by Tony Jones, CEO, One Nucleus

Trusting Your Neighbours
Continuing down the thought process of the importance of nurturing your local ambassadors to enable your international success described in last month’s blog, I seek to explore the value of ensuring your company is not just recognised but also well understood within your local ecosystem, since nurturing success is a two-way process between all parties. It’s one thing for your neighbours to recognise you and know who you are; it is a step further for your neighbours to understand your goals and challenges unless you are open enough to tell them. Finding an environment that feels trusted enough to be so open is key to success. Building such an environment is the role of a group such as One Nucleus.

Does Failure Improve Judgement?

Whilst the data must be compelling to support a pitch, much of the decision-making around which companies, programmes or teams get backed by investors and sponsors is down to the personal judgement of the person or committee holding the capital. As we are often reminded, ‘He who pays the piper calls the tune.’ So, is their judgement an innate capability or is it learned?

Rita Mae Brown suggested ‘good judgement is the result of experience, which is the result of bad judgement’. Perhaps in a field such as life sciences, where the outcome of R&D is, by its nature, experimental, failure by some projects (not reaching the desired endpoint) is inevitable and should be viewed as a learning opportunity rather than necessarily the exercising of poor judgement. Accepting failure was a topic discussed by Renos Savva and Nara Daubeney at last year’s Genesis conference. The pair discussed what a great ecosystem to support the success of a bio-entrepreneur needed to hold. If one were to consider what it is that renders any potential location as a great location, maybe it has roots in a critical mass of good judgement based on previous experiences.

Stronger Together

Attributed to many over the years, although it seems it is an African proverb that first suggested, ‘If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.’ It’s hard to imagine a setting in which this sentiment is truer than in life science innovation and bringing improved outcomes to patients. Innovation is a team sport with excellence required in every position. One aspect of a successful cluster is not simply the knowledge sharing instigated but also the resilience it can afford its constituents through uncertain times.

This was clearly an impression a leading UK bioentrepreneur, Claire Wareing, CEO of Cumulus Oncology, took away from a recent visit to Massachusetts, a location most would argue is world-leading when it comes to innovation. Attending the ‘State of Possible Conference’ moved Claire to post on social media ‘Having been a collaborator with organisations in the Massachusetts biotech ecosystem for the last 22 years, I’ve had the privilege of seeing it evolve and scale. Never have I seen such solidarity and unity as I witnessed today. Really showed the power of a highly networked, well-funded and purpose-driven life sciences community.’

Celebrating success across the breadth of our ecosystem at our recent One Nucleus Annual Awards was followed by the April BioWednesday at the Queen Mary Innovation Centre, in twenty companies pitching their story to attendees. Several things became clear:

• There is a very exciting breadth of innovation happening within our community that will help improve patients’ lives.
• There is a huge amount of goodwill among the constituents to see each other succeed.
• There is impressive depth in expertise and knowledge across all stages of the innovation and commercialisation cycle that can be tapped conveniently.
• There is a great deal of onwards connectivity potential within the group.

From Trust to Deal Flow

A recent, albeit simplistic, LinkedIn poll addressing the origination of deals suggested unsurprisingly that most dealmakers saw leads arise from their network. Perhaps more surprising was the dominance of that route, or rather the low score of routes such as conference pitching and bio-partnering meetings.

Once the lead was generated, then it was clear your company’s (or personal) reputation and being trusted by those advising your target investor, partner or buyer were critical hurdles to overcome to secure the deal.

The Role of One Nucleus

The feedback from the above BioWednesday, the articulation of the Massachusetts ecosystem’s resilience and cohesion by Claire, the indications from the route to deals expressed in the polls and the recurring theme of the importance in dealmaking of the ‘people factor’ across the Genesis 2024 keynotes provide a clear steer for One Nucleus in how we seek to support the success of our members as follows:

• Create opportunities for members to explain to the wider network their particular excellence and challenges, be that in R&D, corporate strategy, investment or operational matters.
• Deliver a means for members to build high levels of trust among each other such that knowledge is shared openly and constructively, with each member wanting all others to succeed.
• Arm each member with information to refer to their network colleagues when meeting their onward contacts.
• Encourage a can-do attitude among our community that leads to resilience in uncertain times.
• Celebrate the successes to engender confidence and a can-do attitude in others.
• Advocate our members collective excellence and needs whilst connecting them to further opportunities.

Where Champions Are Nurtured

Ikechukwu Joseph suggested ‘Champions are made and not born,’ although many would argue champions are born with an innate talent. The innate insights, creativity and personality strengths of bio-entrepreneurs may be the spark, but equally, how they are supported and nurtured by their network is important. Neither nature nor nurture alone being enough for success and accepting One Nucleus can only influence the latter, then our role is to harness the diverse ingredients available in our network to nurture those that are able to become champions.

The above pointers on how we create a knowledgeable, supportive and trusted environment alongside the practical support such as the Purchasing Scheme & Savings, Training, Facilities Management and Special Interest Groups is why we feel One Nucleus is the true home of champions. Those with aspiration can, of course, plough their own furrow, but like all journeys, the road to success is much more enjoyable when shared with friends.