Chris Walker is highly experienced in business and organisation development and gave a three lecture series into the creation of a biology based business.
Business is an area that has always interested me but is something that throughout my education I have never put any attention towards. Chris’s lectures, therefore, were very promising to me, because this was to be my first real experience of being taught about business. Furthermore, this lecture series was given prior to my biotechnology module, which included a biotechnology start-up exercise, so I was hopeful that these lectures would give me a head-start for this future exercise.
Chris talked a lot about innovating, and creating a business that will be able to solve a real first world problem, satisfying customer needs, etc. Chris also got us to think of a biological business that might be useful in the real world. This got me thinking about problems today that could be solved with a biological company. One such idea included tackling problems such as tackling waste caused by plastic bags via the production of renewable plastic bags using materials such as bacterial cellulose.
One particular point Chris made that was particularly interesting to me was the difference between male and female energy within a business. Chris mentioned male energy being compartmentalised and female energy being intertwined. Chris explained that this means that genders have different skill sets that they are better suited to, meaning that they often excel in different roles. This was a point that I have never considered before, but certainly makes sense.
Chris also talked about allocating resources towards four main categories. These categories were; Physical, Intellectual, Human and Financial. Chris talked about the importance of all four areas, and how it is important to divvy up resources between all categories to increase the likelihood of a successful business. This was interesting to me because prior to this, I would have only focused on areas such as physical and financial resources, and barely considered factors such as human and intellectual resources.
To conclude, I would say that Chris Walker’s lectures did live up to the expectations I had set, and Chris gave me several pointers and tips that I would have never previously considered had I not attended the lectures. Chris gave a lot of information about creating a business, but I believe he could have possibly tailored this towards a more biological point of view, especially when considering the resource allocation, etc. Finally, I also think this could have been condensed into a two part lecture series rather than three part.
Thomas Nicholls 