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Part 2 of 4. 

My guest for this week’s episode is Shekhar Mitra, former Senior Vice President of Global Innovation and Chief of Innovation at Procter & Gamble and current President and Founder of InnoPreneur, a strategic advisory firm that enables development of innovation capabilities, ideation, and organizational development for Fortune 500 corporations and new ventures. 

Prior to InnoPreneur, Shekhar spent 29 years at Procter & Gamble where he worked his way up from staff scientist to Senior Vice President of Global Innovation and Chief of Innovation, becoming a part of P&G's top leadership team and a member of the CEO's Global Leadership Council. Shekhar’s time at P&G paints a successful entrepreneurial road map for those looking to learn, grow, and innovate within large corporations. 

Post retirement from P&G, Shekhar spent several years as a board member and strategic adviser to several Fortune 500 corporations, new ventures, and private equity companies developing transformational new ideas, business strategies, and organization capabilities to drive growth.

Shekhar’s an expert with an exceptional track record in creating and developing game changing technology platforms and formulating disruptive innovation strategies, whose extensive background in R&D offers unique insights that listeners can benefit from. Please enjoy my conversation with Shekhar Mitra.

00:28 Intro 

01:46 From Colombia to Yale, the Jane Coffin Fellowship, and help from grants and Professors

06:02 Collaborating with top-notch physicists; on track to become a faculty member 

10:18 Lessons in innovation breakthroughs and the importance of multi-functional teams 

13:10 Leaving academia for Procter & Gamble 

18:50 P&G’s impressive research and enzyme engineering prowess; the application of research in everyday life 

23:26 Navigating challenges and successes at Procter & Gamble 

30:34 Learning from mistakes and getting encouragement at the right moment 

34:00 Collaborating with Barry Marshall, Nobel Laureate, and leading clinical investigations 37:37 The importance of having the opportunity to take big swings in research 

41:52 Consumer is the boss, but so is the FDA: Shekhar’s experience working with the agency 

47:29 The value of listening to and empathizing with those around you 

50:48 Outro

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Podcast Website: https://www.thebiotechstartupspodcast.com/ 

Columbia University: https://www.columbia.edu/

Yale University: https://www.yale.edu/

Procter & Gamble: https://us.pg.com/

Jane Coffin Fellowship: https://www.jccfund.org/

Hammett Award: https://www.chem.columbia.edu/content/graduate-awards

Enzyme Engineering: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/enzyme-engineering

X-ray Crystallography: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1186895/

Computational Biology: https://cbd.cmu.edu/about-us/what-is-computational-biology.html

Bioinformatics vs. Computational Biology: https://www.excedr.com/blog/what-is-bioinformatics-and-computational-biology

Protein Folding: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK9843/

Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, 2005 (Barry Marshall): https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/2005/7693-the-nobel-prize-in-physiology-or-medicine-2005-2005-6/

Bismuth: https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/pepto-bismol/about-pepto-bismol/

Richard Bersohn: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bersohn

Don Prothero: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Prothero

Barry Marshall: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Barry-J-Marshall

John Pepper: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-pepper-b0a80868/

Jon Moeller: https://us.pg.com/leadership-team/jon-moeller/

The Biotech Startups Podcast gives you a front-row seat to the business and science of building a biotech. Hosted by Jon Chee, CEO of Excedr, the show features honest conversations with founders, execs, and investors about their work, their companies, and how they got there. From scientific breakthroughs to startup lessons, each episode explores what it really takes to grow a life science company—from pre-seed to IPO.