As a theoretical physicist and migraine researcher, I started writing this science blog in 2009. I was invited by Lars Fischer, probably not least because of my somewhat unusual professional combination. In my first post I summarized a lecture I gave at the invitation of the American health authority NIH in Chicago. It was about migraines as a dynamic, i.e. time-dependent disease. How can therapeutic approaches be derived from purely physical-mathematical principles that turn the course of the disease around? Can active ingredients come from mathematics and do without molecules at all by turning back time locally in the body?
Science and economy
Today, twelve years later, I am an entrepreneur. Even as a scientist were mine Conflicts of Interest While Blogging deliberately. As an entrepreneur, these are even bigger and, above all, completely different. So I published very little on SciLogs after starting my business out of science in 2016. – But as important as a clear code of conduct is, not writing about science and business is a missed opportunity.
Some sectors, the health sector is a good example, need science and business. So it is not wrong for scientists to look at the economy and learn what skills are needed there. How do I start a business myself? And perhaps more importantly: why?
My area of work is in the health industry. It is a sub-area that today became known in Germany as »Digital Health«, primarily through Jens Spahn. The origin is indeed in Berlin, it can be traced back to the so-called Berlin school, to the physician and physicist Hermann von Helmholtz and the lesser-known but perhaps even more important Emil du Bois Reymond. Looking at digital migraine therapies there are even earlier approaches.
As a scientist at a university, I could not finish my work successfully. It was a lot. One point below was that I not only wanted to bring the technology behind the active ingredients from mathematics – now called digital active ingredients for short – to market readiness, but also to market it. Digital products only grow to their full potential in the market. It’s the same with digital therapies. For apps on prescription.
From scientist to scientist-entrepreneur
With this realization, I left the academic world. The science magazine Nature reported on my first seed funding through the EXIST program of the Ministry of Economic Affairs in its “Career Guide” section with the headline »No more career headaches«. The headline is obviously wrong. The career-related headaches are just different as an entrepreneur. Correct is: “Outside of the university there are also nice laboratories«. Last week was the headline of Qiiu, a magazine published in cooperation with Deutsche Bank that interviewed me on the subject of spin-offs from academia. The whole article is worth reading. I would like to highlight an excerpt here.
“Reasoning isn’t something for everyone,” Dahlem points out. “You then left research for the time being.” As a managing director, it then becomes important to attract venture capital, hire staff and combine both behind an idea. In short: “Getting the company ready for business,” says Dahlem.
What does a (passionate) scientist need to be a (successful) entrepreneur at the same time? What did I take with me? An answer to this question may inspire others to take the risk. In addition to my way of thinking, there are values that I do not consider unusual among scientists and that continue to be valuable to me as an entrepreneur because they give me my compass.
Denken in First Principles
Being a scientist-entrepreneur is about thinking in first principles. Science knows many first principles. For me an important one is the second law of thermodynamics. Before that scares off too many non-physicists, I’ll formulate how this main theorem helps me in general.
The well-known serenity prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr, sums up the use of this principle in a nutshell. I just have to replace God with thermodynamics: »Thermodynamics gives me the serenity to accept things that cannot be undone, the courage to reverse things that are reversible (like diseases), and the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.«
The second law of thermodynamics defines which processes are irreversible. He gives the arrow of time. It also leads to the conclusion that our universe ends in heat death. As a student, of course, I couldn’t accept that. I therefore chose my academic research focus on thermodynamics far from equilibrium. There I suspected I would find a way out. and thats the way it is. There, far from thermodynamic equilibrium, we do not escape the second law of thermodynamics. But with this branch of science we can explain why new structures arise. The time arrow is turned around for a short time and locally. One question in particular fascinated me during the course of my studies: can the course of the disease be reversed?
So my academic background helps me answer the basic question: does the science behind therapy make sense? Thermodynamics, and especially thinking about the arrow of time, helps with the bold question: How can we reverse disease? All that means is that we are changing the paradigm from therapy to healing.
We have to start with a disease. Brain diseases are interrelated. The American Brain Foundation therefore has the approach “Cure One, Cure Many”Formulated. Migraine is the perfect illness to take that approach. Its symptoms form “a whole encyclopedia of neurology” (quote from Oliver Sacks).
Can we therapeutically reprogram the brain to unlearn migraines? In this endeavor of digital therapy, migraine is a bridgehead for me, from which we can reach a new bank, that of organic physics. It is actually an old bank, but not many people today know the old bridges to the Berlin School of Organic Physics.
Principles and values
In addition to my thinking in First Principles, as an entrepreneur I share the same three values as I did as a scientist. However, I notice different levels of resistance.
The first is continuous learning. On the one hand, continuous learning means exposing myself to the thoughts of great thought leaders. On the one hand there is Rudolf Clausius, who introduced the 2nd law of thermodynamics and thus the arrow of time. Emil du Bois Reymond, the father of organic physics, is also important to me. And finally John Hughlings Jackson, who saw himself as a madhouse theorist, others elevated him to the rank of Albert Einstein. Let’s just call him the father of evolutionary neurology. To name three of my science heroes heroes. Today I also have entrepreneurs as role models. On the other hand, continuous learning also means thinking about hypothetical issues without being restricted by previous experience, knowledge and role models.
The second value is respect. Respect does not mean to be conformist or accommodating, but to pay positive attention to my fellow human beings, to listen to them with the intention of understanding, not to react. With this value, I feel a greater challenge since I have been leading a company and no longer a scientific working group.
Above all is serenity. Leaving all doubts behind me and knowing what I am doing as a basis from which wisdom could perhaps even grow one day. There are still many occasions when my composure is disturbed. Then I return to continuous learning.
It’s about uniting everything behind an idea, as a scientist and as an entrepreneur.
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