Ben Thiede is a business-development officer at STEMCELL Technologies in Vancouver, Canada. As a neuroscience graduate student, he worked out methods to coax stem cells to take on specialized properties of the inner ear. Now, he works out intellectual-property and other deals that help to bring technologies to the scientific market.

When did you first think about jobs beyond the bench?

About two years before I graduated from my PhD programme at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, I got married and started thinking more long term about my career. Before that, science was just fun.

What led you to your current career?

A classmate who was a year ahead of me was graduating with her PhD and going to law school. She had been exposed to other careers through an internship for the university's licensing and ventures group, working on technology transfer — helping to license and commercialize academic work. I did some informational interviews along the same lines, but I got an internship by talking to a guy who was fitting me for a suit. He was the father-in-law of one of the licensing managers at the university's patent foundation. I e-mailed the manager, and he took me on.

How did your internship compare to the lab?

As a grad student, you think narrowly about one problem. My learning curve in tech transfer was steeper than it was in the lab. I had to quickly pick up what was important about a technology: how does it fit into the field, and what is its value? It was really interesting for me to be close to science that was close to the point of being useful to people.

What do you do now?

I am looking for technologies, and evaluating whether they work or not and what is already patented. After we negotiate a license to bring in a technology, I can see that in six months or a year we are going to be using it in a product that researchers can buy and use in their labs.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. See go.nature.com/xdttdg for more.