Yesterday I was talking to someone I met on a bike ride about the grant proposal writing tips that I teach here and in my online grant writing courses. I mentioned that I help people get more grants and less rejections by applying the principles of “Marketing” to grantwriting.

Her response?

“Grant writing isn’t like marketing! You have to be a lot more technical in a grant.”

We went back and forth for a while on this, me making points, and her making counterpoints about the nature of science grants, and whether “marketing” was relevant or not.

I pointed out to her that when I mention “Marketing,” I’m not talking about anything underhanded – I’m talking about having a great “product” and then effectively conveying to people – like your reviewers – that it is great. A lot of us have a great project but don’t do a very good job of selling it. Others do a great job of selling but don’t have a good project. You have to have both to really be successful at “marketing”.

Even this didn’t convince her.

Finally, I gently mentioned my track record on funding, and suddenly she got quiet, so we moved onto another topic.

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What this conversation tells me is that there is major resistance to the notion of “marketing,” especially when it comes to technical/science projects.

But have you ever asked yourself why someone like Lee Hood or Craig Venter (both very successful modern scientists involved in systems biology and genomics) are where they are?

They are smart scientists. But are they really smarter than you or I? I’ll bet they are not smarter scientists than we are.

But they probably are smarter when it comes to marketing their science. They know how to get other people onboard and supporting their ambitious plans. They could not have done the work alone – they both have relied on huge amounts of help from other people. This includes everything from financial backing to creative new approaches to problems, contributed by others.

Along the way, I’ve heard some of the following objections to “marketing”:
1. “It is underhanded” – this misperception is based on bad experiences with the worst kind of marketers, such as siding salesmen, telemarketers, etc. But think about this – have you ever bought a product from a Fortune 500 company? If so, in all likelihood it was because of their marketing efforts. The best marketing is “invisible” to the consumer – a far cry from the “pushy salesman” that you might think of when the word “marketing” is used (in the video, I use the example of a Siding salesman). Apple is a great exemplar of this – they do very good marketing, but in a low key way. Without Marketing, they wouldn’t exist as a company, to continue producing the great products that they do. Marketing is vital to their survival – as it is to yours if you want to be a leader who is responsible for a lab or for large projects.

(To be Continued in Part II, tomorrow. I will provide one key action step that you can start taking immediately to improve your funding chances).

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We all waste too much time on grant writing. If you want to stop wasting your time, double your funding, and halve your rejections, sign up for the free “Back Door To Funding” report.

Over at the Naturally Selected Blog I’ve been writing the occasional post about science careers. The most recent post: “Who are you to deserve grant funding?” garnered a few “skeptical” responses.

One writes:

A very plausible pep-talk, but what objective evidence is there that excellence and self confidence are the most important, or even significantly important, determinants in grant funding? I know a lot of anecdotal evidence to the contrary, including my own experience. I know, I know, the purpose of a motivational presentation is to energize and inspire, and toward this useful end, fairy tales may serve better than facts. I’m just saying.

This person missed the point of the post entirely (and he is also wrong about the self-confidence issue).

First: Self-confidence is critical in any human endeavor – especially one as complex as grant writing. All great accomplishments come from a sense of “confidence” that we can pull it off. If we don’t have that confidence, we don’t even get started. Fait accompli. Study the history of any great accomplishment, from flight to relativity to the lightbulb, and you will see that the originator had confidence in their ideas and their ability to implement them.

Second: this wasn’t about having self confidence per se – it is about knowing that you are doing worthwhile work, and being willing to show that in the proposal. The commenter says he knows of “anecdotal evidence to the contrary.” What, exactly, is that evidence? I’m just saying that if you don’t have the confidence in your ability to do great work, then your grant writing will reflect that. But I’m not saying that if you have confidence, you’ll automatically get the grant. It takes a lot more than that.

