About

Funding

Business Encounters: Life Scientist was developed by Clinical Tools, Inc (CTI) with funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (Grant #1 R43 GM131458-01). We gratefully acknowledge this support, which was the sole funding source for this project’s development.

Purpose

The Business Encounters: Life Scientist experience uniquely helps women graduate students, post-docs, early-stage life science researchers with a minimal level of entrepreneurial self-awareness, interest, and confidence explore factors that impact entrepreneurial intent and self-efficacy. Established researchers will also benefit from the curated, tailored resources.

Impact

Business Encounters: Life Scientist is accessible to all life scientists at any point in their career. It is paced to the scientist’s needs, focuses on instilling entrepreneurial intent and self-efficacy. The impact varies with career stage from raising awareness of early career scientists that entrepreneurship is a potential career path to guiding scientists at later career stages in the steps they would need to take to launch a business to translate their research ideas into products. The brief scenarios, inspirational stories, and curated resources are packaged in brief experiences that do not take time away from time-critical and demanding bench work or other tasks, including grant writing.

No Industry Support

All materials on this website were developed in an industry-fund-free environment. No industry funding was used to create this website or simulation experience.

Dissemination

Clinical Tools, and its gaming division Health Impact Studio, strives to share knowledge gained through the testing and use of its products. You can see our latest conference presentations, as well as our published research articles, at the Health Impact Studio site.

Future Plans

During our continued development, we will be focusing Business Encounters: Life Scientist on simulating the common steps a life scientist may encounter when pursing entrepreneurship. Through these simulated experiences, life scientists can learn about the entrepreneurial process and gain confidence in pursuing their ideas in the business world.

After completion of the project, we envision that Business Encounters: Life Scientist will be sold to entrepreneurial support organizations both inside and outside the university community, providing a digital support tool for inspiring early career life scientists to consider entrepreneurship as a career path or to guide life scientists interested in pursuing entrepreneurship with their ideas. This source of revenue will support any ongoing work needed to refine the product and allow free use for life scientists through their organizations.

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