Scientists Can't Do Business
The most expensive lie in science
A one-hour lecture that confronts the commercial gap head on, and argues that changing the role of scientists in society is one of the most important things we could do.
You did the science. Now learn to lead.
The skills that carry research into the real world are not taught in any lab. They can be learned. Spin Up Science gives scientists the commercial fluency to lead their work out of the lab, and take their place as the leaders science needs.
The gap
Science produces the ideas. Too few ever leave the lab.
The majority of breakthrough research never reaches the people who need it. Not because the science is wrong, but because the scientists were not equipped to navigate the commercial world, and that world has no incentive to help them.
That gap costs us. In cures that do not reach patients. In technologies that never get built. In problems that stay unsolved because the person who understood them best did not know how to make the case for funding.
Programmes
Build the skills where you need them.
Six programmes, each one building the commercial skills your science needs next. Start wherever you are.
Wherever you are
No idea of your own required
When you have something to build
Take a specific idea to a company
The signal
Proof, not assertion.
A decade of turning researchers into founders and leaders. The numbers are the quiet part.
5,000+
Scientists trained
£140M+
Raised by alumni companies
23
Partner institutions
Where our alumni come from
Talks
Talks that change how scientists see themselves.
Engineering Serendipity
How to build your own luck
The systems and habits that make breakthrough moments more likely: deliberate practice, network design, and the science of being in the right place at the right time.
Our founder
Founded by a scientist who has done it.
Most commercial training for scientists is designed by people who have never run an experiment. They know business. They do not know what it feels like to have a result that could matter, and no language to explain it to the people with capital.
Spin Up Science was founded in 2016 by Dr Ben Miles, a research scientist who built a commercial career. Its programmes draw on a decade of work with research institutions across the UK and internationally, developing the precise translation between scientific thinking and commercial reality.
- Founder
- Spin Up Science & Empirical Ventures
- Host
- The Dr Ben Miles channel
- Focus
- Deep tech commercialisation
Ready to lead it?
Whether you are a scientist, a department, or a funder, tell us what you are trying to unlock. We will find the right entry point.