Polsky Center Course Pulls Scientists Out of the Lab and Into Business

The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation is running a business course that gives scientists a structured opportunity to explore entrepreneurship, the center has announced.

The program, titled "Out of the Lab," is designed for researchers who want to examine whether their scientific work can support a commercial venture. According to the Polsky Center, the course places participants in a setting where they can learn business fundamentals without leaving their research careers behind.

The initiative addresses a specific gap. Scientists often develop technologies with commercial potential but lack the training to evaluate markets, customers, and business models. The Polsky Center course responds to that gap by offering scientists a pathway to test entrepreneurial ideas while they remain embedded in their laboratories.

The center, based at the University of Chicago, has made its name by bridging academic research and commercial application. This course extends that mission to a population that typically has deep technical expertise but limited exposure to how ventures get built, financed, and scaled.

Participants use the course to explore what entrepreneurship would demand of them in practice. That exploration, rather than an obligation to found a company, is the explicit goal. The framing matters: the program gives scientists room to weigh the transition on their own terms, with input from instructors and the center's venture-support infrastructure behind them.

For researchers weighing whether to commercialize their work, the so-what is direct. Programs like this one lower the cost of finding out — before a scientist commits capital, time, or career risk to a startup idea that may or may not hold up outside the lab.