The Entrepreneurial Researcher

Perhaps like many of you, I am an avid NPR listener. This weekend, I caught a portion of "This American Life," entitled "It's Not the Product, It's the Person," which focused on pitching business ideas and getting the right people to invest in you and your product or service. As I listened, it struck me that these tips from entrepreneurs and private business investors were directly relevant to researchers seeking investment from sponsors through grants.

As part of the segment, one of the producers of This American Life was tutored in pitching his business idea to Chris Sacca, a venture investor, known for his early investments that launched the likes of Twitter and Instagram,

Spoiler alert: although Sacca does not end up investing in the narrator's idea, he does coach him in what sells ideas as outlined below:

Conviction
Sacca describes how when he was approached with the idea of Instagram, he thought that the idea of photosharing had passed. Although the idea didn't necessarily sell him, what did sell him was the conviction of the creators. Sacca describes that he got a sense from the founder that "He's actually looking through you to some spot behind you that's five years in the future and he just knows the inevitability of the success of his platform. And, by the end of the conversation, you're like, 'please take my money.'"

Conviction can make the difference between a good idea and a funded idea. You have to be so sure of your work and its importance that it is contagious. Sacca invested in Instagram because of the creator's conviction. It's worth noting that he did not invest in Dropbox or Airbnb when these businesses were pitched to him. These were also good ideas, as evidenced by these companies' later success, but the creators lacked the conviction at the time to persuade Sacca.

FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out
Successful grant writers have described the importance of describing one's research as a train that's leaving the station - work that is happening and going to be successful, sparking some urgency in the investor that they need to get on the train!

This urgency relates to what Sacca refers to as FOMO, or the fear of missing out.  Researchers must cast their research idea as too good to miss, making reviewers and sponsors feel like they will be kicking themselves if they didn't support the next nobel laureate when they had the chance.

Create a pitch deck
Whether you use it or not, those entrepreneurs looking for investors suggest developing a pitch deck to organize your ideas. Using the pitch deck outline can be a way to organize your message when preparing to write a grant.

This is the basic outline of the pitch deck
- What's the problem I'm trying to solve?
- How is my idea going to solve it?
- What will the return be for everyone who invests in this? What results can they expect?

A more detailed pitch deck outline can be found at Forbes.

What is your unfair advantage?
Chris Sacca advises those pitching ideas to identify their unfair advantage. What makes you the perfect person to start this business and make it succeed. Plenty of people have good ideas, but those that succeed with those ideas generally have an edge, a leg up on the competition. This is true in the grants world as well.  It's not enough to have a great research idea and have great conviction, you must also be the best person to do it.

For early career investigators (ECIs) going up against seasoned PIs, this should not deter you. For one thing, many major sponsors, such as the NIH, have a mandate to fund a certain percentage of ECIs. But, for ECIs who aren't immediately competitive for the largest grants (and most aren't), find smaller grant or career development competitions for which you will be.  Also, form strategic partnerships with senior PI's and participate in their projects to build your experience and essential connections that can help you build your edge. Being strategic in this way will eventually give you "the unfair advantage" in the external funding world.

By positioning your case for funding using some of these entrepreneurial strategies, you might find yourself communicating a more compelling grant proposal to investors or grant sponsors.

Resources
It's Not the Product, It's the Person  - This American Life
The Ultimate Pitch Deck to Raise Money for Startups - Forbes

Research Presentation Tips

Being able to write about your research is important, especially when it comes to writing grants. Yet oftentimes researchers overlook the power of being able to offer a compelling verbal presentation on their research. Having a presentation in your back pocket can allow you to introduce your work at conferences, guest lectures, keynotes, and even everyday conversations effectively and engagingly.

In various formats, you can use the following tips to engage and involve your audience instead of subjecting them to a recitation that closely resembles your latest academic publication.

Instructional Strategies:

I've seen faculty members who make a clear distinction between a "talk" and "teaching." Whereas in the latter, they are concerned with involving their students and focusing on their learning, in the former they're worried about delivering information and often forget about the outcomes for their audience.  Bringing solid instructional strategies into a talk can offer a more engaging and memorable experience for your audience. Below are some instructional strategies to consider:

• Ask a question of your audience early on: When you engage your audience early on, you prevent them from settling into a more passive listening mode and encourage active learning and participation in your presentation.
• Give participants a chance to consider or discuss what your work means for them: adult learners tend to learn and remember things that make a difference to them in their own lives and work. So showing how meaningful your research is to them or designing an exercise that relates your research to their individual lives can help capture them.
• Use everyday parallels and metaphors to describe your research: When describing complex research and processes, it can be helpful to identify a familiar process that you can parallel to your work to better show what you're doing to laypeople in the audience.

Visuals:

• Avoid death by bullet points: One of the biggest faults of presenters are using PowerPoint or Prezi as talking notes instead of the visual aid that is supposed to support learning.  This often manifests in bulleted list after bulleted list.  Often times a visual can communicate an idea better than a word or phrase.
• Don't get text heavy: Another faux pas of presentations is filling a slide with a paragraph of text and then reading it aloud. You receive an additional strike if the text on your slide is too small to be read (you should try to stay at 20 pt or above). Remember, if you put a bunch of text on the screen, your audience will stop listening to you to read what's in front of them. And, if you're reading it to them, they could get annoyed, especially if it's more than one slide.
• Keep it readable and simple: Visuals can be a better way to communicate than text, but be careful to keep your visuals easy to see and read and simple enough to communicate your message effectively.  If you present a very complex-looking model, you should not be surprised when eyes glaze over.

Resources
Edward R. Tufte's Presentation Tips - As noted by the University of Maryland CS Department
Talking the Talk - Tips on Giving a Successful Conference Presentation - American Psychological Association