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Dr. Andrea Haight on the Risks and Rewards of Scientific Industry

This interview is the first in our Bridging the Gap series, a collection of interviews and blog posts investigating the transfer of knowledge, employees, and intellectual property between industry and academia.


Dr. Andrea Haight, Senior Program Manager at Composite Technology Development in Lafayette, Colorado, has worked in the polymer chemistry industry for over 15 years. She currently serves as principal investigator for several research programs as well as a technical advisor for customers and employees. She let us in on all the challenges and rewards of industry, how to manage intellectual property concerns, and why she doesn't plan on leaving small business anytime soon.

CSU iGEM: What is the biggest challenge you encounter while trying to commercialize research?
Andrea Haight: The biggest challenges I have found are risk and cost. Much applied work must be conducted to minimize risk in commercializing any technology, and frequently much work must be done to make production cost-effective and safe. There is a huge difference between what is practical in a laboratory environment versus what is practical and/or feasible in a production environment.

How might you address the issue of practicality?
Mostly it's just a matter of thinking about what you do in the laboratory and how practical that might be on a much larger scale. Simpler procedures and simplest, safest practices should always be used where possible for things that you are intending to move beyond a lab scale. This greatly simplifies scale-up to production.

Do you think it's possible to have open conversations between academia and industry without worrying about intellectual property (IP)?
From the industry side we always worry about IP - it's how the company makes money and we don't like to put it at risk. That said, we work with a lot of folks in academia, but require non-disclosure agreements in order to facilitate open conversation.

Academia does all sorts of interesting research; how often would you say that this is utilized by industry?
Academic research is utilized by industry, but I don't think to a great extent. The focus of academic research is not frequently directed enough toward questions that are important to industry - i.e., too much focus on why it works as opposed to how to use it for an intended purpose. Also, there is frequent incidence of "not invented here" syndrome - this relates back to IP concerns, which as I indicated are always considerations for industry.

Could you explain "not invented here" syndrome for us?
IP is king for businesses and while they may license technologies sometimes, there is a desire not to send any profit out the door in the form of licensing fees and/or royalties or the like. Thus, if they have been working on solutions in-house, they will always prefer to use their own. This also justifies the cost associated with in-house development programs.
Do you believe scientific journals and articles are the best way to transfer knowledge between academia and industry?
I don't feel that scientific journals and articles are the best means of knowledge transfer.

What would you suggest as an alternative?
I feel that participation in conferences is much more effective. Conference participation offers opportunities for one-on-one conversations and industry-wide networking that are much more difficult when trying to communicate via an email address gleaned from a journal article - never mind that you may or may not be contacting the most relevant individual in that case.

What would be one benefit that industry could gain by working more closely with academia?
The biggest benefit would be a greater understanding of system details. While we can get products to market, we frequently don't have the resources to completely understand a system, and this lack of more thorough understanding can be an issue in dealing with customers.

What, to you, are the advantages of industry over academia?
I can only speak from the small business perspective, but the main advantages that I see are: one, I can develop any technology I wish - within the company core competencies - as long as I can get funding for the development; two, there is a drive to move technology forward to a product and move on to new things; and three, there is the opportunity to branch out of my academic comfort zone. In small business I have learned about IT, business development, patent law, accounting and finance, et cetera.

Would you ever want to transition into academia from industry?
I can’t imagine wanting to switch from industry - in my case, small business - to academia. The minimal level of red tape associated with small business as well as the ability to learn many new things regularly are powerful drivers for me to stay where I am.

What do you wish you had known about going into industry before you made the decision to?
I wish I'd had a better idea of how truly difficult it can be to transition a technology from the laboratory to a product.

What do you recommend undergraduates do or be aware of moving forward into industry to make sure there is collaboration with academia?
Try to stay current with the state-of-the-art in your field of work. Read the journals and most importantly attend the conferences to foster relationships. The relationships are what drive collaborations and determine whether or not they are successful.

CSU iGEM would like to thank Dr. Haight for taking the time to speak with us. Please share comments and add your voice by emailing us at csu.igem@gmail.com or tweeting us @CSU_iGEM.