The financial incentives that drive industry, without question, account for the different pace than academia. What I have noticed is that partnerships with the private sector "quicken" the normal pace of our research work, especially when they tie additional levels of funding to certain research or study guidelines being met. The greater level of accountability toward reaching a positive outcome distinguishes industry from academia. In the academic setting, we are much more cognizant of complying with NIH or NSF guidelines and reporting processes. Unconsciously, our culture can cruise into the end of our 3-year or 5-year grant term, and in many cases, we can secure a supplemental grant or a no-cost extension to give us another 12-24 months to accomplish the aims of our study.
This kind of leeway is unheard in the for-profit setting. In fact, we could probably all plan on being fired if after 3-5 years, our research or product development had not yielded any tangible outcomes that could be tied to commercialization and profit-generation potential! I think the optimal setup is having a PI or project manager with industry training and mindset within the academic setting who can accelerate the pace of research. When it's vice-versa, industry culture nearly always swallows up the "sensibilities" and laid back tendencies of the researcher from academia.
To answer the first question posed regarding if projects in industry are successful- well, yes. In fact, many times in industry, a company's success is based off the success of their projects. Projects are obviously focused on the objective at hand, but in a larger grand scheme, projects are usually created to produce something for the company in order to drive it forward, produce more revenue, and ultimately stay in business. I have not been exposed to industry for long, however, from my experience so far I can tell there is never enough time given to complete projects. There is definitely a lot more pressure to get things done from upper management, and the timelines proposed are usually not by the people actually doing the work. The key to ensuring the success of a project comes from basic steps of project management- initiating, planning, executing, and closing with monitoring and control throughout. The planning phase is the most crucial within this development in the sense that it will determine delays, and how they are handled, in the execution phase. The effort and time put into these phases will ultimately lay out the projects timeline and success.
Research in Industry is generally completed faster due to strict deadlines. The time management risks of an industry research project should be accounted for in the planning phase. In Industry, the whole point of research is to ultimately develop a product for profit. A company might decide not to fund a project if they think the research portion will take to long. So with strict deadlines and proper resources, industry research is usually completed faster than academia.
I feel more comfortable doing research for a living than doing engineering work for a living. There are two options, either academia or industry. Although I would be more comfortable and more efficient doing research, I want to make a decent living as a result of my graduate education as a financial benefit rather than making a name for myself. My view is helping others is nice, but I got to be okay myself to be able to do that. Although, I am a little confused about how I can find a position in the industry. What are the hiring managers look for while hiring a Biomedical Engineering Researcher? In academia, if you have a Ph.D. or Masters, you can join a lab eventually in the field of your interest, but in the industry, they want to experience, and I am not sure if they count graduate education as research experience. So although I want to work in the industry as a researcher, I cannot figure out what I must do to be considered.
I’ve had a fortununate opportunity to work with both academia and industry in terms of research and I noticed many parallels but there are some subtle differences that I will outline. While working in an industry I had to deliver quantitative research as opposed to qualitative research using statistical analysis software. The project is well funded and required a very strict deadline. In addition the project was very well-funded and I was able to present it successfully to the CEO of the company who found my research rather stimulating. That experience gave me the confidence in industry and how thorough of an operation it can be when organized, funded correctly, and given the proper direction in perpetuity. I’ve done a few research projects on the academia side. Having that experience has given me many skills that I otherwise would have to learn on my own if you were in industry. The environment promotes learning and skills development and because of this the research did take time. Grant funded research is not always available and may not move at the speed of industry but nonetheless some of the greatest innovations of our time have come from academia. Case and point look at Biontech collaboration with university of Pennsylvania scientists and what they were able to accomplish with the COVID-19 vaccine, simply amazing.
I’ve had a fortununate opportunity to work with both academia and industry in terms of research and I noticed many parallels but there are some subtle differences that I will outline. While working in an industry I had to deliver quantitative research as opposed to qualitative research using statistical analysis software. The project is well funded and required a very strict deadline. In addition the project was very well-funded and I was able to present it successfully to the CEO of the company who found my research rather stimulating. That experience gave me the confidence in industry and how thorough of an operation it can be when organized, funded correctly, and given the proper direction in perpetuity. I’ve done a few research projects on the academia side. Having that experience has given me many skills that I otherwise would have to learn on my own if you were in industry. The environment promotes learning and skills development and because of this the research did take time. Grant funded research is not always available and may not move at the speed of industry but nonetheless some of the greatest innovations of our time have come from academia. Case and point look at Biontech collaboration with university of Pennsylvania scientists and what they were able to accomplish with the COVID-19 vaccine, simply amazing.
