You Can Go Home Again

Jian Ni spent more than a decade outside of China, earning his PhD at Cambridge University and joining Human Genome Sciences of Rockville, Md., when it was still a small company. He kept close tabs on events back home and regularly traveled to China to keep in touch with colleagues. When he finally returned last April to start his own biotechnology company, his contacts in Asia and the United States proved essential to his success in obtaining corporate partners. "We are focusing on licensing technology from abroad, developing our own technology," Ni says, "and we have collaborations with other biotech companies in China." HOME LURES Such scenarios become more common as the growth in foreign-born researchers in the United States continues. In 1997, the number of foreign-born postdoctoral fellows in American academic institutions exceeded the number of homegrown postdocs for the first time, and the gap has been widening ever since. By 2001, there were about 40% more foreign-born than US citizens holding US postdoc positions.1 Bicultural experiences make many researchers particularly valuable to both Western companies and those in their own countries that are eager for collaboration. "The opportunity is enormous," says Ida Chen, a research scientist at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, who grew up in Taiwan. Chen is a founder of Clingenix, which has corporate headquarters in Sunnyvale, Calif., and research labs in Taiwan and China. Chen has occasionally assisted life science companies in recruiting bilingual scientists. "I think the foreign researchers here have a lot of potential if they truly can speak both languages," Chen says. "I mean read, write, speak--really be able to do it." Chen stresses that it is particularly difficult to find researchers who are fluent in business terms in two languages, given that younger scientists may not even know the specific meaning of contract terms in their own languages. Researchers from Singapore and India have an advantage, because they typically already know English, she says. Shahab Alam encourages Indians studying or working abroad to immerse themselves in the foreign culture, and to educate their hosts about Indian culture. He emphasizes the importance of understanding differences in body language and gender rules between Indian and Western countries. "In India there are a lot of nonverbal cues Americans don't really understand," says Alam, human resources director for TCG Software, which has offices in New Jersey and India, and a life science division in Singapore. "For example, a lot of communication in India happens by people nodding." Without the expected verbal responses, Westerners can become confused, Alam says. A good intermediary educates both parties, helping Westerners understand that nonverbal communication carries great weight in India, and helping Indians understand that Westerners value verbal responses. In some regions, cultural beliefs may make an Indian woman hesitant to shake the hand of a visiting male collaborator. Without a facilitator who understands both cultures, offense or misunderstandings could easily arise. "[It is useful to] help Americans understand cultural issues with respect to the male/female issues in India," Alam says. HOME HURDLES Though researchers can learn cultural cues when working in a foreign country, they may face problems when returning home to start a company or work in an established life sciences business. Brad Lee, executive vice president of operations and business development at Epitomics, Burlingame, Calif., says that clashes between returnees and scientists who remained in China are so common that descriptive terms have emerged. Returnees are called sea turtles (they have gone out to sea and returned), and locally trained scientists are called rock turtles (they have stayed on land), says Lee, whose company has an antibody manufacturing subsidiary in Hangzhou, China. Sea turtles sometimes return home with excessive confidence and unrealistic expectations, he says. Rock turtles can be better adapted to the local environment, and they resent the preferential treatment they believe their government gives to the sea turtles. "There is a clash, and there is always the debate: Is the sea turtle better or is the rock turtle better?" Lee adds. To return home and succeed in business, Lee says, the sea turtles will need a deep commitment. "It is a totally different business environment ... the training they receive in the United States is very different than the experience they will face when they return ... especially in third-world countries like China and India," he says. For example, taking time to develop deep personal relationships is critical to conducting business in China. "[In the United States] you just get the people you need, build a team ... get the paperwork, and settle down and start doing things," he says. "If you try to do that [in China] you will basically hit your head to the stone wall because no one will listen to you." Mignon Fogarty (mignon@welltopia.com) is a freelance writer in Santa Cruz, Calif. 1. H.H. Garrison et al., "In an era of scientific opportunity, are there opportunities for biomedical scientists?" FASEB J, Oct. 2, 2003, available online at www.fasebj.org/cgi/reprint/03-0836lifev1.pdf LEADING US COMPANIES TO ASIA The potential to penetrate vast, embryonic markets is a powerful lure to US life science companies exploring Asia. Young companies such as Epitomics in Burlingame, Calif., and established companies such as Eli Lilly & Co. in Indianapolis are forming partnerships and setting up subsidiaries. "It makes a lot of strategic sense to have a facility in the Far East, specifically in China, to utilize their human and capital resources," says Brad Lee, executive vice president of operations and business development at Epitomics, which runs an antibody manufacturing subsidiary in Hangzhou, China. Grace Yu, senior investment manager at China Development Industrial Bank Bioscience Venture Management, San Diego, says that profits are a strong attractor. "People would like to establish connections with Asia because the market is large," she says. Biotech growth overseas is driven strongly by a flood of returning scientists trained in the United States or Europe. Asian and Indian scientists appear to be returning home (or staying there in the first place) in part because fewer US employment visas have been available in the last year or two. But they also return with the hope of a better life. "People believe that they will have more in terms of their career development in China than in the United States, where they [can] hit the glass ceiling because they are a foreigner or a minority," Yu says. Furthermore, wages paid by US or European companies to overseas workers can be enticing, at least in relative terms. For example, Reuters reports that with just a couple of years of US experience, a software worker in India can make more in a month than the average Indian makes in a year.1 Matt Plunkett, director of Healthcare Investment Banking at CIBC World Markets in Menlo Park, Calif., cautions against overstating the trend to move research overseas. "Novartis is building a huge 1000-person research headquarters in Boston, and GlaxoSmithKline has been moving research into the US for a decade," he notes, "so there are certainly some strong trends on the other side of the fence too." 1. "Jobs abound in India's tech sector," Reuters, October 4, 2003. function sendData() { document.frm.pathName.value = location.pathname; result = false if (document.frm.score[0].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[1].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[2].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[3].checked) result = true; if (document.frm.score[4].checked) result = true; if (!result) alert("Please select") return result; } .myradio{background-color : #94bee5} Please indicate on a 1 - 5 scale how strongly you would recommend this article to your colleagues? Not recommended 1 2 3 4 5 Highly recommended Please register your vote

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