When a company enters another system
When a company with substantial technical capability at home enters another system, the questions it faces are not limited to regulation. This article reflects on the assumptions that shape how serious conversations begin, what preparation is expected and how companies and specialists understand one another across systems. It draws on recent engagement with life sciences […]
Can a life sciences system be read without reference to its anchor?
For an international company assessing a UK life sciences location, a major anchor institution can provide an immediate point of reference. It reduces the need to investigate every organisation and relationship before deciding whether a place deserves further attention. When that name is no longer there, the system has to make its own capability legible: […]
Where does judgement develop when AI produces the answer?
As AI becomes more embedded in early-career work, a practical question is emerging: where does professional judgement begin to form? Drawing on a conversation with Cambridge Cognition, this article looks at how meaningful but bounded work can give early-career researchers room to test AI’s outputs with support from more experienced colleagues. Read the article here: […]
If AI can write the application, what evidence will employers trust?
A London company’s decision to ask candidates for a video rather than a CV raises a question that goes beyond one recruitment process. This article looks at what a finished application still tells an employer once AI can help produce it, and where the more revealing evidence about how someone thinks tends to appear. Read […]
The skills gap in life sciences hasn’t changed. What used to close it has.
By Lily Lin, CEO, Excellence First Enterprise Consultancy (EFEC) The UK’s new Life Sciences Jobs Plan sets out how the sector will build the workforce it needs over the next decade. This article looks at a question the Plan raises but doesn’t quite name: what happens to the informal ways early-career roles used to build […]
The Exposure Gap
What shapes a young person’s understanding of work long before they enter it? This article reflects on the exposure gap: the difference between access to information, which is now widely available, and repeated exposure to how organisations think, decide and solve problems. Drawing on recent conversations with employers, universities, innovation networks and a regional skills […]
Beyond capability: The questions I’m hearing
Lily Lin, CEO of Excellence First Enterprise Consultancy New from Lily Lin: Beyond capability: The questions I’m hearing. Drawing on conversations across the UK’s life sciences ecosystem and with colleagues in China, Lily reflects on a question that keeps resurfacing in very different settings — not how to build more capability, but how organisations recognise, […]
Beyond assets: access is not navigation
The question of whether a strong life sciences ecosystem is also a navigable one rarely receives the attention it deserves. Assets and ambition can coexist with genuine difficulty for those trying to enter the system from an unfamiliar starting point. This piece by our CEO Lily Lin, published on Cambridge Network, takes up that question […]
The Discipline of Not Pursuing
EFEC’s latest article, published by Cambridge Network, examines how organisations decide which opportunities deserve serious attention as capital and institutional capacity become more constrained. The piece argues that mature ecosystems add value less by generating more activity, and more by helping organisations distinguish between what is genuinely executable and what is merely interesting — a […]
When Capability Matters More Than Performance
Employer surveys have long pointed to gaps between what organisations need and what new entrants bring. What the ISE’s 2026 Student Development Survey surfaces is a quieter signal: the qualities falling furthest short are not technical — they are the ones that form slowly, through accumulated exposure to real uncertainty and consequence. EFEC’s latest article, […]