On the 19th/20th of September, right after the ESR Conference in Mondello, Sicily, the ESRs participated in the third complemetary skills workshop organised by the QCALL network. The aim of the workshop was to gain more knowledge on business and commercialisation procedures for research and development. The workshop was held by Dr. Andrew Collins, Enterprise Lead for QTEC, University of Bristol.

On the first day the participants practiced how to communicate their research effectively targeted at different audiences and they attended a lecture where they were given a high level view of the commercialisation process focusing on market research, protection of intellectual property and various business models.

On the second day the ESRs were asked to pick a career path/business plan and were coached to be able to find out who and/or what is needed to achieve their goals by making use of what they had learnt the previous day. The final goal of this session was to put together a pitch aimed at a potential customer, venture capitalist, lead scientist or a government funding board. The pitches were followed by a brief evaluation by the instructor and also the rest of the group could comment on the pitches. Prices were offered for the best pitches. Congratulations go out to Gaëtan, Guillermo and Yumang for the most convincing pitches!

The ESRs found the workshop informative, enjoyable and useful as they managed to gain some insight on important concepts possibly necessary for their future career and they also had the opportunity to try themselves in a pitching scenario and receive valuable feedback.