The #1 Career Path That Will Actually Change the World—and Why You’ve Never Heard of It
Everybody talks about the power of youth or the power of entrepreneurship—and rightfully so. Students have changed the world before, and they will again:
In the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. was largely driven by student activists
Students played a key role in toppling the South African apartheid regime in the 60s-80s
Various impactful companies, including Facebook, Google, Dell, as well as discoveries and inventions like the polio vaccine, blood transfusion, space exploration, and the world wide web, are things that might have never happened without the drive of students.
In the 2010s, the Finnish startup ecosystem was created from scratch by students
At the same time, research breakthroughs have redefined human existence. Just to name a few:
The Google search algorithm was developed from Larry Page’s and Sergey Brin’s Stanford research.
Lithium-Ion Batteries were developed at the University of Oxford in the 1980s
GPS, now used in everything from logistics to ride-sharing, started as a DARPA-university collaboration.
The internet itself was a defense research project originally, as a DARPA project.
Penicillin, discovered by Alexander Fleming, was further developed at Oxford University
So why does it seem so difficult today for youth to find impactful careers?
The truth is, most of the big challenges we face —from climate change and global health to economic stagnation—demand not just entrepreneurial drive, but also new solutions, and as a society we are way too fascinated by the past.
The fact of the matter is that new human knowledge tends to lie in universities and research institutes. Yet, despite housing some of the most cutting-edge innovations in history, these institutions struggle to bring their breakthroughs to society. The process of getting research out of the lab and into the world—a process called research commercialization—is long, brutal, and deeply flawed.
Why Don’t More Breakthroughs Reach Society?
The path from research to impact is anything but straightforward. Consider the steps a single scientific discovery must go through before it can change the world:
Discovery & Research: A breakthrough occurs in a lab—often by accident or through years of incremental work. This process is long and explorative, as we can not know what will be revolutionary beforehand. Additionally, many discoveries need large amounts of refinement before they are market-ready. For example, the Lithium-Ion batteries were originally developed in the 70s, but only made it to the markets in 1991.
Disclosure: Universities produce a large volume of new knowledge annually. Only in Finland, there are around 20,000 scientific articles produced annually. The current incentives and structures in academia do not give a reason to explicitly disclose what might be an invention that is worth exploring. In Finland, the current figure is 1200 annually, so a mere 6%.
Technology Transfer: Universities must find a way to license or spin out the discovery into a company. This process involves figuring out the IP strategy, as well as negotiations between the company and the university on how to transfer the technology and on which terms.
Funding & Development: Deep tech takes years to refine, test, and bring to market—unlike software, where an MVP can be built in a hackathon. mRNA vaccine technology took decades of research before Pfizer and Moderna brought it to the world in record time during the COVID-19 pandemic. The current VC structures, often set up for 10+2 year cycles, might sometimes be a tough constraint. Additionally, hardware based products require large amounts of capital, as factories are not cheap to build.
Scaling & Adoption: Even if an innovation is scientifically groundbreaking, it still needs business models, markets, and real-world validation. The solar panel technology we see today was originally developed in research institutions decades ago but required massive commercialization efforts even from governments to become affordable and widespread.
So ideas definitely exist. The question is, are we determined to do the work to bring them to life?
Why Research Commercialization is the Common Denominator for Global Challenges
No matter the crisis or challenge, the solution almost always traces back to research commercialization:
Climate Change? Innovation might be in battery storage, carbon capture, or steady-state fusion, who knows? What we do know is that mitigation alone will never be enough.
Productivity? Sure, bring manufacturing and jobs back, but what will we produce, where will we work? We need the breakthroughs for building new factories to make sense, and for us to actually have real jobs for people to come to.
Talent Retention & Attraction? The best minds go where the frontier is. If Finland is where the cutting edge companies are, climate is not a factor in the decision of where to move.
Defense? History shows that research commercialization and defense are closely linked. Nuclear power, the internet, and even GPS were fast-tracked by defense-driven R&D.
Economic Stagnation? The most transformative companies that radically create new markets or morph existing ones require transformative new products. The black swan companies that truly drive economic growth are not incremental.
So what?
Most people never consider working in research commercialization. It sounds niche, bureaucratic, or like something only for scientists. But it’s not. If you’re an entrepreneurially minded person who wants to solve big problems, this is THE frontier.
Whether your career ambitions lie in becoming a scientist, entrepreneur, lawyer, government official, designer, or anything else, the world needs the smartest people to solve the most important problems. You need to be part of bringing science into society through your perspective.
