Leadership Archives - Digitizing Biology

April 12, 2021May 18, 2021

a16z and my own journey

a16z is a major Silicon Valley venture capital firm. I listened to their recent podcast episode where they talked with Jeff Lawson, CEO and author of Ask Your Developer. Generally I am very interested in the topic of software development as a creative exercise, this is probably why I chose that particular episode of the podcast to listen to. But what I found of particular interest came in the final 30 seconds of the interview.

Jeff has a view of his own trajectory as a CEO, from that of a Technical-CEO, through Product, and then to Go-to-market. The a16z interviewer pointed out that they have an entire series on the concept of how technical people develop as CEOs and they see them moving through the following sequence:

February 8, 2021May 18, 2021

Mental Health Check

I guess that I am not the only one who has found the grind of a second pandemic lockdown a drain also on mental health and productivity.

The first lockdown was almost fun. For the first time in years I was able to sit at home, work on what I wanted to work on, and go jogging regularly in clean air. There was even the bonus of a new wave of healthcare related information across every media outlet – a field with which I have been passionately involved for 20 years now.

This time is a bit different. First of all it is Winter, so jogging in the park is not so easy. It’s snowing and -10 celsius (-20 fahrenheit) today. Air pollution has not dropped this time, I guess it’s a combination of lignite burning and car emissions. And work is much more stressful this time around. That last point is what I want to write about today.

October 5, 2020May 18, 2021

New article: My experience of the BIA Pulse accelerator

I wrote recently about my experiences of the Pulse leadership and entrepreneurship training program for the blog of the UK BioIndustry Association (BIA). The Pulse course is organised jointly by the BIA and the Francis Crick Institute. I joined the three-day course, in its first year of operation, in 2018.

I felt that I benefited enormously from the course. I had left my postdoc position 3 months previously and I was researching ideas for setting-up a company. I subsequently took my learnings from Pulse and elsewhere, and established my first company Simmunology. So when I was contacted earlier this year I was particularly keen to write something and say thanks.

May 4, 2020April 24, 2020

There is no such thing as a manager

I had the opportunity to interview for a senior position at a very big company recently. The entire process was fascinating for what it says about human nature and about large companies. The outcome of the process is unclear at the time of writing this but I am expecting the intrinsic misalignments in the process will lead it into the reeds from which it is unlikely to emerge. I am as close to the perfect candidate for the role that they will ever interview, but the internal parties are not all aligned around the very existence of the position.

April 27, 2020April 24, 2020

Talks cancelled – Talks online

I had quite a nice spring season of talks planned for 2020. I was invited to deliver a keynote on AI in Healthcare at Biovaria. And, I was one of the invited speakers for the Dynamics of Immune Repertoires conference where I would also have given a workshop, in Dresden. Covid-19 struck and the rest is history.

Emergencies lead to quick changes of plans. Anthony Kelly from AI in Action reached out to me asking me to take part in a special on AI in Healthcare.