by Tony Jones, CEO, One Nucleus

Continuing the series of blogs about the way in which One Nucleus views the nurturing of our community to facilitate the success of our members, the focus this time is on how we can leverage technology to enhance the ‘One Nucleus Bump’ effect.

The Value of Human Collisions

In the first two parts of the series, Nurturing Your Local Ambassadors to Enable Your International Success and Creating the Home of Champions, readers may recall how the themes of your network contacts helping to amplify your visibility and why being part of a trusted community leads to shared knowledge, better judgement and warm deal flow introductions were explored. Moreover, avenues One Nucleus could develop with its members to support such dynamics were also suggested.

The ‘bump’ referred to above is taken from the terminology we hear used often about the life science ecosystem in the Greater Boston cluster in Massachusetts. In the context of innovation and deal flow, it describes well how the condensed ecosystems around, e.g., Kendall Square, Cambridge, and Seaport in Boston lead to an increased frequency of contact between peers. Such a higher frequency leads to that building of pooled knowledge, trust and intra-cluster business introductions that ultimately lead to increased deal flow, whether those deals be investment, R&D collaborations, lab leasing, recruitment or professional advice, these are all transactions (deals) essential to a dynamic and successful innovation cluster, one could argue.

Adapting from Metropolitan to Rural Dynamics

There have been numerous fact-finding missions, theories and illustrative examples of the benefits of such connectivity and proximity in that Greater Boston cluster. One might even dare to say there has not been infrequent surfacing of the green-eyed monster when other regions, including those in the UK, have sought to understand how to replicate such success. Policymakers, innovation advocates and entrepreneurs have long since admired that success in Massachusetts. Absolutely, in any such comparisons it is hard to ignore the moose on the table that is the financing landscape. Success cannot simply be about more money, perhaps when you consider Massachusetts outperforms other capital-rich states such as California. It is conceivable that the ‘bump’ factor, predetermined by geography and being a dense metropolitan area, plays a pivotal role. As often suggested in life sciences, you can get everything right on the science and business strategies, and yet you still also need to be lucky.

Accepting the relative rural layout of the UK clusters, such as Cambridge, and even the relatively disjointed layout across London, then leveraging technology to enable a greater bump factor in our community would seem like at least a partial solution. The wider, day-to-day apps such as LinkedIn provide a partial mechanism, and many of us use these for generality and serendipity, but apps focussed around an event, a common need or target motivation can add so much more in a complementary way at a specific point in time. Great then that the conference app for the upcoming OH Helix conference is about to launch, enriching that serendipitous connectivity around the event opportunity, a common need to ensure each encounter is maximised and a collective target motivation to understand how we can do our best to translate great invention and innovation into better patient outcomes at an industrial scale.

Introducing the One Nucleus Conference App

As delegates prepare for the 3 July ON Helix conference in Cambridge, the approach to gain maximum return on investment for anyone’s time and cost of attending is featuring on many minds. Questions around how to meet the right people, gain the right knowledge and instigate new business relationships abound for all attendees, either consciously for those focussed on quantification of outcomes or subconsciously for those experienced hands who know the value of such networking opportunities. Those attending the larger bio-partnering events, aimed at providing a direct and intense pitching experience for deals or money such as BIO-Europe and LSX Congress - with their corresponding price tags - absolutely want to be focussed on the one-to-one selections.

One Nucleus does likewise, since that is the point of the investment. But it is key to remember that engaging with your community when the option arises can be fully rewarding both in direct and indirect ways as set out earlier. Creating ambassadors, champions and a trusted source of advisors is pivotal to improving judgement and chances of success. This wider engagement, often taken for granted or overlooked in favour of trying to be efficient, selective and/or exclusive in your attention, is pivotal to building a trusted brand, developing robust plans and ultimately securing deal flow.

Sourcing the Best Advice

Knowledge-sharing and connectivity in a way lie at the heart of cluster and membership groups’ value-adding propositions to their members. Everyone requires and seeks to get the best advice when it is needed as they journey through new challenges. Whether the advice given is good or bad depends on the specifics of any opportunity and the desired outcome. For example: take two academic researchers who have discovered a novel mechanism to treat infectious diseases in their labs. Both share the same goal of wanting to see the science translated into better patient outcomes. One, however, wishes to be entrepreneurial and start, then build, a company that they lead. The other doesn’t want to leave their acidic career to start a company, so wishes to seek an existing company for someone else to translate their science. Whilst advice given to each of these academics about what they should each do to achieve their aims may be different given their situation and respective aspirations, equally both pieces of advice could be correct for the right one. Thus, assessing what is good advice remains the responsibility of the recipient to validate and accommodate. Increasing the chances of either piece of advice being good can be achieved by connecting with an expert and broad network such that their advice is based on experience and hence learned good judgement. One factor for sure is that such expertise and experience are not restricted to those working only under one business model. Individual excellence can never be differentiated on the basis of business model.

Recognising the Value of Different

Summarising the above, the conclusion here is that one needs to be rigorous in understanding the respective value, efficiency and effectiveness of targeting connections. The differences between a large, fairly homogeneous metropolitan life sciences cluster and a less dense, more diverse and spread-out rural cluster can mean a lesser impact of serendipity when physical bumps with peers at scale are less common. Perhaps, when geography means the wider connectivity happens by default in a city’s daily life routine, the emphasis is on the more formal partnering and pitching approach. In smaller, less dense geographies the bump factor needs some engineering. Utilising the network and technology around events such as ON Helix can be that engineering, meaning good advice is secured, onwards connections happen more effectively, and learnings are shared. This becomes important when companies then invest in the targeted, higher-cost partnering events near home and internationally, since they are then prepared, informed and recommended on a more level playing field to their metropolitan counterparts and hence have a greater chance of seeing traction.

ON Helix App Access

ON Helix, held at the Babraham Research Campus on Thursday 3 July, will assemble a broad cross section of expertise across the translational research field, from primary R&D and investors, to CRO/CDMO and Professional Services. Many attendees who have faced the challenges others are now facing several times. Therefore, ON Helix represents an exciting value proposition for attendees to share what they know and gain advice on challenges they feel less qualified to plan around. There are always the conference sessions and in-person networking on offer, but complementing this through the conference app by:

• Completing your company profile in a manner those who wish to work with you feel attracted
• Posting a ‘Quest’ on the site, challenging other users to answer a question you are arriving at the event with
• Pre-arrange some set 1-2-1 meetings with those attendees with whom you are keen to spend some dedicated time
• View what others are seeking to assess if you have their solution or at least some insight to offer.

The app is available to all fully registered conference participants and remains live for four weeks post-event in order to facilitate any ongoing follow-up connectivity.