across the UK ecosystem, and beyond. That includes nonprofits and for profit organisations, as well as those focused on nurturing talent pipelines, facilitating networks (especially within tech and science), and enabling venture creation. We’ve also spoken to a number of scientists at the coalface – researchers working on early-stage innovation, and science founders in a slightly later stage of that journey.

What we've heard from them is that ARIA has the potential to play a really powerful convening role in the ecosystem. We're not trying to reinvent the wheel here. There's a huge amount of really incredible talent and activity already within the UK in this space. But if ARIA can help bring some of these organisations together and catalyse more activity, that would be amazing. By fostering this kind of collaboration within each of our opportunity spaces, we firmly believe that we can empower our scientists and wider communities to achieve breakthroughs that will unlock new science and technology capabilities for everyone’s benefit.?