Building Evidence-Based & Problem-Led Commercial Ventures. With Rachel Carey

In this episode we talk to Dr Rachel Carey who is Chief Scientist at Zinc. Backed by the London School of Economics, Zinc was created in 2017 to test different ways of tackling important societal issues.

Rachel is a behavioural scientist with a PhD in Psychology, and a passion for research translation and innovation.

During our conversation, Rachel explains what her role involves and we talk about Zinc's mission and purpose, their Venture Builder Programme, and what it really looks like when you ground new commercial ventures in evidence-based research and with a problem-led approach from the get-go.

Rachel also shares why she thinks start-ups are really interesting environments for social scientists and what's different about social science-based innovation.

Rachel shares some success stories from the Zinc Venture Builder programmes, Bellevie and Tonus as well as two social-scientist-led ventures, Ferly and Studio X.

Lastly, we talk about Zinc's work combatting the impacts of automation on the workforce, such as Tandem and Sook, and the importance of peer groups for social scientists working outside academia.

You can follow Rachel on Twitter and connect with her on LinkedIn. You can find out more about Zinc at www.zinc.vc and twitter.com/zincvc.

We loved talking to Rachel and we hope you enjoy the episode.