{"id":701,"date":"2021-01-15T06:52:51","date_gmt":"2021-01-15T06:52:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/?p=701"},"modified":"2021-01-15T08:51:06","modified_gmt":"2021-01-15T08:51:06","slug":"enterprise-is-not-about-the-money-by-professor-matt-westmore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/2021\/01\/15\/enterprise-is-not-about-the-money-by-professor-matt-westmore\/","title":{"rendered":"Enterprise is not about the money – by Professor Matt Westmore"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Enterprise is not about the money.

Let me say that again; enterprise activity – contract research, spin-outs, consultancy, service contracts, intellectual property and all that jazz – are not about the money.

Yes \u2013 they involve generating income and often through commercial activity, but enterprise is no more about generating income than research is about getting research grants, or education is about securing tuition fees. Now, of course, it feels like it is sometimes, and the money is important, necessary, sometimes exciting, but it\u2019s not why we do any of these things.\u00a0\u00a0

We do research, education\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0enterprise to deliver on the Faculty\u2019s and University\u2019s social mission. To create social, cultural and economic value for peoples in our immediate community and around the world. This is true across the University and I believe especially so for health-related enterprise.

As with health-related research and medical education, the problem is that money is easy to count whilst social value is hard; worse still for enterprise is the seductive opportunity to release your inner Gordon Gekko or Deborah Meaden. But let me put it this way. I work in the Wessex Institute, the University\u2019s biggest enterprise unit by far. I don\u2019t see any Gordon Gekkos or Deborah Meadens walking around. I see people committed to investing in patient involvement, not returns on investment, I see people get excited by how research leads to healthier communities, not healthier balance sheets; and I see people trying to make the world a better place, not make money.

But here is the funny thing. Although the Wessex Institute is not driven by the desire to make \u2018loads-a-money\u2019, but by a common sense of purpose that is about making a difference, we generate around 50% of the entire University\u2019s consultancy income and return a healthy surplus to Faculty coffer each and every year. So, if you don\u2019t focus on enterprise as a money-making activity, it seems that you actually end up making quite a lot of money. And the reason is quite simple. In general, people don\u2019t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. They wouldn\u2019t buy our desire to make money, but they will buy our desire to make a difference. And they do. So next time you think about whether to engage in enterprise, think not whether you want to make money \u2013 let\u2019s be honest would you be an academic if you did –\u00a0 think whether you want to make a difference to society <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Enterprise is not about the money. Let me say that again; enterprise activity – contract research, spin-outs, consultancy, service contracts, intellectual property and all that jazz – are not about the money. Yes \u2013 they involve generating income and often<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3796,"featured_media":588,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,42,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise","category-professor-matt-westmore","category-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/97\/2019\/11\/image.jpg?fit=400%2C267&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8r5I4-bj","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3796"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":703,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions\/703"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generic.wordpress.soton.ac.uk\/medicallyspeaking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}