On Crossing Over From Science to Business

I am half way finished with an MBA at DePaul, and the question of what ares of science/chemistry are most similar to business is becoming clearer. I've all but finished my required courses, and I'm down to the six electives and the one or two concentrations that I've chosen. I've chosen finance as my concentration and most likely entrepreneurship, but I'm still intrigued by marketing.

What makes the decision hard is that I am uncertain what part of my past life as a scientist will lead me to a future in the business world. In the past it has always been technical skills that got me a job and not so much my people connections. The challenge I find is in marketing myself and breaking away from the scientist stereotype - something that I would like to make my strength and not my weakness (people tend to see me as only a scientist). My short term goal is to transition to marketing or operations management in the biotechnology or pharmaceutical industry where I have the most experience.

I've taken accounting, business statistics, organizational behavior, economics, management of information systems, operations management and now finance and marketing. The classes I find more reminiscent of "chemistry skills" are finance, marketing and operations management.

I'll first describe the disciplines of chemistry and then follow up with business and how they are related. In chemistry there are the basic disciplines of general, organic, analytical, physical and inorganic chemistry. Generally, the most jobs in industry go to organic and analytical chemistry. Organic chemistry has to do with the study of chemical reactions of compounds consisting mostly of carbon and hydrogen. If you are a strategic thinker and can apply rules, you'll be good at organic chemistry. It also has a lot to do with geometry and shape. Inorganic chemistry has many parallels as well with organic, but the chemical compounds contain a metal. Analytical and physical chemistry have more to do with analyzing and fitting chemical behavior to models. Quantifying and predicting are important. Building equipment and writing computer code can also come in to play.

Of the business courses I've taken I would divide them in to organizing/categorizing/efficiency, forecasting/predicting, organizing people/communication skills, analyzing/quantifying/research

Functional Skill	Business	Chemistry
organizing/categorizing/efficiency	Accounting, Ops Management	Organic, rxn type, % yield
forecasting/predicting	Economics, Finance	Physical
organizing people/communication	Organizational Behavior, HR	N/A
analyzing/quantifying/research	Finance, Marketing	Analytical, Physical Research applies to all

A person can over analyze decision making when it comes to careers. What it really boils down to is are you passionate and motivated about the path you've chosen. If you have these elements when you inevitably hit a stumbling block, you can keep going. If we could all forecast the future then that would be boring. For me, I'll be gathering information until the very last minute and then make the best choice possible.