Aiden Flynn, CEO 05 January 2021
In the wake of a tumultuous 2020, I have taken the opportunity to reflect on the progress Exploristics has made as a company and reappraise my reasons for setting it up. This seems fitting as New Year can be a time when many consider what the future holds and what their next career steps might be.
Taking a leap
Almost 12 years ago I chose to take a leap from a relatively secure position in big Pharma and start my own business. As individuals we all have our personal motivations, and it can take a long time into a career before we understand what they are. For me, there were four main reasons for starting something new:
- I had worked for 17 years in two large organisations and had reached a certain level within the hierarchy from which it was difficult to see where my next move or opportunity was coming from. Therefore, I was left with a decision to wait for my next opportunity or to take things into my own hands.
- I have always been motivated by new challenges where I can develop and apply new technology or methodology in drug development and clinical research. Striking out alone seemed to offer me a new freedom to innovate.
- Over my career I have been driven by the need to use my skills to make a genuine contribution to the lives of others by doing something meaningful. Operating within a smaller organisation seemed to offer me the chance to have a more direct connection between what I did and its impact.
- Whilst large Pharma are the engine of our life sciences sector, getting smaller did not seem to be about thinking smaller. Due to their limited size and funds, SMEs can be adept at pivoting to meet emerging needs, bringing a fresh way of thinking about how best to use available resources and offering new approaches to deep-rooted challenges.
New challenges
So, I left big Pharma to set up Exploristics. In truth, the move took a little adjustment and has certainly offered a wealth of new challenges – where was the IT/HR helpline when I really needed it? At times, it has also been a bit of a rollercoaster providing both exceptional highs and lows sometimes within in a single afternoon. Setting up your own company is not for the faint-hearted. Nevertheless, for me it has delivered a multitude of opportunities despite the undoubted challenges. In a small company, you never stop learning and developing as you strive to remain at the cutting-edge of such a fast-moving sector which in the last year has seen unprecedented change. Whilst perhaps I am still honing the perfect job, I can certainly say that I am immensely proud of the extraordinary progress we have made as a company. From a coffee-table start-up, Exploristics has blossomed into a genuinely creative enterprise filled with talented individuals providing world-class support to life sciences organisations of all sizes. It gives me great satisfaction to see the real value that we create for those involved in clinical development every day. So, for me personally there have been no regrets in changing the course of my career all those years ago. It has given me both new goals and new opportunities. In short, it has made me raise my game. A new year is a great time to make a new start. Where will you end up in 2021?
Our offering
We are a global leader in leading-edge statistical and computational methods to expedite Precision Medicine (Stratified Medicine) approaches, supporting biomarker discovery and validation, companion diagnostics development and the integration of biomarkers into development programmes.
With KerusCloud, we accelerate Precision Medicine and biomarker enrichment studies with state-of-the art simulation for comprehensive study optimisation and multiple subgroup identification and treatment selection.
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