With just one week to go until the Lab of the Future Congress Europe, Joshua Lally one of our Conference Producers, caught up with Stéphane Maikovsky for an exclusive preview of his upcoming presentation and the insights he’ll be sharing on Day 2 of the event.
Q1. What are you currently working on?
I am Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer at LifeArc , and one of our major projects right now is to literally build the lab of our future. The majority of our staff are currently split between locations in London and in the town of Stevenage, which is around 45km (30 miles) away. We are going to bring all these staff onto one site by refurbishing a single building in the centre of London to meet all our needs.
Q2. What do you plan to cover in your talk?
I am Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer at LifeArc , and one of our major projects right now is to literally build the lab of our future. The majority of our staff are currently split between locations in London and in the town of Stevenage, which is around 45km (30 miles) away. We are going to bring all these staff onto one site by refurbishing a single building in the centre of London to meet all our needs.
Q3. What are the biggest challenges in collaborating effectively and driving innovation in interdisciplinary spaces?
It may sound simple, but effective collaboration starts with people talking to each other. Many of the biggest challenges to effective collaboration are around removing the barriers to those conversations happening. The bigger and more complex an organisation becomes, the harder it is to remove barriers – and to stop new barriers popping up.
Q4. How important is physical space and particularly laboratories in enabling effective collaboration?
Incredibly important. We must, of course, recognise that quick and easy virtual contact opens the door to collaborations that could never have happened otherwise. But we lose more than we gain if we transfer all conversations to the screen. The human touch – and serendipity – have always played a role in moving the frontiers of scientific knowledge forward, and that does require physical space and person-to-person contact.
Q5. What does the lab of the Future look like to you?
All will be revealed in my talk! But seriously – it is a space that closely matches the needs of the organisation it hosts, a space which can adapt to the changing needs of that organisation (and the advance of technology and scientific knowledge), and a space that makes it easy for people to be together to create real value through deep collaboration.
Q6. Why do you choose to attend/speak at the Congress?
The quality of the delegates is incredibly high, which offers me the opportunity to learn and the chance to have my own ideas challenged. I expect to leave thinking: “I’m glad I came – I never would have known that otherwise.”