Third: There is this view of the world – particularly widespread in scientific circles – that we are just machines, part of a big universe that is like a clock winding down. In that view, everything is pre-destined. We are given certain talents and circumstances, and we have no control over what happens beyond those things we were given. That’s because a machine is deterministic, meaning that its ultimate trajectory is completely determined from the beginning. However, taking that point of view is both contradictory to many observable facts, and more importantly, if you act like that’s true, your life will go nowhere.

The poster’s comment reflects this deeply-held point of view. “It’s all fate” is the underlying message here. Belief has no role. The clock was wound so that you’ll either get the grant (or not) and there’s nothing you can do. It’s a “fairy tale” to believe that you can improve your odds, or do better.

But this whole universe-mind-as-a-machine is just another fairy tale!

Hence, if you adopt that view, you’ll permanently suffer from the view that life just happens to you, and there’s nothing you can do.

In the meantime, people who don’t suffer from that view will continue inventing, creating, and building.

And that’s what grants are ultimately about – getting the funds to create, build, invent, and test.

We all live within our own particular “fairy tales”. There is no objective reality that the human mind can grasp. Reality is far too big for our minds. We tell ourselves stories in an attempt to make sense out of the bigness of it all.

Which story are you going to tell yourself? I choose to tell myself stories that will help me accomplish more of what I want and less of what I don’t want.

Today I had a conversation with someone who is in the middle of a science career, and is having trouble with getting grants funded.

It seems like there are a lot of us mid-career people who are having struggles of various kinds. My goal is to help with those, in any way I can.

In this particular conversation, we touched on the topic of the importance of having papers published in “reputable” journals to get your grant funded. Journals like Nature, Science, PNAS, and etc.

I ended up with a somewhat contrary view to the “conventional wisdom” on this point.

I’ll explain it with an example. Let’s say you’re on a study section, and you have two grants to compare. All other things are equal (and you do not know either author personally), but this:

Grant A was written by a senior scientist who has had 9 Nature/Science papers over the past 10 years on the subject. He is proposing to continue extending the work, by studying new molecular players that may be involved in the pathway. It shows some promise for moving the field forward, but is not revolutionary.

Grant B was written by a newer scientist who has no Nature/Science papers, but does have one paper in a specialist journal on his brand new approach for solving a disease, and in his grant he’s proposing to further develop this promising new approach.

Which one would get you more enthusiastic? More of the same, or something new?

For better or worse, we are a society that thrives on newness and innovation. It has taken us very far (and occasionally led us into troubles, like inventing the atomic bomb). We like the new, and we’re not so keen on the same and the boring.

Given what I just wrote, I would be hard pressed to see how the first proposal would get more enthusiasm than the second – despite the lack of Nature/Science papers for the second grant.

This is especially true because the senior researcher has been working on the topic for 10 years. Let’s say that topic is Cancer (a favorite of mine, since it claimed my father’s life). Now, if the senior researcher had 10 years to work on it already, and he’s only made “decent” progress – but no big leaps – it starts making a reviewer wonder if it wouldn’t be better to invest in a new approach.

I believe this is the greatest challenge that lies in waiting for mid-career investigators. At first, your work is often seen as being novel and new by study sections. But after your second or third funded grant on the subject, it starts growing stale. It just isn’t exciting anymore.

Therefore, I’d argue that the number of high-profile publications is actually less important than the amount of (feasible) innovation present. I think that taking your field in a new direction is a far more interesting thing to most reviewers than just having a bunch of great publications.

So, if you are having mid-career funding challenges, think about the science that you’ve been doing, and ask yourself: has it grown a bit stale? Or is it fresh and new? If it is stale, how could you renew it?

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BTW – I’m not saying that “selling” something new is easy. It never is. That’s what “Marketing Your Science” is all about. (And, yes, I’ll finish that book someday, after I’ve finished some of the many other projects I have going on).

When we get our grant rejected, it is easy to point the blame at the reviewers. “Those
stupid reviewers, they didn’t get it.” While that approach may be emotionally satisfying and ego-stroking, it doesn’t
solve the problem. Your reviewer didn’t understand your proposal, and there is only one person to blame for that.