9 minute read
Welcoming the new Imperial President, Professor Hugh Brady
Selly Shafira, this year’s WE Innovate winner and co-founder of Banoo, speaks with Imperial College London’s brand-new President, Professor Hugh Brady, in one of his first interviews since taking on his new role.
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It’s been an eventful start to the academic year for Professor Hugh Brady who, on 1 August 2022, became the 17th President of Imperial College London. Professor Brady is the first medic to lead Imperial, relocating from the University of Bristol where he was Vice-Chancellor and President. Here Banoo’s Selly Shafira asks Professor Brady about his decision to join Imperial, views on innovation and entrepreneurship at the university, and plans for the future.
What attracted you to work at Imperial College London?
I’ve admired Imperial for many decades. It’s recognised as a global ‘top ten’ and is one of the world’s greatest researchintensive universities, focusing not just on excellence in research but on how that excellence can be applied for the betterment of humanity and the planet. As a university, it knows how to apply that research, innovation, science and engineering to make our world a better place. For me, there’s no more exciting role at this particular time in my career.
What do you admire about Imperial’s focus on innovation and entrepreneurship?
I think the job of a university president is to create an environment where both students and staff can realise their full potential. In many universities, this principally applies to education and research, but Imperial thinks about innovation and entrepreneurship in new, exciting and ambitious ways and is at the vanguard of that international thinking. Imperial has mainstreamed innovation and entrepreneurship into the student experience and not all universities have done that. It’s a university that’s redefining the value of universities to societies, to economies, and to nations.
What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur?
That’s the age-old question, isn’t it? How much of it is nature and how much is nurture? In most cases, of course, it’s probably a combination of the two, but I think what a university can do – and Imperial has set its sights on this – is recognise that everybody has an entrepreneurial gene or streak within them. Imperial thinks in a very proactive way about how it can unleash and empower that entrepreneurial streak in its students and staff.
Once that streak is identified, it’s about how to support them, and how to give them access to business angels, networks and finance. It’s also about ensuring students learn from the mistakes of others so they don’t make the same ones themselves. And it’s about recognising that students must have the freedom to innovate, to create their own companies and to fail in many cases.
The ecosystem is very important. It’s about having the right support available at the right time, depending on the students’ needs and their stage in the creative process – and having a menu of fantastic support on the shelf to help them succeed.
How can Imperial and other higher education institutions incentivise inventors to turn their good inventions into successful innovations?
There are some inventors who have changed the world and needed no help, but I think most successful inventors have had the good judgment to learn from others about developing their ideas and bringing them to market. Imperial can really help with this and is giving students an environment to think about their entrepreneurial potential. It’s helping students understand the principles and pathways to successful commercialisation.
Understanding and learning from others’ experiences of success is so important, as is understanding the pitfalls and ways to avoid them. Imperial is getting it right because it knows not to stifle the natural innovative potential of students but to be there, ready to support them, as necessary. That’s the right approach and it’s very exciting.
What do you see as the main opportunities and challenges for today’s innovators and entrepreneurs?
It’s a challenging time for everybody in society – most recently with the looming recession and spiralling inflation.
About Selly Shafira
Selly co-founded Banoo – an Imperial startup providing Internet of Things water-quality technology to fish farmers – in 2020 while a student on Imperial College Business School’s MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management course. In June 2022, the startup won the top prize of £15,000 on Imperial Enterprise Lab’s WE Innovate women’s entrepreneurship programme.
Having said that, humanity has probably never been as entrepreneurial as it has been over the past two years during COVID-19. The pandemic probably fast-forwarded universities by about a decade in terms of digital innovation and applications.
So, yes, there are challenges out there, but there’s also more openness to new ideas and more opportunities for digital entrepreneurship than ever before. Coupled with that, we’re thinking about our planet and climate change and how we mitigate that in ways we’ve never done before. And that raises so many new opportunities in terms of the approaches and technologies we need to manage the risk to our planet.
