MBAs told to go offshore for biotech experience

Business management students were told yesterday that they may have to work overseas before they sought employment in Australia's biotechnology industry.

Kelvin Hopper, managing director of Aoris Nova, a life science business consultancy firm, told a forum of graduates that they should work overseas to develop progressive business skills and international links.

He said that in the US, biotech companies and research institutions were bigger, with a lot more money, and the contacts they made would be valuable when people returned to Australia.

"Overseas, you'll get the big picture, experience and excitement, but be sure to come back."

"It (Australia) doesn't have the cycling of managers from one company to the other that gives that cross-fertilisation and broad experience," Hopper said in the first in a series of seminars organised by the UNSW Australian Graduate School of Management's Bioconcepts forum.

He said that scientists returned to Australia because the science was good here, but most business professionals ended up staying overseas because they had no comparable business incentives to return.

On a more positive note, he said that expats who chose to stay overseas offered a valuable link for the Australian biotechnology industry.

For business graduates who chose to stay in Australia and seek work in the biotechnology industry, Hopper said the market was not good for jobs right now but it would improve.

"Because there is a massive increase in start-up companies, I think there will be more opportunities coming up," he said.

Careers in smaller biotechnology companies would allow people to learn much faster and would be exciting in the short term, especially in a start-up, he said. In larger companies there was more scope for making major decisions with a team of people, as well as good training and international linkage, something not often available in a smaller company.

Hopper said that in principle a biotechnology business was no different to that in other industries. Both aimed to get a product to market although, "the path to market for a biotechnology product is more complex compared to an IT product. Many more technical issues need to be overcome by specialists in the industry and, as a result, biotech start-up companies do not generate revenue for a number of years," he told Australian Biotechnology News.

Biotechnology business development managers, he said, "need basic business skills overlayed with an understanding of science and regulatory affairs."

"A person coming into a company with an MBA would have to learn quickly what the business is about, and talk with some authority about the science," he said.

Hopper said that while there were short science courses, often business managers would learn the relevant science while in the company, or, in a bigger company, it may not be essential to have an in-depth understanding as that is generally left to the scientists.

People who have done PhDs have a similar problem to those with MBAs, Hopper said: "they cannot talk business." And he recommended scientists going into business development positions consider doing an MBA, or some other business qualification, to fast-track their business skills.

He said that biotechnology companies would benefit form managing directors that were high-profile in the biotechnology industry, rather than high-profile business people.

"Managing directors need to be able to talk about the science to a boardroom," Hopper said.