@llefevre does a good job with identifying the differences between research in academia and industry. I've done academic research and do some on the industry side as well, but this response gives a great idea of what to expect on either side of the spectrum. Industry research in my opinion is a bit more strict as there are timepoints and deadlines throughout that are setup in a way to progress the project forward.
@merzkrashed great feedback. Are you a product manager? Some years ago I had the unfortunate experience of being apart of a product launch that was missing the product manager... I'm still not sure how that was supposed to work. Needless to say, the product launch was tough on the team. Hence your comment resonates well. To that end, what do you suggest to be the critical components of a product launch? Whatever first-thought comes to mind is welcome. KC
@merzkrashed great feedback. Are you a product manager? Some years ago I had the unfortunate experience of being apart of a product launch that was missing the product manager... I'm still not sure how that was supposed to work. Needless to say, the product launch was tough on the team. Hence your comment resonates well. To that end, what do you suggest to be the critical components of a product launch? Whatever first-thought comes to mind is welcome. KC
Academia research mainly focused is on research and discovery the love of science and learning. However, we see that it is different in industry work that allows their researchers to feel a sense of immediate impact on patient lives by creating products that will go to the market and use soon. I believe that there has to be a balance between what happens in industry and academia. In Academia, their research seems more extensive, while in industry they are more driven with profits.
In my experience working in Academic Research, there was guidance from my professors in how to conduct the research, how to formulate my question and how to analyze my results. The schedule that we had was very lax, we came to the lab when we had the time, we did a few procedures for that time, we cleaned up and we did it again the following week or whenever we had time during our busy school schedules. We met up once a week to talk about new scholarly articles that relate to our research and we had to analyze it and elaborate on how it could help our research move forward. I loved doing research when I was in undergrad, it really inspired me to pursue a career in biotechnology and research. I was always that friend that was in the lab late at night. My natural curiosity was always fulfilled when the procedure would be done and results and outcomes of the test that we ran would conclude. But instead of doing research to find a new product or a new drug or a new revolutionary technology, we would present at conferences. The conferences would be the driving force of our research timeline.
In regards to the industry, I would assume that they have very tight deadlines to meet, there is much more critical oversight on your research to make sure that there are minimal mistakes. That there are a lot of checks and balances later down the line. While applying to jobs, I visited jobs where "all hands are on deck" for different projects because they had to send the samples that they worked on the following day and they needed to make sure that things were properly packaged. The researchers that worked in the lab were often working very independently and had a schedule to complete different tasks. I believe that the companies believe that the researchers that they hire, can work independently however also have their coworkers check their work, to make sure that procedures are followed. Or that they can work independently but in a team/group setting to where they can effectively. While one would make the assumption that a company wouldn't pick up a project with an almost unachievable deadline and expect their workers to accommodate, that may be the case for different companies. However I would assume that the deadlines that they have to meet would be established with enough time to verify that they quality of the research did not suffer.
I would love to understand more how the research industry operates from everyones experiences being that I would like to break into the industry soon.
The academic sector is research and discovery focused with many of the projects focused on expanding the current knowledge scope of the field. While industry relies on creating products that can have an immediate impact on lives while making a profit. I do not think that industry standards focus on making the best product, rather I believe industry focuses on making a product that safe, useful, and effective for the intended purposes. The end result of these two can be drastically different. Timelines, deadlines, and the end result are all very important in industry while in academia some deadlines can be looked at as more of a guideline leading to a more relaxed environment.
In my opinion, studies in the sector are aimed at making more money by doing research quickly. Therefore, the work in the field of industry is much faster and result-oriented. In addition, the work in the academy is not only result-oriented but also aims to produce new things. Since the deadline set for a product in the industry world is much more precise, even if the time is not enough, you are expected to reach this deadline within this period.
Thanks!
Industry research is quite different from academia research in that in industry the end goal often has a higher probability of success because the purpose of it was to fix something or to make a process better . This differs from industry where the target may or may not exist and the purpose of doing research is to see if something could be a viable option. It is synonymous to throwing all your darts and hoping that one of them sticks. However, even though industry might sound like it is the better option, I believe the research that is done is very conservative and doesn't push the bound unless it is guaranteed to work or is shown to work. In industry everything is highly calculated and decisions are made with a purpose in mind. For example one of my researches that I did for my profession, had a high probability of succeeding because there were many procedures done before the actual start of the experiment. Often times, industry looks to academia to see what is a viable topic to research and often times that is how research is conducted. Where as in academia, these preliminary researches are often the thoughts and creations of the professor themselves which is a product of general curiosity.