The same applies in medicine. Ten years ago, the pandemic would have killed many more millions of people. The advances in vaccine development over the past decade have not only saved the lives of so many but also position us well to fight off the next pandemic. They have the potential to transform the treatment of so many other major diseases too, such as cancer. So, while the challenges are many and the general atmosphere is somewhat gloomy, I actually think the opportunities for young entrepreneurs are more numerous than ever before.
You’ve worked with a lot of people from different backgrounds in your years of experience. How important is diversity in innovation and entrepreneurship?
It’s hugely important. For many years now in academia there’s been a general consensus that an academic environment is much stronger if underpinned by multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity, because so many great discoveries come from the creative collisions at the interface of different disciplines. It’s so exciting to watch what happens when smart people come together to learn each other’s scientific languages and collaborate to solve problems.
We are also rapidly appreciating that gender, cultural, ethnic and other forms of diversity greatly enrich the quality and productivity of research and innovation environments, in addition to being the right thing to do in the wider societal context. I’m delighted that Imperial is prioritising equality, diversity and inclusion across the entire university and I look forward to working with colleagues to advance this important agenda.
What are your top tips to founders for getting the most out of meetings with their networks?
First, I should stress that I have never founded a company. However, with all meetings, it’s always good to have an idea in advance of what you want to get out of it. For some meetings, it might be technical advice. For others, it might be
advice around the business development process, or venture funding, or finance, or asking an alumnus to open the door to his or her network. Meetings may also result in new medium- to long-term relationships which might be even more valuable in the long run.
It’s also important to have your antennae raised for surprising new ideas, suggestions or challenges that are made during the meeting. Sometimes it’s those serendipitous left-field discussions which can be the most exciting, as they take the discovery process in a different direction. Having an open mind for new directions and new ideas is really important.
You’ve been celebrated for your business mindset and extensive business network. How should entrepreneurs engage with more people and expand their networks?
Networking is such an important part of the entrepreneurial process. Young entrepreneurs must appreciate how important networks are and actively seek out ways to engage with others. Not all entrepreneurs are extroverts, so it can be difficult to walk into a room of people who may be older or from different backgrounds. I think having an appreciation of the value of networking and a willingness to engage, even though it might not come naturally, will pay off hugely.
Given your successful medical career, do you have any advice for Imperial founders who specifically want to bring new med-tech innovations to market?
One piece of advice is to get as close as possible to the practitioners who are working at the bedside, in the operating room and in the interventional radiology lab. So many of the most important medtech innovations have either been born out of or benefited from the experience and insights of practitioners.
What opportunities and ideas are you most excited about in the next five to ten years?
Imperial has a remarkable story – a global top 10 university despite being relatively young and not receiving the scale of government or philanthropic support that many of its US and Asian counterparts enjoy. It has a number of key differentiators, though, that serve it well – a focus on science, engineering, medicine and business; an impressive commitment to impact, innovation and entrepreneurship; and its location in one of the world’s greatest and most vibrant cities. With the development of the White City Campus, Imperial has a unique opportunity to position itself as a powerful catalyst at the heart of London’s, and indeed the UK’s, innovation ecosystem. This is a tremendously exciting prospect for an incoming President and I look forward to working with my new colleagues to maximise this opportunity.
What are your hopes for Imperial’s entrepreneurial ecosystem in your first year as President?
My focus during my first year will be to understand Imperial’s ambitions in innovation and entrepreneurship in more detail and work with colleagues to shape a strategy – a roadmap – for the next phase of Imperial’s development. We will be building on the huge achievements of those who have preceded us. Imperial has the potential to establish itself at the heart of one of the world’s most vibrant and successful deep tech innovation ecosystems – serving as both a key catalyst for the UK’s economic future and an international partner of choice for major research efforts tackling some of the greatest challenges facing humanity and our planet.
About Professor Hugh Brady
Across his academic career, Professor Brady has fulfilled roles at Harvard Medical School and the University of Toronto, and was the youngest-ever President of University College Dublin. He is a renowned global leader in science, engineering, medicine and business, and an international authority on the pathogenesis of renal inflammation and diabetic kidney disease. From 2009 to 2013, Professor Brady served on the Irish Government’s innovation taskforce with the aim of positioning Ireland as an international innovation hub and increasing innovation and entrepreneurship across the nation.
