Entrepreneurial Skills
As a postdoc, you are an innovator in training and you already share behaviours with entrepreneurs.
Developing your entrepreneurial mindset and capabilities enables you to spot opportunities and have the capacity to act on these with confidence. Whether that’s in relation to gaining independence in an academic career, a commercial opportunity, policy intervention, or other ways your research can have impact.
Find out about the resources available to help you develop your entrepreneurial thinking and build your confidence to explore different avenues of impact:
The Postdoc Academy is a leading partner within Postdocs to Innovators (p2i) - an international partnership between institutes of higher education and global companies.
p2i's aim is to enhance postdocs' entrepreneurial mindset with a key set of skills, which they can use to pursue careers that will be personally and professionally meaningful both within and outside of academia.
The p2i programme enables postdocs to engage in a range of activities, including:
- postdoc societies
- entrepreneurship events
- business plan competitions
- mentoring
- residential training programmes
- online education courses.
Participants are connected with other researchers, industrial contacts, investors, entrepreneurs, and academics with experience in starts-ups.
Postdocs to Innovators (p2i) offers the online course 'Researcher to Innovator and Entrepreneur'. It is free for postdocs from the University of Cambridge and partner institutes who want to learn how to seize opportunities and see them through.
The course is ideal for postdocs from any discipline who are:
- interested in learning to think entrepreneurially
- curious about entrepreneurship
- ready to develop entrepreneurial skills and confidence
- keen to develop their networks.
Venture creation events and programmes provide aspiring entrepreneurs with an exciting opportunity to develop, test, and pitch business ideas. They usually involve working in teams across a set time period (anything from an academic term, to an intense few days), and often involve mentoring and advice from experts and investors.
p2i sponsors places for postdocs to attend for free on a number of these, including:
The Postdocs of Cambridge Society have an entrepreneurial sub-committee providing entrepreneurship focused events and communications to postdocs in Cambridge.
If you are interested in contributing to the sub-committee, or helping with planning entrepreneurship events, please email contact@pdoc.cam.ac.uk.
I/E Cambridge is a web portal into the Cambridge innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem. It provides information on training programmes and events and is there to support, inspire and develop entrepreneurial thinking and skills.
The Postdoc Academy professional development programme delivers two workshops:
- Entrepreneurial thinking benefits all Researchers - gain an overview of entrepreneurial skills
- Planning fundable research using Research Canvas - this entrepreneurial tool will help your research proposition stand out
Book onto upcoming sessions on UTBS
Download the Research Canvas tool
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